Thought Picnic: When your child is very different from you

Genealogies of uncles

Watching television programmes like Who Do You Think You Are? On the BBC sometimes fills me with some regret, the regret of poor documentation in Africa that means there are few or no archives to be researched for detail about the lives of my forebears and ancestors along with another more personal one.

That being the fact that my life is somewhat documented but if anyone of my relations would be interested in a future time, it would not be through my children but through the offspring of my siblings.

The plot of my lot

Now, as I have written before, I have made peace with myself quite conclusively after chemotherapy that the matter of bearing children is done, though it has never really been a pressing issue apart from the encouragement bordering on harassment of my parents in their desire for grandchildren, and they do have many.

Yet, as I watch the continuum of life in people raising children, not only am I fascinated by the miracle of life, but also the interactions between parent and child along with the attendant responsibility that refocuses perspectives of guardians in relation to their wards.

A child is always a person apart

It is a wonderful thing to be cherished, and I hope that the more parents appreciate the individuality and uniqueness of their children, resisting the tendency to mould them into something they are not, they can help them in the pursuit of their own happiness which might not be fully aligned with their expectations. Parents might find that diversity is a lively thing and more so a greater blessing to them as it is a reaffirmation of the personality of their child.

Most parents in their heart of hearts mean well for their children, and when met with great difficulty of accepting some unexpected and somewhat unpalatable truths about their children, I hope they would be protective, loving, understanding and supportive parents first and well above what they think they are to their community and in society at large.

Think as a parent

It is sometimes a big ask of parents, but some things are just as they are, and what would you do despite all they you know and hold dear when you learn that you child is gay?

Will your humanity allowing for acceptance despite the painful realisation it portends for a while, adjust yourself to accommodate the difficult or would you allow yourself to be overcome with depression and the indifference of strangeness and apathy leading to rejection?

Think as a parent should think – your child needs you more to face the world, do not throw your child to the dogs, in selfish anger.

Thought Picnic: To wilfully forget a parent's birthday

An unfortunate breakdown

It probably signifies a breakdown in relationship building when parents and children grow considerably distant that the only connection between them becomes that of grudging filial duty rather than longing friendship.

Association challenges some children and at times blackmail spurs action through comparison and embarrassment; caught between comparison and envy of others who have cultivated better of parent-child interaction.

These things do not happen in a vacuum, opportunity and choice over the years left untapped and unexploited defines what becomes of how parent and child respect, acknowledge and support each other in whatever paths they all choose and thrive in.

Emotions in turmoil

This might catch a child between resentfulness and gratitude; the former borne of unfortunate inadequacies on both sides and the latter recognising that as age diminishes the influence of parentage, their being around still offers some slight opportunity at reconciliation and renewed friendship.

Resentfulness however is a consuming fire that leaves a person in danger of being past caring, indifferent, unconcerned, disinterested and unaffected.

Exasperated kids

Children are not perfect, and parents do strive to do their best within the spectrum of the knowledge and experience they have from handling the responsibility of making basic provision of shelter, protection, education and material needs, but these are no substitutes for the intangibles of love and affection borne out of proper emotional engagement.

Children do get exasperated starting with parents demanding respect through to parents being overly controlling that the child never gets to live their own life. Crudely, you find instances where the father expects to be feared, and the mother will not countenance the idea of joking or laughing with the children in idle banter.

A lack of adaptation

Independence cannot then come too quickly for the child to break free. The nature of the break if not properly recognised by the parent such that they adapt will lead to unavoidable disengagement as each party goes their different ways, decades separating them until it appears they do not matter to each other anymore than through the intrusion of emotion brought on by nostalgic impudence.

That things could have been better is no more the discussion or argument, whether the time can be redeemed is another issue, but worse still is the possible regret that might follow never having done something when things could be done on the side of both the parent and the child.

Whatever!

You then ask; can a child wilfully forget a parent’s birthday? At which point your realise that things have really gotten that bad and rather than face the trepidation that infuses each conversation when they talk, the greater peace though without comfort is best served by just getting on with your life and the sadness of the story being told.

Providence and consequence draws on a long history of experiences, we are young, we cultivate relationships and grow old living the knowledge of our lived out truths. For those whose memory is the keenest, the hope is that the good remembered outnumbers the ready reckoner of the bad and the ugly when it is all put in the balance.

C’est la vie will say the French, but just west of France, in Spain, one might hear, Que sera, sera.

Thought Picnic: Kids having kids

Break a bottle or two

Just consider a situation where a parent walked into a vintage wines shop where the average price of a bottle was for instance $2,000, just to satisfy their curiosity. Having in tow a toddler or even an adolescent child who then decides to try juggling bottles of Chateau Lafite 1954 as he saw on a cocktail demonstration on television.

Or maybe just a crockery shop where the child just takes plates off the shelf without care or concern, I would assume the parent would exercise authority with a firm caution and possible reprimand knowing that the damage caused by the child would be exacted in penalties against them.

The proud father at 13

My Though Picnic revolves around parent, child, responsibility and consequences.

The news looked interesting enough, a 13-year old boy in the UK had just become a father, the picture that appeared in the papers had father looking not a day over 9 and mother who is 15 looking like his really big sister and daughter born after the bird and the bees moved off the trees into some serious reality.

Apparently, the girl fell pregnant after having sex with her boyfriend – but the pictures also showed how girls who mature earlier than boys made this look like a family photo of siblings rather than parents and child.

An ancestry almost vile

The grandparents of the new born baby who have no discernable income apart from that of the lowly paid paternal grandfather makes the story all the more saddening and visiting an indictment on what our society has become.

None of the grandparents are in a normal family setting, all divorced and separated; something was definitely missing in the early education of the new parents.

First of all is the matter of consequence – sex between kids barely adolescent can produce, wait for it – A PREGNANCY. Then the matter of responsibility, what do these kids know of fending for themselves before ending up with a child?

Then being from broken homes with jobless separated parents on welfare, this piece of news generates more odium than should be accorded the little bundle of joy that is the result of a complete breakdown of responsibility.

Responsibility and consequence

It is very much like a few broken bottles or plates in the shops visited by the parents with their child only that now in the case of a teenage pregnancy and baby the parents are not being held accountable to the point of exacting costs and penalties.

There is no telling that if I were to engage in a business transaction that needed financing the source of finance would enquire of my ability to maintain payments through all sorts verification and authentication.

With the news of the single mother of six children living in a 3-bedroom apartment with her parents now having octuplets through in-vitro fertilisation treatment the question of affordability following responsibility cannot be overlooked.

Affording your children

People should just not have children beyond their ability to offer a good environment for upbringing without relying on charity or welfare. For many, the birth of a child might be a divine gift but the fact is God did not engage in the act of copulation and it required the human-being to adopt a suitable kind of contraception.

There is a case for society creating a means-testing approach to having children just as people are not allowed to drink, drive or vote until they reach a certain age.

Where those societal checks cannot be implemented and enforced then there should be a case of age-related contraceptive neutering – not so much for removing the organs but making the potency of the usage of those organs ineffective until an age of responsibility has been reached.

Time-limited impotence vaccine

Perish the thought that this kind of sexual-organ docility can be introduced through an infant vaccine which wears off as the person approaches 18.

Beyond this, the matter of the 15 year old mother gives cause for concern where her mother allowed her boyfriends to spend the night with her at home – so much so that the 13 year old boy is now asking for a DNA test as proof of paternity because the girl had apparently been offering pleasures to many a man.

At which point I could have fainted with incredulity but this is no time for moralising the matter there is a lot at stack for them, for society and the media-feeding frenzy that now has the grandparents salivating with the thought of making money of the back of this seeming societal tragedy.

No abortion? Then pay up

My biggest wagging finger would however go to the good-intentioned organisations of religious atrocity whose dogmatic adherence to the cult of life abhorring abortion never goes beyond lip service.

Until those organisations really wade into the matter of their principled positions of non-abortion by offering viable and usable care and support through counselling, parental guidance and monetary commitment their noise is piffle and they are hypocrites of the highest order.

No good at all

There is nothing of societal good in having children who cannot fend for themselves having children of their own where even their parents are not effective and beneficial contributors in the society where they belong.

It all lends a lie to the whole moral debate on these matters which can be summarised as follows – parents should provide good sex education to their kids; kids should not be experimenting with sex; if they are then they should have easy access to contraception; kids having kids is just not on and where there is no clear evidence as to how the child would have a life of comfort better than that of those who brought it into the world – adoption is an option whilst abortion should not be ruled out.

Basically, this is serious business, no boy should be proud of being a father at 13, no girl of 15 should be proud of having slept around that the owner of the pregnancy is in dispute, no parent should be seen to be encouraging these kinds of liaisons and no new-born child should be assaulted with the irresponsibility that pervades this sorry tale.

The innocent party to this tale are the child and the octuplets – if only for all that is good in this world they be extricated from the madness into which they have been born which calls for a cold hard look and what is becoming rabid news material but a sad reflection on our sense of responsibility.

Note:

Thought Picnics are a series of random thoughts where thinking the unthinkable becomes part of the conversation to excite debate.

Mother's love or daughter's hate

Mama cannot take it

Reading that a mother had taken her daughter to court for libel [1] in relation to her memoirs that stated she was abused as a child was enough to get my interest.

The daughter is a 50-year old successful barrister and part-time judge, her mother who is 73 has asserted that the writings of her daughter are pure fiction.

The judge in the case read the said book which was titled Ugly [2] and it narrated aspects of mental cruelty meted to the daughter and other aspects of abuse done by her step-father.

It is necessary to note that the recollections in book go back to when the lady was just about 5 or 6 and it gives air to the possibility of false memories, fantasies and vague recollections that might appear as reality.

We must not however discount the possibility that a child of 5 can and will recollect events that have become indelibly marked in the psyche of the child who has become an adult.

They had an opinion of me

I cannot say that I was abused by my parents to any extent that I feel seriously impaired, but I do remember that I seemed never to be able to find anything my mother sent me to get from her room and had to try many times before I succeeded – each failure attracted enough verbal scolding to almost feel worthless.

My father said when I was born I could hardly fit in his palm, and somehow as I developed into a child, that thought of my premature birth became a forgotten memory but I always seemed to be too slow at doing things, he coined a phrase for that slowness – die-die (sounds like dee-err spoken in quick succession).

Beyond that, I witnessed events that I cannot seem to forget and much of what happened in our home as the servants took liberties for their satisfaction and none of that ever got out to our parents except once.

Obviously, if one were to talk about those things now, including the sexual abuse at 7 [3], I could very well expect a legal mayhem invading my doorstep. Now my parents did so well to provide us a safe and comfortable environment but the people they trusted and mentored were not necessarily pious eunuchs and virgin Marys.

The lay of probability

But if one were to look at the circumstances depicted by this lady, her mother had married another man who became her step-father and I can say that it takes a level of vicarious adjustment for a man to accept another man’s child as his to love, to cherish, to mentor and to raise.

There are many circumstances where women in trying to keep a roof over their heads and have a modicum of comfort have expected their children from another marriage to bear the cross as they suspended motherly concern and love for the purpose of keeping their man regardless of what he may do to the children.

This is not to say that all the recollections of childhood are true, but it does not make them entirely false either, there is a probability that a good deal might well be true but children are up against a societal notion that suggests that children cannot have long term memories that they can recall in adulthood.

Between facts and opinions

Now, children may not necessarily have opinions but there are facts of what those children might have experienced. The mother might well have the opinion that whatever happened in the home she tried to keep together was all for the good of making her daughter the success she has become, but the mother’s opinion of her motherhood may not necessarily be the overriding fact of the child’s experience.

We should however objectively look at the situation, the circumstances and events, including the cultural settings of these kinds of allegations, the mother who might well be a pillar of society in her outward appearance might not be as angelic as she purports to be.

She doth protest much

I would contend that she doth protest much as she has brought this libel case, but if in the end the jury finds in her favour, I do worry for the case of other adults who have been unable to speak out about childhood abuse and those who would never see justice and the decent objective scrutiny of their allegations because the weight of societal prejudice seems to give the parent the benefit of the doubt and the child the epithet of the evil and ungrateful spawn.

It would be easy to prejudge this case because the facts are difficult to ascertain, but any advocate should work on determining the difference between the opinion of the mother and the facts of the events; somewhere in the cross-examination, the truth can be prised out to give either the child or the mother victory – we know for one, this is no happy family and who would be to blame for that?

Sources

[1] Mother sues barrister daughter for libel over 'neglect memoir' – Telegraph

[2] Amazon.co.uk: Ugly: Constance Briscoe: Books

[3] My Sex Post [akin.blog-city.com]