How an absent parent shapes your love life

Does growing up in a single-parent home shape your views of relationships? PHOTO| FILE 

In Summary

• Parents obliviously lay the blueprints for their children’s choice of their life partners. As they grow up, children admire (or detest) particular character traits in their parents.
• Say, they will admire how their father comes home early to wind down the day with them, or how involved he is in their school life.
• Or they will admire how their mother runs the household with a personalised loving care, and how she extends the same to her husband and kids.

By FLORENCE BETT
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The status of our parents’ relationship shapes our own views on love so much it’s almost scary. To understand why it is so, let’s put it in the context of a child.

The role of a parent to his child is a complex and delicate one. It’s an irreplaceable one. What a parent is to a child is someone who supports him when he is unsure of himself, who comforts him in time of need and who shares the special moments in his life. He is a cheerleader, a comforter and a companion. An absent parent leaves a yearning gap as far as these go.

Parents obliviously lay the blueprints for their children’s choice of their life partners. As they grow up, children admire (or detest) particular character traits in their parents.

Say, they will admire how their father comes home early to wind down the day with them, or how involved he is in their school life.

Or they will admire how their mother runs the household with a personalised loving care, and how she extends the same to her husband and kids.

Children will search for these traits in their life partners. They will marry their parents. A good dad or a good mum is the paragon of a good husband or a good wife.

Similarly, a not-so-good dad or mum is a warning to the type of man you don’t want to settle with or the type of mother/wife you don’t want to turn into – women are intuitive to avoid the man who will batter them, just as they saw their father do to their mother;

they will want to be supportive and friendly to their kids, unlike their mother who always pointed out their shortcomings or wasn’t approachable when they needed the reassurance of a female shoulder;

they will want to be the wife that isn’t shy to laud and be loyal to her man.

FIRST REAL ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP

The parents’ relationship is the first real romantic relationship a child encounters. A child first perceives his parents as mum and dad, two separate individuals who care for him.

As he grows older he will perceive them as a committed unit that shares love. He will later understand that it is the union of this love that brought him forth. On the flip side, it could be the first dysfunctional relationship he encounters.

One where either parent is absent, or is uncommitted to their partner and to parenting their kids. Love knows not such a space. This dysfunctionality leaves a bitter taste in their mouth.

Let’s also consider the circumstances that lead to a single-parent home. These vary from divorce and separation, death, or simply irresponsible parenting.

Lillian, 31-year-old sales manager, was raised by a single mum who really struggled. She is the last child in a family of six. Lillian says her father was a violent man who abandoned the family when her mother was expecting her.

“I don’t know my father. I don’t remember what he looks like,” she says. “He tried to make contact a few times but I have no interest in knowing him, I don’t see the value he will add to my life.”

Lillian had her daughter then married last year. Speaking about motherhood and parenting, she says, “I don’t respect men easily. I don’t see the role they play in society because they aren’t providers, nurturers or caregivers.”

ABANDONMENT CHILLS

And yet, “I don’t want my daughter to grow up without a father. I vowed to work extra hard to make my marriage work.” Abandonment chills her to her core.

Didn’t her strong and contradicting views rub her husband the wrong way? They did, she says, especially when they were dating. She didn’t trust easily. “I kept challenging him to prove his worth to me.”

Unconsciously so. He didn’t know his place in her life but this didn’t bother her one bit. “I am fiercely independent. I give off this I-don’t-need-a-man vibe. It frustrated him.”

And yet, “I live in constant fear that my husband could become as violent as my father was.”

Roselyn, a 32-year-old, who is engaged, grew up with only her mum and her five siblings. Her dad passed on when she was eight. Her mother was a great influence in her life.

“I learnt from her how to be a strong and persevering woman. She always spoke well of my late dad, so we loved him and missed him more.”

Her love didn’t die with his death. Roselyn is ambivalent to the strong views Lillian holds. If anything, she appreciates and values more the support of man in her life.

According to Dr Chris Hart, a psychologist, it doesn’t matter whether you are brought up in a single-parent home or not.

What matters is the quality of parenting you receive. “If the mother is in contact with the father of her kids and they have cordial relations, then he can still be a role model to the kids.

But if she is a bitter and twisted woman who despises their father, then this spills to her kids who end up projecting the same views to all men and to life in general.”

Dr Hart adds that single mothers are less authoritative and more permissive compared to their peers. They don’t want any more trouble, he says. They are too friendly with their kids who end up becoming wayward.

Also, if a child grows up in an environment where he sees evidence of other grownups (besides his parents) loving and caring for one another, then it won’t matter if he is brought up in a single-parent home or not, says Dr Hart. He will already have known what love means.