July 15, 2004

Some couples prefer to stay married even though there are endless fights in their relationship. Children of such marriages are psychologically affected, writes S. Rehan

Parental relationships are sacred. In an ideal world, they are perfect. Every child fantasizes about perfect parents, every woman dreams of a faultless family, and harmonious relationships are man’s ultimate desire. Reality, however, is far from perfect. In the words of Mac Lean: “When mammals opted for a family way of life they set the stage for one of the most distressful forms of suffering.”

“My earliest childhood memories are of a constant struggle between my parents — a clash of egos, personalities, backgrounds, upbringing — that extended to every facet of our lives,” recounts Fauzia, a 28-year-old school teacher, now the mother of two. “In our family, every occasion to rejoice was just another reason to fight, be it birthdays, the Eids or weddings. We lived life on a double edged sword, never knowing when it would strike. Even now, I wish that my parents had separated or divorced rather than have faced the constant turmoil that we all did under the guise of their ‘marriage’.”

Fauzia’s case is not an isolated one and neither is she alone in her misery. Many children live under intense pressure and distress due to a home environment that breeds insecurity because of faulty parental relationships. “As far as I can remember my parents addressed each other to us as ‘tumhara baap’ or ‘tumharee maa’. They never had a civil word to say to each other and the worst was involving us in their arguments, consciously or unconsciously instigating us to take sides. We were totally torn apart in an environment at home which was one of a continuous battleground. We never knew from where the next round would be fired,” recounts Fauzia.

Her ordeal is corroborated by her 19-year-old brother, Ahsan, who spends most of his time at home, locked up in his room either on the computer or the telephone. He says he doesn’t have any close friends except his sister and his views on marriage are not much different from hers. Both siblings term it “the most fragile of all relationships and highly over-rated.”

Psychologists have long emphasized that parents’ arguing and fighting in front of children change the personality of the children. “My advice to feuding parents is keep your fights to yourself. Quarrelling amongst parents leads the children towards an identity crisis,” says Rubina Feroze, associate professor of psychology at the University

of Karachi. Her doctoral study is based on dysfunctional family systems and she says that marital disharmony between parents represents war to a child’s psyche.

“They are the building blocks of trust and when that is taken away, it is a great blow to a person’s self-esteem which is the essence of a sound personality.” She says the background of psychological troubles in most if not all her patients is parental tussle which splinters their self-confidence. It thus creates a negative effect on their personalities forever, ingraining what experts term “free floating anxiety” in behavioural characteristics.

Midhat is a teenager whose parents have been married for 18 years but live like strangers under the same roof. According to her she hates coming home from school and has joined many activity clubs to keep herself mentally occupied. Aliya Iqbal, a clinical psychologist, describes this as an extremist tendency characteristic of children growing up in troubled homes. “In order to be nice they can become ‘too nice’ so that the relationships they develop are not healthy and contain some element of pathology.” Dr Zainab Fotawadzadeh, a clinical psychologist, says this is because such individuals develop self-conflict which is difficult to overcome. This can be gauged through Midhat’s own words: she describes herself as “a dual personality — carefree at school and an introvert at home.”

“They have a hard time developing trust and faith in other relationships, especially with elderly figures in position.” They develop, according to Dr Fotawadzeh, “machine-based relationships like the telephone and computer”. They have had no solid role models of patronage, and thus have problems opening up and sharing their problems with others as well as showing their true selves and weaknesses.

Individuals like Ahsan emphatically believe that most relationships are artificial. They develop a sense of powerlessness to influence their own lives or make contact with others. “I think I would blame my mother for this,” states Ahsan. “She has always encouraged us to intervene in her fights with my father. As children what could we have done except scream? We didn’t know how to communicate or discuss and ended up hating our father and pushing him away by siding with our mother. Today, I don’t care what the root cause of the problems between the two are or who was initially to be blamed. It was their problem and they should have solved it amicably rather than drag the entire family into it. Obviously, I don’t trust them enough to take my problems to them when they can’t even decide where to take us out for dinner once a week without hurling abuses at each other.”

Rubina Feroze emphasizes that demonstrating such behavior can only be labelled as: “highly immature — expecting a 13-year-old to take over from a 30-year-old.” All it does is shift responsibility from the care giver to the care taker and reverses roles unfairly. These are family dynamics in which children are just forced to grow up too fast. They become independent at an early age, thus taking up the responsibilities and serving the roles of parents themselves. Zehra Kamal and Nausheen Tariq, both clinical psychologists, say that this might encourage the children to “sublimate themselves in academic work, driving them to excel,” but Kamal says that when it comes to relationships, they face hardships.

“Today, I can best describe my own marriage as highly unpredictable. I don’t know who to blame, myself, my husband or my parents, whose role model of marriage firmly ingrained in me the notion that marriage is the least trustworthy of all relationships,” says Fauzia. Dr Kamal says that at times children from troubled homes might rebel and thus have difficulty adjusting in life. “Fear of relationships develops in some. At times, as adults, they end up in relationships where they react in similar ways in their own relationships as their parents did. However, if while growing up the children were able to process their feelings and were able to understand the impact of the strife between their parents, then they might put extra effort in making their relationships work.”

“In our home there is no ‘family time’ and hardly any family outings,” says Midhat. “We merely pass our time sticking to our daily schedules, in fact trying to avoid interaction with each other. I am grateful for that because when my parents come into close contact it means another fight. You never know what will trigger the next quarrel so it is a case of better safe than sorry.”

Rubina Feroze parallels this to being in a high stress situation like a volcano eruption or storm where the threat of looming disaster propels the human body and mind to be charged up for defense. A natural disaster occurs usually once in a lifetime while it’s aftermath lasts a lifetime. Imagine the response of the human immuno-nervous system if it is in a state of alert, day in day out. This is evident in Midhat’s case, who at the age of 18 has been operated upon for a breast as well as ovarian cyst, problems directly linked to high stress situations. Midhat, however, is nonchalant about her physical problems, may be because her emotional turmoil is foremost on her mind.

Behavioural and emotional problems in children from troubled homes can take any form from mild problems to more severe ones like drug abuse, depression, anxiety, conduct problems, stealing, lying, fighting, bed-wetting, suicidal attempts, running away from home and anger outbursts.

All experts contend that in most cases, children from divorced homes fare better than those living in troubled homes, because once families break up there is more chance of settling in harmoniously rather than the constant turmoil of a volatile family situation. Dr Zeenia, a 25-year-old, says one of her biggest burdens that she has carried all her life is the fact that her parents did not amicably divorce and lived a life of charade for her sake. She knows that this is the most common excuse cited by couples for staying in an unhappy marriage. They do not opt out for other more valid reasons such as emotional as well as financial support. She says the guilt induced by both her parents in her being the scapegoat for their unhappiness together, has torn her apart for as long as she can recall.

This leads children to develop low self esteem, constant guilt feelings, poor communicative abilities, fear of losing, fear of abandonment, constant torture of seeing the parents fight, personality disorders and in extreme form, a ‘I don’t care’ kind of an attitude that can very smoothly lead to self harming behaviours. “My sister and I would pretend to be asleep each morning, stuffing our fingers in our ears hoping that the bickering that started from dawn would settle down rather than continue over the trivial matters.” Zeenia recalls, “Family vacations were out of question for us and outings were so cumbersome that we hated the idea of them. That drove us to the point of being recluses in our shells because we hated interacting with our parents in public as they always ended up arguing in front of friends, family, shopkeepers, waiters, doctors, our teachers — anywhere and every time.”

“Some children become accommodating and try to make the environment happy, to give reasons for parents to stay together. Others might experience extreme resentment and anger for being used as an excuse and for having to witness the fights,” explains Dr Kamal. But disjointed communication between parents results in the children being more or less isolated from either one, usually the fathers, as there is no love between them. Ali, a 17-year-old, says he doesn’t even greet his father when he enters the house, not something that he wants to do but “if a day earlier I am screaming at him for shouting at my mother how can I just retune my system in the next twelve hours and pretend that everything is all right? She might iron his clothes or pack his lunch to convey her openness for dialogue but I cannot form such double standards.” Thus, the worst part is that couples to some extent might experience some form of intimacy at one point or another, but the children are secluded from the sparse harmony and form intense impressions of the situation.

The adage ‘children learn what they live’ has never been far from the truth. Parental relationships are the fundamental essence for personality development and strife at home leads to a vortex of unhealthy emotions for all individuals involved, from the eldest to the youngest. While opting out is not an easy choice due to many factors like cultural pressure, financial constraints, filial bonding or merely lacking the strength to move out of a ‘comfort zone’ — be it one of constant discord — the worst to fare are children who for no fault of their own are torn apart in their parents tussle.