Why do we need a father? What irreplaceable role does it play for our future happiness, success, peace of mind? And finally, what does this role require of him?
Severity. Protection. Rules. Love. Reliability. Discipline. Distance. Absence. Overcoming. These words come to mind when we talk about the father figure. The role of the first man in our life is very complex, ambiguous.
To understand what this role consists of, we turned to the psychologist Marina Ponomareva. Here’s what she told us.
From owner to parent
How has the understanding of what a father is changed? Let’s start from ancient times, from the period of matriarchy (if there was one at all, which historians are still not sure about). The role of the father was reduced to conception, and even in this case, magical thinking allowed a woman to think that she could become pregnant from the wind, from a god or a spirit that entered her.
In Antiquity, in the hands of a man, there was a huge power not only over the behavior of the child, but also over his body. Children were considered the property of their parents: in ancient Rome, a father could even sell his son into slavery.
How is it in our culture? From «Domostroy» we learn that the father was considered the vicar of God on earth. He made laws and regulations. He could punish — by the way, not always delving into the essence of what happened — but only from the age of seven. Until that time, the child lived in the women’s half of the house. Both boys and girls wore the same clothes.
The situation changed after the October Revolution. Political, economic, social changes began to be reflected in the figure of the father, in the idea of uXNUMXbuXNUMXbwho he is. A totalitarian society took away from the father the right to educate and decide what rules the child should obey. The authority of the man in the family begins to fall.
Today, the father is becoming different — more emotionally included, accessible to the child.
And then — war, hard life, poor living conditions. All this led to the fact that a rather depressing picture began to take shape in families.
An asexual mother who works hard and who needs nothing but children and work, and an alcoholic father who, as in the story of Sasha Cherny, “drinks on even days, and beats his wife on odd days.”
But today the role of the father has begun to change again. Now the father is no longer Absent, who is always at war, or at work, or drinking somewhere. He is present. He is a co-parent. He, along with a woman, shares the responsibility for raising a child. They both participate equally in the lives of children.
However, fatherhood and motherhood are two different things. On the one hand, we still have not left the patriarchal society, where the father is the head of the family. He is still a provider. And it is he who should bring the “mammoth” (in one form or another). It is also the protector of the family in the face of dangers from the outside world. It happens that he is also an internal arbiter: he must regulate disputes and conflicts within the family, maintain a balance.
But the father becomes different — more emotionally involved. He, as psychologists say, is more accessible. And this is important. It grows and develops.
Between two worlds
In the book «Father», Jungian analyst Luigi Zoya introduces the concept of the «paradox of the father». It is as follows: the mother’s connection with the child is natural, natural — she carried him for nine months, they were one.
The father has no such connection. He enters into this relationship voluntarily. Not by nature, not by instinct. At some point, he realizes:
«Oh, I’m a father. We have to do something about it.»
And what he gives to a child, no one else can give. From the mother we expect warmth, acceptance, tenderness. Mother teaches us how to handle the body. Emotions, feelings are all maternal space. What then is the father? When it appears, it is no longer a symbiosis of mother and child. This is a triad. And the triad is part of society.
The child is waiting for his father to teach him how to live in society, be strong and realize his desires.
The figure of the father is, as it were, on the border between family and society. These two areas have different laws. Family is about love, support, care. And the law of force works in society.
Therefore, we expect warmth from the mother, and strength from the father. The child expects that his father will be able to protect him, and in the future he will teach him how to defend himself. Live in society, be strong and fulfill your desires.
And the expectations of the child are different. A lot is forgiven to his mother, but he wants to see the winner in his father. There was such an episode in Freud’s biography. Once his Jewish father Jakob Freud told how he was walking down the street and could not pass by a passerby (the streets were very narrow — you could not disperse). Jacob made a timid, uncertain movement, to which a passer-by tore off his hat, threw it into the dirt and shouted: “Down with the sidewalk, Jew!” «And what did you do?» Freud asked. “I got off the sidewalk and picked up my hat,” my father replied.
For Sigmund Freud, this was a huge disappointment. Much later, having formulated the theory of psychoanalysis, he wrote: most of all, a child needs a father and his support.
Included third
The first role of a father is Law and Order. When a child is born, he has no concept of good and evil, right and wrong. He does not know how to interact with others, with himself. He is in chaos and feels the need to structure this chaos. Psychologist Eric Berne calls this basic need “structure hunger.” Ideally, the father should establish the rules of interaction in the family. Fathers not included in upbringing do not do this, which means they do not give the child support.
Father’s love, unlike mother’s, is always conditional, it must be earned. The desire to meet the expectations of the father forms a sense of purpose, motivation for achievement.
The second role is the conductor. A guide to the world of relationships, society, the world outside the family — scary, incomprehensible, but exciting. Interest in this world grows as the child grows. This is called separation: the child gradually leaves the family for the big world, searches for himself, learns to build relationships. This transition is very difficult. It is important that there is a bridge, and the father acts as a guarantor of such a bridge.
In the noble culture there was a tradition of the first balls, and it was the father who brought the girl to the first ball. In Western society, it was the father who had the right to represent the family, to speak on its behalf. And this is also important to remember. The father introduces the young man to both associates and rivals. The father gradually immerses the child in the world, and with such support, he ceases to seem scary and hostile.
If there is no such guide, this does not mean that the child will not be able to achieve anything. But he will definitely experience more tension, will suffer more from uncertainty. He will need more strength to succeed.
It is important that the child knows: parents have their own relationship in which he is not present.
Where does it all begin? From a joint game. A child’s play with mother and father are two different things. The mother is often more anxious, she worries about the child not falling, tripping, hitting.
Games with the father are more active, mobile. And this is very important: through such a more energetic, more dangerous game, the child learns the world.
The third role is the father as the husband of the mother. It is important that the child knows that parents have their own relationship in which he is not present. There are “mother-child” and “father-child” bonds, and the connection between adults is their special space, where the child does not have access.
Seeing this connection and this space, the child understands: when I grow up, I will also have such a relationship. And what kind of relationship it will be depends largely on the quality of communication between the parents. The father «unloads» the symbiotic relationship between mother and child. If this does not happen, the woman plunges headlong into the child, and the harmony in the triad collapses.
The second important point is the quality of this connection. Love, sexual relations between husband and wife strengthen the entire family structure. Firstly, the father gives the mother a resource, supports her, helps her recover. Secondly, the child forms ideas about the couple, fantasies appear on the topic “what kind of relationship will I have”. If we are talking about a boy — “how should I treat my future wife”, if about a girl — “what kind of relationship do I deserve”.
The role of the father is not limited to interaction with the child: it is a relationship with both the mother and society. And you can get involved in this development at any stage — no matter how old the child is.