Psychological effect of parent, child relationship

Tobi Olabode is a frustrated adult. Even at 27, she realises that the relationship between her mother and father is affecting her outlook at starting a personal family life. For the umpteenth time, she has turned down her fiancé’s proposal for marriage. She just finds it difficult to say yes to him.

In today’s world children like Tobi have been affected either positively or negatively by the relationship which exists between their parents; as a child’s development is greatly dependent on the relationship they have with both parents.

Experts are of the view that such a relationship provides the child with the structure on how they perceive themselves and the world around them. More importantly, it helps to determine how well they form relationships with others throughout their life.

For instance, very few people would say that a father’s role is less important than that of the mother, yet most research have shown that the relationship between mother and child tends to be stornger. Perhaps this is because traditionally, the primary role of the father was that of breadwinner and disciplinarian, to provide nurturance and emotional support was considered a mother’s domain.

According to Jumoke Odedeyi, a parent, parent’s physical state is possible to keep him or her from being able to relate to the child or take into consideration the child’s needs. “This kind of psychological state such as depression, bipolar disorder, drug and alcohol addictions may cause impairments that make difficult for the child to maintain a relationship with the parent,” she says.

In addition, she says, divorce and the conflict can also disrupt a child’s life. “ Violence in the home is not the best for any child,” she says. “I am speaking from experience. Violence between parents could make a child become hostile toward friends or both even both parents if he feels his parents are failing to meet his need for security. In a normal circumstance, parents are supposed to resolve such a situation quickly. However, there are times when anger, hurt feelings and conflict can cause a long-lasting estrangement between parent and child.”

Looking back at the 1960s in Nigeria, most women in the country were not encouraged to enter the work force and fathers were expected to take a less active role in all aspects of parenting. Yet most children had the best attention they could get from both parents. Still, this expectation was conditional. That is to say, fathers were expected to be more involved in parenting their children as long as it did not interfere with their primary role of breadwinner.

Of course, due to separation and divorce, many children have fathers who are absent from the home and may have little or no involvement in their lives. Moreover, there are other factors besides the responsibilities of the workplace that affect the level of paternal involvement. One of these is the gender of the children. Fathers tend to spend more time with sons than daughters but a daughter may get more attention from her father if she has a brother. A study shows that the lowest level of paternal involvement occurred in families with all female children.

What effect might a lack of or limited levels of paternal involvement have on adolescent girls? Existing literature suggests that women may be deeply affected by their relationships with their fathers. Little research has been done concerning father-daughter relationships and what does exist mainly involves absent or abusive fathers and their daughter’s problems with developing and maintaining intimate relationships later in life. These studies suggest that fathers may have a considerable impact on their daughters’ self-esteem and greatly influence her choice of romantic partners.

One parent may deliberately attempt to cause a rift between their child and the other parent. When a parent purposefully alienates a child from a parent without intervention the chances of rebuilding the child/parent bond grows increasing difficult as time goes by.

FUNKE OSAE-BROWN