Dilemma of children in parentectomy

BY WATIPASO MZUNGU JNR
A parentectomy is the cruellest infringement upon children's rights to be carried out against human children by human adults. Actually, parentectomies are psychologically lethal to both children and parents.

Dr. Frank S. Williams, M.D. Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist and Psychoanalyst, defines parentectomy as the removal, erasure, or severe diminution of a caring parent in a child's life, following separation or divorce.

Williams says children whose parents have separated or divorced feel abandoned by a loved and needed parent, and unusually resent and become depressed over the abandonment.

When a parentectomy occurs, children lose the rewarding ongoing opportunity to give and receive love to and from a parent.

Usually, before parents divorce, they would fight over custody of children. In the worst scenario of parentectomy, the victim parent gives up and walks away from the surgically-minded adults and the victim children.

When this happens, the victim parent walks away from the chronic warring battlefield with intense ambivalence and confusion, faced with an insoluble dilemma.

He or she knows that the chronic war in which one parent tries to erase the other, and the other parent struggles to stave off parentectomy, is itself destructive to the children, as it causes ongoing tension and stress in them, as well as in the ongoing interaction between the children and each of their parents.

On the other hand, if a mother or father gives up and walks away from the war, the children feel abandoned by a loved and needed parent, and usually resent and become depressed over the abandonment.

Although Andrew Ntaja (not real surname) hates to see his parents fighting and prays for them to stop, he always misinterprets a parent's giving up the fight as that parent's not caring enough about them.

Andrew is frequently depressed - especially in later adolescence. At times, his depression reaches suicidal proportions.

In his clinical work, Dr. Williams discovered a very high correlation between suicidality in adolescents and a divorce in their earlier years, which virtually results in one parent being erased from their lives.

Such children would often lack self esteem, particularly if they believe the erased parent willfully abandoned them, or when the remaining parent behaves as if the erased parent never existed or never loved and cared for the children.

Children with parentectomies often go on to mistrust and fail in adult intimate relationships, this is for several reasons. First, they tend to see people as good or bad, right or wrong, loving or hateful, worthy of gratitude or worthy of punishment.

Secondly, they have usually witnessed models of adult relationships based on mutual accusations and defensiveness, as opposed to the healthier model of tolerating ambivalence about the good and bad in others and in oneself.

Some parents may continue fighting for their children, but sometimes they would give up because they are emotionally depleted, physically exhausted, worn out, depressed or financially drained; they don't want to continue to subject their children to the relentless warring; they discover that they have little chance of success against a prejudiced legal or judicial system.

In cases of parental alienation, children may leave home prematurely or turn against the "favoured' parent later in life. Their turning against the one favoured parent may come about in later adolescence, when they realize they were "brainwashed" victims caused by a malicious, angry, or disturbed parent, to unjustifiably hate the other parent.

Dr. Williams recommends that children be raised in one home as it provides stability and continuity. He contends that when parents divorce, the children cannot enjoy the benefit of both parents living with them in the same home.

“Therefore, shuttling between homes may be inevitable. In divorce, we usually do not have the option of choosing what is in the best interest of the children. Instead, we most often must choose the least detrimental of several detrimental options.

“This is especially so when a child has been psychologically bonded to two parents. Of two potential evils for children - the evil of shuttling between the homes of two loving, caring parents versus the evil of losing one such parent - certainly the lesser evil is shuttling between two homes,” observes the psychiatrist.

Williams says it is the continued parental bonding, not the number of homes or vehicular travel, which will be the crucial determinant of children's forward psychological development following divorce.

In these days, when both parents frequently work, and rely on sharing the child-rearing with each other, with other family members and with housekeepers and day care personnel, the concept of one "primary psychological caretaker" is outdated.

Frequently there are two psychological caretakers or a network of caretakers, supervised by two parents.

Stepparents

The appearance of a potential stepmother or stepfather on the scene is highly threatening to parental identity. This is especially so when that newcomer has a great need to parent. Hearing one's children refer to a step parent as "mommy" or "daddy", often triggers the search for the parental scalpel.

Recently, an influential man had to fight with his ex-lover over a child because all along the child had been in the custody of a stepfather. After coming to his senses, the influential father couldn’t let his child continue suffering under a poor stepfather.

Although this man contended that he didn’t want his child to live with a stepfather, what he might have forgotten is that his child will still suffer the pain of growing without the mother.

It will be extremely agonizing if the child finds that the stepmother is cruel that life was better in the care of the stepfather.

This is the fact many parents do not consider before they choose to separate or divorce. Unless a parent in custody of the children chooses to remain single forever, their kids will still suffer the agony of being raised by a stepparent; and lose one parent’s love and care.

END