THE MAKING OF THEM This means that father has to be both physically and emotionally present, good willed, and subtle enough to be able to think beyond the surface meaning of a boy's behaviour. A father can do excellent developmental work when he allows himself to 'muck about' or 'rough-house' with his son. In their mock combat the pair enact all the trials of strength they need to, they flex their muscles together, they learn to have boundaries about what hurts and what is appropriate, but above all they get great contact. The boy gets, as it were, the smell of the father embedded in his psyche, and this is a major part of his education. But the father cannot do it all. Eventually the rivalry between sons and fathers can become too much for both, and the boy will need the presence of other older men. But this is not until his teenage years, and he will certainly not want to be sent away from his father at seven. Being a 'good-enough' father is no mean task, and many men have a tendency to avoid the responsibilities that being a good enough father entails which go beyond earning the bread. The principal avoidances in fathering are the retreat positions of absence, physically or emotionally, or the patriarchal style, which leans towards despotic tyranny. The latter was the most popular style in the pre-war and Victorian periods, but in recent years the western world has been developing the absent-father syndrome in epidemic proportions. Recent reports from America indicate that less than 30% of the poorest households have a dad on the premises. This is a time bomb for future social problems. To sum up, missing out on the kind of contact with father which we have been discussing is a great loss to a growing child, even if having any father around is becoming a luxury. Moreover, sending children away to boarding school can create a sense of the absence of both mother and father, unless the parents are extremely successful in keeping the emotional channels open with their child. Whether fathering is at all possible from a distance is questionable, particularly when the father is 'out' at work and the boy is 'away' at school. Most likely they settle for a kind of emotional distance between them, which is a familiar thing for men. Men may feel that 'distance' both inside them and between them. Later in life, the anger which men feel towards their fathers can with awareness be recognised as a longing for him. Even recognising this longing starts to heal the inner void. Fathering from afar may, however, become a skill which current divorce rates make it imperative for men to learn. I was impressed to see Nelson Mandela talking to Arthur Miller on television, shortly after his release from twenty-seven years in gaol, describing his efforts to father children he had barely known or touched, imparting guidance, boundaries, and love. Mothers Daddy may be absent at home, but in the boarding school the Archetype of Father is a strong symbolic presence. On the other hand, Mother is distinctly missing from the boys' school, even symbolically. The difficulty of visits and phone calls home make her loss worse, and the need to be self-sufficient more critical. One of the grotesque advantages of the BBC 40 Minutes film was being able to see how these things are dealt with by mothers and children today, and how rapidly the children adapted and compensated. In the film, young Harry's mother thought phone contact in the first three weeks of her eight year old son being away undesirable. She explained: "If they can phone they can say "Can I come home, I'm so unhappy, when am I going to see you again?" But they're not unhappy at all. It's just the obvious thing to say." Next we see a little boy on the film, looking tiny in his room-for-growth trousers and sports jacket, in the absence of his mother arguing the case for self-reliance: "When I'm a businessman . when I'm about twenty or something . I have to be able to manage on my own." Behind this mother's collusion with the abandonment of her son is, of course, our old friend, the British attitude to children. A special place in the attitude is reserved for our horror of the 'spoiling' of children. Normally this is meant to guard against overindulgence, but the 'fear-of-spoiling' syndrome can be used to rationalise lack of care, or downright neglect. Historically, it is connected with the male fear of having the boy child contaminated by the mother, and seduced into a world of softness and emotionality. What truth there may be in this idea is grossly distorted by applying the 'un-made child' paradigm. Clinically, psychotherapists know that there are times when a child does need to be protected from over-zealous mothering, in the same way as he needs protection from over-disciplined fathering. A mother can readily become excessive when the father is physically or emotionally absent, and especially when he is not relating with his wife. A tendency to psychologically hang on to her child, who was once a part of her body, is meted against by father's presence. Otherwise she may find it hard to let the child out of her psychic world. In such a case she runs the danger of spoiling a child's sense of autonomy. It is important to distinguish whether this is indeed the case, or whether the child is going to be sacrificed to appease the family's fear-of-spoiling
top of page