Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Different Families

All of us grow up in different families, even if we are born to the same parents and live in the same house! My sister has told me, especially as I relate "Things Mama Taught Me" on my Finding the Faith Way blog, "You had different parents than I had. That's not the mother I knew."

When I was born, I was the baby girl who followed two boys. When my mother realized that she now had the daughter she wanted so much, she was convinced she would never be unhappy again. (Oh my! How naïve she was!) I realize now, as an adult, that my mother was thus confessing that there were times when she was, in fact, unhappy. Not just exasperated with a couple of rowdy boys, not just tired from a farm-wife's duties, not just worried about some things the household lacked—but unhappy. That makes me sad. My mother had an early ambition to be a nurse or a teacher. She graduated from high school, something not every girl did in those days. Did the role of wife and mother stifle the creative urge I am certain she possessed? I will never know. But of course, this woman at thirty-five was very different from the girl of nineteen.

Here are some of the ordinary things that make the same family "different". (I have left out the really awful things like death of a parent, abuse or abandonment, loss of the home, the unexpected and unwanted child, and so on.)

4Some family members are a good fit. They are at ease together, they understand each other, they like each other. Others are not such a good fit--you wouldn't select them as friends if you were doing the choosing! We sometimes say, "He is like a brother (or a father) to me." "She is the mother (or the sister) I did not have." This statement reveals our yearning for the ideal—often an impossible one—that our real father or mother, brother or sister did not, and indeed could not, meet. This idealistic idea of love is one reason that many a person grows up feeling unloved.

4Unloved does not necessarily mean deprived or neglected. It means just what it says, "not loved." The opposite of love is not always—as we've usually been taught—hate. The opposite of love is often apathy, another reason for being "unloved." Whatever the cause, some parents are unable to nurture their offspring emotionally. They are just too busy. Or they are oppressed financially. They know only one way to treat children: the way they themselves were treated. They are at odds with each other. They hate their jobs, or they don't have one at all. They don't like themselves, and they don't really like kids either, or at least not so many of them!

4Perceived differences can make children feel unloved. To them, "fair" means equal opportunity or the very same treatment. This isn't realistic. Children are not the same and have different needs; parents, because they are human, may—aware or not—show favoritism. (Yes, it does happen in good families. Look at Joseph's story in the Bible!) However, studies show that preferential treatment may not be for the person himself/herself since it often doesn't continue all through the child's development. The preference may be for the life stage of the child—as a darling infant or the adorable toddler or precocious five-year old. What sibling can process this accurately?

We shouldn't be too surprised that two people born to the same parents and raised in the same home do not think and feel and act the same. The very fact of each one's birth changed the dynamics and created a different family.

Marjorie

Information about the study I mentioned is from Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt authored by Peg Streep.

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