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Youth View

One parent can be all a child needs, but something will always be missing

How it feels to grow up with divorced or seperated parents is different for every kid. Sometimes the parents don't even realize that it makes a difference to who the child becomes. It is easy to think that you can be everything your child needs as a single parent, and sometimes that is true. But there will always be something missing from that child's life, and no matter how hard you try, you can only be one person at once.

It's a funny thing, but every single close friend I have, myself included, has one thing in common. We have all grown up without stable father figures in our lives. It's interesting how we all came together, one by one we met over the years, and something unidentifiable kept us together, forced us to grow together.

It is very hard to grow up without a father, and I'm sure just as hard without a mother. Sometimes I think it might have been easier if my father had been dead, instead of alive and as close as Vancouver. At least if he had been dead I could have begun the healing process from the loss of him, but with him there and gone over and over again it was impossible to heal a wound when there was barely time before I suffered the next one.

My father's childhood was straight out of a horror movie, the abuse included emotional and verbal, not to mention physical and sexual.

I believe my father vowed never to be like his father, and sure enough, he never was. On the surface, he was a wonderful father. But down inside me I felt abandoned.

A joint custody arrangement, where the child spends equal time with each parent, can sometimes seem like the best answer for the child. And in some cases, it may be. But for a friend of mine it was one of the worst things the parents could have done.

I guess she was about seven when her parents split up. Her father had a new girlfriend and her mother would call her father's new girlfriend a whore, and her daddy a bastard. My friend began to think that this was what her father and his girlfriend really were. Through this she built up a resentment toward him, and she always felt as if her daddy was a bad person, by hating him her mother made her feel like she shouldn't love him at all.

If there is resentment between the child's parents, or misunderstandings still unresolved, or child or spousal support disagreements, this can reflect on the child's view of one of the parents. Especially in cases where the child lives with one parent and only visits the other, it is crucial that the parent be conscious of how the child feels toward both parents. This was the case with my parents.

My dad would tell me that his relationship with my mother was emotionally abusive, he made me feel as if she was the cause. When I was with my dad I felt like my mom was a bad person, stubborn, cold-hearted walking PMS symptom. My mom would tell me that my dad never gave her the things she needed from him, that she was very unhappy and had been for a long time. Both my parents would tell me that they stayed together for my brother and my sake. Do you know what kind of a responsibility that is for a child to hold? I always knew that my parents were unhappy when they were together. That makes me feel responsible for my parents' unhappiness. That is too much for a child to have on their conscience.

My mom told me she loved me enough for two parents. Was she trying to compensate for something my father didn't give me? Did that mean my father didn't love me?

All one of my friends ever wanted was a father, a stable man in her life. She has watched her mother take men into her bed, and my friend would grow to love and trust them like a father. Soon enough her mother would grow tired, or something would go wrong, and she would move on to the next man. My friend's mother was not a whore. Just a single lady looking for the right one. Not only did my friend lose one father like most kids, she lost father after father. Her entire childhood consisted of never knowing who it was safe to trust, safe to love.

I'm not saying don't get divorced. Sometimes it is best. And I am certainly not saying stay together for "the sake of the children." Try to think how it makes your child feel when you say negative things about their other parent to them, try to think about how it makes them feel to be torn between the two people they love and need most in the world.

And if you don't have kids yet, know not just that you can afford it, or that you could convert the den into a nursery with just a touch of wallpaper, but that the child is going to need you as its provider, as it's role model for the rest of your life. This child is going to be whatever you make it.

I read somewhere that having a child is like ripping your heart out of your chest and letting it walk around unsupervised, unprotected. I agree wholeheartedly.

by Robyn Hovorka
Reprinted with permission of the author and the publisher
Originally appeared in The Reporter: Voice of the Sunshine Coast
(Monday July 21, 1997)