Fear of Abandonment and the needto hear "I Love You". Single parents

Recently in Australia there has been a great deal of media exposure given to the ‘stolen generation’. The
term stolen generation refers to Aboriginal children who where taken from their parents by the Australian
Government in the late -1800’s through the mid-1900’s, and either placed with white Anglo-Saxon
families or in Government homes or orphanages. My limited understanding of this is that the Government’s
actions were intended to breed out the Aboriginal race – a form of genocide. (I’m sure some people will
take offence at this comment, but what the hell, it is my understanding.)

I mention the stolen generation here because I see a similarity between Aboriginal children during this era
being denied access to their culture, language and customs by removing them from their family
environment, and modern day children being denied access to their absent parents. It is only now that
Australians are beginning to understand the ramifications of the Government’s actions in that era. Basically
we now have an entire generation who had their childhood memories stolen and who are demanding that
the country formally apologise. They demand to be told, “We are sorry”.

The children of the 1970’s and 1980’s have become young adults and we may well refer to them as, ‘the
abandoned generation’. Could we now have over 100 years adding up to this one common denominator: I
am sorry.

This is absolutely not about guilt or shame. It’s time to stop pushing down our resentment, time to step out
of our denial and find our voices.

Our children are now referred to as Generation X-ers. Generation X-ers are often portrayed in the media
as being: feral, violent, selfish, materialistic and or lazy. While there may be an element of truth to the media’
s portrait of these children, high unemployment, homelessness, drug and alcohol abuse, lack of community,
indifferent parenting and mental health issues have predictably influenced and affected the Generation X-ers.

In my opinion the Generation X-ers are going to be the generation that could change the world.

Historically family life followed a natural course to do as your forefathers did. Children did not have a
voice; they did not ask questions, and they did not challenge the way things were done. Children, they said,
“Should be seen and not heard”. Your parents set an example and you followed that example. If you were
miserable, confused or unfulfilled, you kept your mouth shut and did as you were told or ‘the right thing’.

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My brother was killed in a tragic accident in his early 30’s. His pregnant wife
and three daughters (under the age of five) survived him. Many lives were
profoundly changed as a result of his death.

My brother was a highly ethical man who had very concrete ideas about family
and what his role in a family would be. Like many men, he intended to rewrite
his own history and be the father that, perhaps, his father had been was unable
to be. Being a man’s man, he would have fulfilled his role as family protector
and provider. More than this though, he had envisaged his marriage as an equal
partnership. Without doubt he aspired to be the kind of father that all children
need and want, and I believe that he would have been the kind of father that
most men dream of being.

Although many men do not voice their expectations of themselves as fathers, I
believe that most men have a deep desire to be exceptional fathers. From the
moment a man is told that he is going to be a father, he starts to plan the ‘ball
games’. He imagines protecting his daughter from boys like himself. He starts
planning for the child’s education and often he states out loud what occupation
his child is likely to take up (usually his own). You often hear a father refer to his
future business as ‘Me and Son’. He envisions his son having everything in life
that he did not such as becoming the champion athlete that he was not. His
daughter is going to be the most beautiful in the land - his daughter, his princess.

I recently was contacted by one of my brother’s daughters. She explained that
she felt that her life was a jigsaw puzzle with many missing pieces. She felt that
her memories of her father were a combination of her imagination and her
mother’s memories, and that this created a very incomplete picture of him. She
asked me to share some of my memories with her, in the hope that this would
create a more balanced picture of the man her father was.

My niece is in her early 20’s now, an age when most of us look back and try to
connect the dots, and also an age when we try to know and understand
ourselves by reaching into our history. This is an age when we start to consider
how our personality, talents and emotions play into who we are. We are more
aware of our gene pool and wonder how much of who we are is a product of
that genetic mix. We wonder if having a better understanding of our parents will
allow us to better understand ourselves.

Deep within us all is the need to love our parents. We need to know that above
all else our parents love us. Without this, there is a ‘soul emptiness’, a
disconnection from our selves.

We all need our childhood memories, without them we feel incomplete. In the
absence of real memories we tend to adopt imagined memories.

My mother, sister and I have been gathering, talking and writing down as much
as we can remember about my niece’s father. It has opened up a lot of sadness
but much joy as well. One memory will set off another and so much of what we
have lain to rest and left unspoken has been allowed to resurface. Emotional
pain has a way of being pushed so far down that we sometimes forget it’s there.
Of course it is always there, just below the surface, and in many ways it
continues to choke us. Self-preservation is often the core reason for denial.

Just prior to hearing from my niece, I had been speaking with a couple of men,
who, after a long absence, had returned to town and were attempting to
reconnect with their now grown-up daughters. I am not sure why or how I
became engaged in these conversations, but three different men, in three slightly
different circumstances, had the same agenda: to get to know their 20-
something year old children. Or, perhaps they needed to allow their children to
get to know them. I believe that in their own way, each of these men were
seeking to complete the same jigsaw puzzle that my niece referred to.

Just as childhood memories are a part of who we are, and their absence leaves
us with a sense of being incomplete, it might be for those of us who are parents,
that parental memories or their absence, leave us with an equal sense of being
incomplete.

I believe a revolution is taking place in which absent fathers, who have been
silent and whose roles in a child’s life have been minimized for far too long, will
be ‘stepping up to the plate’, demanding that they be included in their child’s
memories.

Many men have reached an age or a level of maturity now and the children have
become young adults. That deep-seated longing within them both has finally
become a compelling force leading them to re-connect.

It’s certainly common for society to label absent fathers as selfish, irresponsible
or even redundant forces in their children’s lives. While this may be true of some
absent fathers, I don’t believe it is the predominant truth of all absent fathers. As
my father used to tell me, “I did the best I could at the time with the limited
understanding that I had”. Or to put it more succinctly, if I had known better I
would have done better.

I am using the term ‘absent father’ here for convenience. The term absent
parent could and should be substituted throughout. My definition of absent is
not restricted to physically not there. It extends to include emotionally,
financially and spiritually not there.