Parents’ Haunting Shadows

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” Walt Kelly, Pogo

“Of course I would do anything for my child!”

There are very few statements spoken with absolute conviction, leaving no room for doubt, and this is one of them.

“Would you confront your personal shadow?”

The parent’s answer may not be uttered so convincingly. Or, there would be only a grin and a back turned away in silence.

It’s really difficult to admit that each of us has a Dr Jekyll and a Mr Hyde, as Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams argue: “Negative feelings and emotions: rage, jealousy, shame, lying, resentment, lust, greed, suicidal and murderous tendencies, lie concealed just beneath the surface, masked by our more proper selves.” The shadow is hard to face: “it is dangerous, disorderly, and forever in hiding, as if the light of consciousness would steal its very life.”

However, when we don’t own our shadow, the parenting scenarios may look like this: a mother may love her children and be fully committed to them but, whether partly aware of it or not aware at all, she may resent motherhood.

She resents devoting most, if not all, of her time and energy to her children who will one day leave home and may not appreciate her fully. She resents sacrificing what she truly enjoys (dancing, knitting, gardening, writing, hiking, painting) on the altar of motherhood. She resents postponing the business she could flourish in because her children are not yet 18 and they still need her.

Her resentment doesn’t come alone – it triggers an equally abhorrent sense of guilt and shame which she compensates for by harbouring secret contempt for mothers who don’t seem to do their best.

All these feelings, which are personally and socially unacceptable, are repressed from her awareness, but they generate a profound, relentless tension she strives to hide or disguise for years.

If a woman doesn’t acknowledge and integrate her shadow, her children may unconsciously repeat the same behaviour patterns and face the same exasperation, anguish, rage of their mother.

There may also be a man whose intentions and actions seem perfectly aligned with his values, principles, beliefs; he is the ideal father, setting a high standard for his children and unquestionably wanting them to succeed in life.

However, his authoritarian parenting style may camouflages his fear of failure, suppressed vulnerabilty, unacknowledged shame, need for control, unprocessed anger, or perfectionism.  

Everyone else can see how controlling, rigid and demanding he is – except him.

The effects of his behaviour and attitude on his children will be emotional (low self-esteem, anxiety, fear, shame, emotional suppression), behavioural (perfectionism, rebellion, defiance, risk of aggression, over-compliance), cognitive and developemental (limited creativity, diminished problem-solving skills, low confidence to make decisions).

The fact that the parents’ refusal to own and integrate their shadow may have disastrous consequences on the children is emphasized by Carl Jung.

The Swiss psychoanalyst told A.I. Allensby about a remarkable Quaker that he had met, a man who couldn’t imagine ever having done anything wrong in his entire life. Sadly, when his children grew up, his son turned to theft and his daughter to prostitution.

“Because the father would not take on his shadow,” said Jung, “his children were compelled to live out the dark side which he ignored.”

Meeting our shadow is crucial. The aim is to have a constant relationship with it, to expand, as Zweig and Abrahams put it, “our sense of self by balancing the one-sidedness of our conscious attitudes with our unconscious depths.”

So, again, what are you willing to do for your child?

Resources:

Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, Meeting the Shadow. The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature