The Results of Parents' Quarrel in the Presence of Children

Dr. Sayyed Reza Hosseini

Translated by: M.H. Broomand

Parents teach in the most difficult school of the world: the school of hu¬man-making! As a matter of fact, as parents, you are the blackboard, the principal, the teacher, and the janitor of the school. To handle the family, safe relationship is important. Being a father or a mother can be one of the happiest experiences of the life for the spouses who are good at communica-tional skills. But when parents are not dominant over the necessary skills of making a safe and compatible contact, distress, the sense of alienation and solitariness is felt by all of them. For their children, this could be devastat¬ing.

Children in each age show the reac¬tions of shock and awe when in en¬countering the debates and quarrels between their own parents.

Emotional Reactions

It is demonstrated by experience that children experience what their parents feel. Hence, if parents are indignant and sorrowful, these sensations will be transferred to the other members of the family. Inasmuch as the children regard their own parents as their patterns and icons and rely on them, seeing them having a quarrel with each other is annoying. This behavior can cause distress and anxiety in children. The sense of family along with their sense of self-confidence is demolished. When seeing that parents break the law, whereas children are not allowed to do that, it can destroy their sense of confidence and this experience will be embarrass¬ing for them. If conflict is a normal part of parents' lives, children will expect that a quarrel would be kindled between them. This matter puts them in a very serious situation and forces them to play the role of adults, whereas neither in terms of physical gesture nor in terms of awareness, they are accepted as such.

Long-standing Effects

If children observe these conflicts constantly, es¬pecially at home, they will imitate these behaviors in the games they play with their friends and in other situations like their relationships with their spouses, later in life. The empirical evidences show that many parents abstain from verbal conflict in the presence of their children. Many parents are aware of these probable effects on their children and try to do that in another room and away from their children.

The Family Function

The family plays an important role in determin¬ing the lifestyle and its policy, ethics, the health and function of a person in the future. Hence, factors such as parents' personalities, their physical and psycho¬logical health, the ways of exerted training inside the family, the profession and education of parents, the cultural and economic condition of the family, the place of their living, the numerical strength of the family, social relationships of the family, all of them influence the shaping of children's personality and their physical and psychological health, the future of their profession, education, economic, social and cultural compatibility and even their marriage. This is the reason why the psychologists mention that those people afflicted with different psychological problems that have a lack of psychological health are derived from ill-mannered families. Unfortunately, one of the greatest social problems in the present society is the family debates and conflicts which weaken the foundations of the family and endanger the psychological health of its members. Thus, the organization whose fundamental obligation is to create morale and good personality is changed into a factor for creating emotional, behavioral, and personality malfunctions. The family malfunctions are divided in two groups: one kind occurs between spouses which weakens the family relationships and destroys the morale of a man and a woman, includ¬ing the children. As to the second group, sometimes between children and parents some conflicts come into existence which can get worse with the growth of the children or and increase in their number. The various social and psychological studies show that the main cause of these behaviors should be inves¬tigated with respect to the behavior of parents with each other and their training principles concerning the children. Violence, the lack of balance of train¬ing behavior, the lack of kindness and the rejection of children, discrimination between children, addic¬tion, poverty, the lack of parents' awareness regard¬ing their training function and disregarding the ne¬cessities compatible with the formative days of the child and adolescence are the major reasons of par¬ents' conflicts with children have and the children problems in making contacts with their spouses in the future.

The Effect of an Ill-mannered Family

Usually in an ill-mannered family, the parents are those who are not trained and are ill-mannered. In these families there is a hard and impenetrable frontier among the members and when necessary, they communicate with one another and no member can enter the realm of another member. Therefore, they have rough and formal relationships with one another. For instance, the children can never talk to the father or give their opinions or there is not any boundary among the members of the family and the individuals destroy and disdain constantly the per¬sonality of one another; hence, love and mutual un¬derstanding cannot be the major reason to preserve the family. This matter causes the children to lose the ability to solve the problems and they cannot be successful in their matrimonial relationships. Such children cannot use effective communicational skills in their conflicts with spouses and the family when they grow up. Only when this cycle is halted, the skills of solving problems, the control of anger and impulse are acquired.

Source: Mahjubah Magazine

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