What you see at Fight Club is a generation of men raised by women.

Yeah, parenting! In a world of champion-mothers and hero-fathers, who emphatically take pride in their parenting and whose children are seen as god-send angels and treated like royalties, we will talk about parenting… as useless as you might presume, given the current picture being put on display by most families… You might come to the conclusion that, in many cases and many times, everything is a façade and people fake good parenting, pretending to be proficient so as to maintain an “honorable personal image”, damaging their children in the process… Because being a parent and being a “good enough parent” are 2 very different things…

I am writing from Romania, East-Europe – the undisputed champion of abhorrent orphanages, the inexhaustible source of prostitutes and cheap workforce, the front-runner in parenting provided by grandmas and grandpas instead of the actual parents, as the latter are either divorced or gone to work abroad in Western Europe. My dissatisfaction with my native country is quite obvious by now, and quite known by those who follow me for some time, so we shall start a difficult journey through a complex and delicate subject.

What is a parent?

Biologically and legally, a parent needs no definition. I shall not enter in debates linked to what exactly is a parent from these 2 perspectives, given the contemporary debates, but I guess that everyone sane knows what a parent is. From a psychological perspective however, a parent is someone who behaves like a parent. For this reason, I often use the term “parental figure”, which includes the parents and any person playing the role of a parent. For instance, if you’re an orphan, the caretakers and the educators in the orphanage play the role of parents and are, truly, your parents… for better and for worse… Also, the priest (or cleric) in the church (or temple) is also a parental figure… for better and for worse… And the 2 partners in homosexual couples are also parental figures… again, for better and for worse…

But what exactly in someone’s behavior makes him or her (or them) a parent to a child?! It is hard not to be technical and also not to be exhaustive, but I will do my best…

A parent is someone who can play any (and hopefully all) of the following 4 roles: soothing, regulation, reparation and enhancement.

Soothing

As the name says, soothing is the ability of a parental figure to calm a child in distress, to stabilize the child from an emotional viewpoint. Suppose your child plays outside and suddenly comes in crying with a wound. The injury is superficial, you realize that it will heal completely, but the child is in tears and frightened by the red blood coming from the wound.

What do you do?

You yell at him, do you? “What did you do, you stupid! You are so absent-minded! Look at me! You have dirtied your clothes! Do you know how expensive they are?!”

or

“It’s nothing! Go wash your hands!” And then you return to what you were doing (social media, for instance).

Do you know what you are supposed to do in this situation? What is your ideal (and expected) parental behavior? Take some time to ponder on what you would do before reading further…

You are supposed to be responsive to the emotional distress of the child and try to calm him. Calming doesn’t mean yelling at him, insulting him (“stupid”)… or screaming like an idiot because you care more about cleanliness (“dirty clothes”) or about money (“expensive clothes”). Stabilizing the child doesn’t mean to (hypnotically and implicitly) induce in him the idea that he is confused or numb (“absent-minded”). On the other hand, soothing the child doesn’t mean to minimize his distress (“it’s nothing”), because, despite the fact that it truly is “Nothing”, practically (and from your perspective of experienced adult), it is “Something”, emotionally important (from his perspective of inexperienced child). Staying in your place, not moving your ass to comfort the child and letting him wash his hands alone… that is, leaving him “emotionally alone”… is abusive (it’s an abuse by negligence, which is a subtle type of abuse, often undetected and much more sinister than the classical abuse). The fact that you return to your social media (or TV, or whatever) signals your emotional unavailability and proves that you have the emotional intelligence of a wooden chair or a rubber boot.

Regulation

It is the ability of a parent to anticipate that a child’s emotional distress will postpone or completely ruin the satisfaction of some of the parent’s needs and desires. It also involves putting the child first and the parent after… or loving the child more than oneself (read: involves self-sacrifice).

Moving one’s ass to appease the child means leaving any unfinished work or activity currently ongoing. Stabilizing the child involves giving up that video on the smartphone or that PUBG or Call of Duty shooting operation. That means you will lose that Warzone mission and that your curiosity will not be satisfied to the end by that video or you will not know “the latest news about what the US president does or doesn’t”. However, when you’ll be old (if you make it until then), your child will give you a call or will pay you a visit (and spend time with you), instead of throwing you in a senior’s residence (nursing home) and forgetting about you. Imagine this situation like this: you earn “quality time” in your retirement age every time when you’re managing the emotional distress of your child by being with him, by spending time with him when he’s scared or in pain. It’s an investment in the future… although, I reckon, it’s a very twisted way of seeing things…

Now visualize: the child came in wounded and you were at the phone while smoking a cigarette. What do you do? What is advisable and appropriate to do?

You abandon the cigarette (which will smoke itself all alone) and you tell to the other one at the phone that you’ll be busy for a quarter of hour at least, then you offer your time to the child. This require an ability to anticipate that you won’t be available. You’re planning ahead.

Now, just imagine how many children have parents working night shifts. Imagine that there are parents who work like slaves for 12 hours a day. Imagine that some parents need 2 jobs to monthly make the ends meet. And imagine that in some countries (France, for instance) it is normal to leave home at 8 AM and return at 7 PM (being grateful that you’re having a French experience – I couldn’t resist!) and then we can talk about the quality of life and the time devoted to the family. In this case, soothing and regulation are tricky, your child being raised by the grandparents (if there are any) or by the State (unless one parent stays at home). Regulation here involves planning time together, even if it’s 30 minutes each week. Without planning, in these cases, you fail as a parent at this chapter… and then… good luck with a child that is going to tell you that you never had time for him!

Reparation

As the name says, this is the ability of a parent to undo a damage done to the child or fix what has been broken.

If the child comes with a bleeding wound, you bandage the wound, do you? You also talk to the child and find out what happened, do you? You give advice if the wound was caused by glass or by a biting dog, right? You go to the hospital if you suspect that the dog has rabies, do you? In one word, you are not only reactive, but also proactive.

If another child has hit your child, you go talk to his parents, do you? You take measures. You take action. This is exactly what the child awaits from you: to repair the evil that has been done.

DO NOT let the child repair the evil by himself! DO NOT let him do self-parenting! If he does so, what in the world is your freaking role?!? This involves your protective side, as well as your counselling abilities: the child needs to get advice, to have the situation explained (to his best knowledge and understanding) and you MUST do that! If not you, WHO else is gonna do it?!

And… if your child goes after the other child that hit him… or if you tell your child to hit back the other child… I guess it’s obvious that this is not good reparation… DO NOT forget that young men with deadly guns, going into a killing spree in American schools, are (former) children who have taken reparation in their own hands, in the hardest possible way… perhaps because there wasn’t any parent around (when they were little children) so as to show them how a decent reparation is done.

Enhancement

I like to think about this last role of the parent as empowering, but since the word is misused these days, we will go by enhancement. To put it simple, enhancement is the instillation of hope, it means inducing in the child the idea that everything bad in life can be defeated and nasty situations do have a happy ending. The child needs to discover and needs to have faith in him and in the world so as to explore and expand his horizons and develop into a strong individual. He doesn’t need a pessimistic view of the world, in which the evil isn’t punished and the anxiety keeps everyone in slavery. So yes, it’s about inducing optimism and trust in the child’s own power to undo the harm that has been done.

For this reason, once the wound has been bandaged, the vicious dog chased away and the danger put at bay, we need to go with the child and show him that there is nothing to be afraid of. Or, that he should be wiser, since we explained to him what he did wrong (if he did wrong). This involves moving again your ass outside, where the wound happened, and go again with the child through the same situation, this time after reparation, after management and after soothing.

As you can see everywhere in this article, it is always – always – about moving your own and personal ass!

So, here they are, the 4 assets of a parent: soothing, regulation, reparation and enhancement. I count on the fingers of only one hand the persons I met who happen to have all these 4 needs “sufficiently well” satisfied. But there are passive parents who soothe but don’t repair, or those who repair like robots but don’t say a word. And there are always those who forget to empower. As I said, I live in Eastern Europe, so bad parenting in somewhat of a “national sport”, but don’t imagine that Western Europe is any better in a significant way; an “army” of psychologists, educators and other mental health professionals are re-parenting many children (and young adults) whose parents were (and still are) absolutely inept.

How about you? How your own mother (or father, or grandma, or grandpa, or uncle, or aunt) appeased you? Did he or she take some time from his/her schedule so as to be with you when you were in pain or fearful? Was someone with you when you were in distress? Did someone defend you or advise you? Did you feel protected? Were you criticized? How? How you felt that criticism? What about the resolution of that distressful situation? Did your parent go with you to undo the harm? Did he or she taught you that evil is temporary and the sun always shines, sooner or later?

Did you have a parent (or a parental figure) in your life?

* The motto at the beginning of the article is no accident. It is from Fight Club, the movie. I have chosen it with a purpose. The fight clubs were places where men came to fight in the most brutal way possible, edging the loss of consciousness. They were there to harm themselves and the others, metaphorically fighting their inner demons. I let you meditate on this subtle quote and its other unmentioned meanings.