Authoritarianism has lost legitimacy and interest and today the fathers, unlike in the past, are present in the life of children and are looking for a properly “paternal” way to help them grow
The paternal role has changed over time: no longer authoritarian, today the winning model is that of the evolutionary father, who confronts his mother, accompanies his son in growth, but is able to say “no”.
We live a completely new historical and social moment full of interesting potential for the figure of the father. Until the last century the father was a figure fundamentally absent from the path of growth of the children and whose educational role was played substantially through the commands and punishments (those who do not remember the typical maternal phrase that instantly calmed the spirits: “If you do not stop, tonight I say it to dad!”). The children were afraid of the father who, with his scolded and his punishments, aroused guilt and, often, emotional distance.
But The time of the father-master is finished, authoritarianism has lost legitimacy and interest: We asked ourselves about how to recover sincere, intimate relationships with our children, in order to raise more peaceful children. Today the fathers are there, they are present in the life of children and are looking for a properly “paternal” way to help them grow.
However, it has passed from one extreme to the other. After the era of the father we moved on to the era of the son, characterized by an excess of care, anxiety, concern with respect to well -being and, basically, by a renunciation by parents to their educational rolein particular the paternal one. Children often give commands to adults, are loaded with the responsibility of decisions that should not be up to them (“Where do you want to go this weekend?”; “What name do you want to give your little brother?”; “Do you prefer to eat in front of the TV?”). We try with a thousand explanations of motivating the rules and no, in the belief that it is possible to make a 5 -year -old boy understand, with certainly rational arguments, because he cannot see his desires immediately satisfied.
Maternal and paternal, fundamental educational codes
The maternal function, beyond those who fulfill it, is essential to live: human puppies need a decidedly greater care than any other species. For this reason, throughout the first year, but also for most of the childhood, the breast code plays a predominant role: it nourishes, takes care, preserves, protects. In this initial phase, the paternal does not have a defined role, and often this can trigger couple crises. Growing up, however, it is necessary that the role of the breast code will decrease and gradually growing the paternal one, which on the one hand is the element that separates the mother from the son, on the other what allows children to become great, to learn to be in the world, to face difficulties, manage desires, to bring out their resources.
The codes do not necessarily coincide with the masculine and the biological female: today the paternal role is often played by the woman, and the fathers seem “mammi”. If women, however, have in many respects, with the social and cultural changes of the last century, redefined their identity, this did not happen for men. Compared to their being fathers, they often have not yet identified an alternative possibility of playing their role, which you do not refer to the father-master and do not flatten in dedication and care.
The new time of the Father
Fathers and mothers realized that the era of the child actually does not help children to grow better, indeed it arouses problems, anxieties, great disorientation and often anguish and “educational diseases” (such as obesity, attention disorders, relational and social difficulties, the increase in eno -concealed ages, etc.) that had never been present with this frequency.
An example among many: 12 years of Carlo. Giorgio, the father, managed to oppose and resist the anxiety of Anna’s control who haunted his son on the tasks. “Did you make them? Are you sure? Wait, we check … here, you didn’t make the drawing! And now it’s too late! This time I do it, but it no longer repeats itself! Already last week … ». Screams, complaints, quarrels, and Carlo’s school performance in free fall. Giorgio proposed an organization and has taken on the management of his son’s tasks: now Carlo does them alone, under the supervision of the father who imposed with him the week of study and verify occasionally, letting Carlo take responsibility for his forgetfulness and failures, which are less and less! The difference between the paternal and maternal roles is, in the end, what generates the conflict necessary for the boy and the girl to grow, that’s why both are necessary and fundamental in an educational path.
The tasks and role of the evolutionary Father
The new evolutionary father is primarily a companion who helps the mother to get rid of the maternal tyranny as the only code valid to grow children. The conflict between the two dimensions necessary for growth is open and, above all, knows how to protect but also regret. Often today’s fathers struggle to accept a role of containment, of embankment, which clearly causes conflicts with their children; They want to be friends. But If you do not keep a right distance from the children, who are not emotional but educational, you cannot deliver a legacyto give the precious secret of living, to support that conflicting element that allows children to bring out all
their resources and to do it. Here are some operational devices of the evolutionary father and the educational couple:
- First of all cohesion: Dad and mom must decide educational rules and strategies together, talk to each other, share and show themselves united (let’s talk about everything, except for how to educate our children!). Mothers also need to work on this. Often today, fathers meet who cannot set their role because mothers do not let him act. Using cohesion means referring to each other and making a team game that has the autonomy of the children as its purpose
- Then the regulation: a father is needed who knows how to communicate that the rule is not an impediment, but the definition of the space in which he can move freely. If the rule is clear, adequate and contextual and, from 11 years onwards, even negotiated, it will be a precious tool to help children become autonomous and responsible. For this reason, it is important that, especially during pre -adolescence and adolescence, if until then the “educational front office” was substantially entrusted to the mother, the father is increasingly legitimized and involved. “I’m talking about it with your father” is no longer a punitive threat, but shows cohesion and that a witness’s passage has occurred.
It is the father who accompanies the discoveries, who recovers the children when they fall, who puts them back on their feet. His authentic task lies in putting himself next to you: “I do not prevent you from doing alone, to test yourself, to risk to test your potential, and in your attempts I am close to you, I am on your side, I show you that fail is human and possible, but that it is also the same possible to try to do it”. The evolutionary father is witness to courage and desire for life.
The father’s resistant “no” in adolescence
Without the “no” of the father, the teenager risks slipping into the “no limit” quagmire. He needs a response from the adult who, even if he will give him an answer he does not like, will still allow him to slow down the race towards the insidious universe of “everything is possible”, where “yet another object, the umpteenth novelty” is needed to satisfy the inevitable emptiness that growing grows. Especially if you are traveling the road to adolescence.
Some forms of youth depression, of carelessness towards growth, are attributable to a resistance deficit by the father. Keeping the interest and the desire to grow alive requires a father, even symbolic, which allows you to take leave of childhood. In order to get out of this sort of compulsive vortex, the teenager needs the father’s resistance, to see further, jump the fence and find his own way.
For the father to say “no” it involves “letting yourself be used” without the fear of losing the position of ideal father, who does not make a mistake and has a solution for everything. The resistant “no” is a necessary competence to exercise the role of father, a “service” competence, according to the other, evolutionary. The paternal task is mainly regulatory. The “no” of the Resistance is the tool to be favored to exercise it.
Become fathers
The analyzes carried out confirm that the link between “doing family”, “living the family” and working is not exclusively female prerogative. Even the father seems to be busy to combine the care activities, but above all of the game and entertainment of the children, with those associated with productive work. Father’s collaborative nature does not seem to be influenced by having a unique child or two children. The involvement of the father, when there is, is immediately manifested, from the birth of the first child. Also for the father, the intense work commitment hinders the conciliation between work and care of children. The latter appears sacrificed precisely by those fathers who more than others invest in professional realization, at least in terms of time spent at work in the absence of children.
However, the role of the father is secondary compared to that played by the mother who, especially in school life support activities, is the master. Therefore, a gender division of family work is still confirmed, still unbalanced by the disfavor of women, although this asymmetry appears to be shared shades.
