Lilanka BotejueAn Escape from Overbearing Parenting
Toxic parenting is very common in South Asia. In general, if one considers how much parents and children are enmeshed in each other’s lives, it is a hold that is never relinquished till one or the other leaves this earth. It’s as if the umbilical cord was never severed.
Most families live with each other and only separate if a child gets married. However, even this sometimes does not happen, as couples end up living with their parents and this can often lead to a lot more issues than if they were on their own.
Many would never see this as problematic or the toxicity of these relationships. Still, in an environment of constant attachment, it is understandable that children would want to eventually break away from their parents, simply because they are not children anymore and want their own space and independence.
One of the saddest realisations I had recently was how many people I know have got married or migrated to escape their parents’ and society’s clutches. It sounds really terrible to say it like this but this is the reality of it.
Marriage is a ticket to be with someone who allows you to dress the way you want, travel at any time of day and just be free to be yourself without constant badgering, nattering and coercing into things that you don’t want to do. Sadly some of these tickets out have proven to be from the frying pan into the fire situations.
Migration is an escape from Sri Lankan society and its narrow mindedness in general (in addition to the family pressure). So you go to a land where no one knows you or cares what you wore last night or if you can cook or whether you are getting married or sleeping with someone. You become your true self; whereas, if you were back home, you would have to be wearing some mask or another to please your parents or society.
In this so-called culture of ours, where parenting doesn’t stop till you are dead or your child dies, it is really sad that we have mistaken possessiveness, control and fear for love.
Surely if you love your child would you chase them away? If you cared about someone would you want them to suffer? Then why stifle them?
Adults need space to be themselves and be who they are. Since we don’t encourage children to move out (till they get married or migrate) then it’s best we learn to give them space. Without constantly breathing down their necks about anything and everything. This is a double-edged sword in a sense. Where you get stifled thanks to smothering love and you are hindered from being truly independent.
You are constantly dependent on your parents for something, and even if you eventually move out or get married, your parents live within your household, sometimes to a detrimental extent. So we are never truly independent, and this kind of toxic interdependency is encouraged and nurtured. And so then you get the frustrations seeping out in other ways: the secret lives that blossom and the psychological issues that ensue. And of course, all this is simmering under the surface since no one wants to admit or accept it.
The notion of personal space is alien to most Sri Lankans. Just take the questions you get asked by random people who hardly know you. It would be everything from why you don’t have children to whether you are married and if you are earning X amount of money. People love prying into other people’s lives in an attempt almost to live vicariously through them, and many just get caught in this flow. But we need to be aware of such things and their repercussions.
We must encourage parents to seek their own happiness so that they don’t depend on their children and thereby smother them. We also need to understand that child once adults, must be let go, physically and emotionally. Clinging on and trying to hold them back will only have a ricochet effect and hence why many marry or migrate.
We must encourage children to move out of their parental homes once they are financially independent. This would be anathema to most parents but it must start. Now. And we must encourage individual fulfilment versus finding it in marriage or in children. A content human being will not be dependent on another to fulfil all their love needs. And this is true of parents and children.
Kahlil Gibran got it right in his poem ‘Children’ where he speaks of the parents as archers and the children as arrows that are sent forth on life’s infinite path.
If we are to progress and flourish as individuals and have healthy relationships, this toxic attachment and the need to detach must be addressed. If for nothing else, to stop chasing adult children off so that they feel that marriage or migration is the only way out from overbearing parenting well after childhood.
