The Impact of Parental Conflict on Children

Questioner: When parents are in conflict, what happens to the child? What is the impact on the child? And how can the parents help the child be a healthy adult in the future?

Acharya Prashant: It’s a double calamity. You see, first of all, there is this basic thing regarding company. Let’s say there is only one child. So, there are three people: the man, the woman, and their child. The child has the company of the man and the woman. The man and the woman constitute, let’s say, fifty to eighty percent of the child’s company. Except for the neighboring playground and the school he goes to, who is the one who provides him company? These two, the man and the woman.

So, it is these two that he principally got for company. And if you are in the company of two people who are always fighting, what effect will it have on your mind? Forget that those two people are your parents—any two people. If you are in a railway coach, and that too in an enclosed cabin, with two fellow passengers, and it’s just a journey, let’s say, ten hours long, and those two people are constantly squabbling, constantly, what would it do to you?

Questioner: It would be very irritating and frustrating.

Acharya Prashant: If you are very patient, you will try to sleep. If you are a little less patient, you will try to calm them down. If you know even lesser patience, you will pull the chain. And if you are totally fed up, you may as well not decide to wait till the next station!

If even ten hours are intolerable with two quarreling people, how does it feel to live with two quarreling fools for an entire lifetime? Forget that they are your parents—any two persons; I said that even strangers, fellow travelers in a train. It’s a very, very bad thing to happen to anybody. And worst if it happens to the impressionable mind of the child.

When you are fighting, you become very, very self-centered, extremely selfish. When you are fighting, then the ego is aroused to unimaginable levels; you forget all about anybody else. In the moment of aggressive excitement, you are totally yourself, you are totally the little self, you are totally the petty ego. And then the other’s welfare, the other’s concern, ceases to matter. When the woman is fighting the man, and vice versa, then it becomes immaterial to both of them what is happening to the child. The woman has to win, the man has to win, and in the process of winning that petty battle, what is happening to the kid becomes insignificant.

Questioner: What is the solution?

Acharya Prashant: We have to see what is happening. Next thing is the issue of identification. First issue was of company, the second is of identification. Not only is the kid in bad company, he is deeply identified with these two quarreling people. One is his or her mother, the other is his or her father. And what does identification mean? 'I am that.' This is what identification says, right? 'That am I.' In the heated moment of the quarrel, what is the mother? The mother is pure aggression. What is the father? The father is pure hatred. And the kid is saying, 'That am I' because the kid is identified with the father and the mother. So, what does the kid become? Aggression and hatred. And the mother and the father will not even realize it. They will say, 'We were fighting; we didn’t do anything to the kid as such.' You did do, and you did a lot. You destroyed the kid.

Questioner: So, is it better to get separated?

Acharya Prashant: And take the kid along?

Questioner: The kid would live with at least one of them, right?

Acharya Prashant: Would one of them live and survive loneliness? No. That one of them will surely pull somebody else into his life. It may not necessarily be somebody from the opposite sex, but that fellow is surely not going to live a vacuous and vacant life. He would find something to get involved in, because the fundamental petty ego remains the same even after separation. Separation does not transform the ego. Divorce is not enlightenment, or is it? So, you are still the same; the kid is still with one of these two fools. In fact, it might make it worse for the kid because now there is nobody else to fight with. So, the kid gets all the aggressive attention—you know, you can’t beat up the wife now and the hand is itching, so it’s the kid.

Divorce and separation are obviously not the solution. The solution lies in basic inner transformation. And that inner transformation will become easier if the parents see that they have some love for the kid. You know, sometimes it is easier to do it for others than for yourself. It is easier to say, 'I will accept defeat not because I feel like getting defeated, but for the sake of the kid. For the sake of the child, I am prepared to accept defeat.'

The important thing is to realize that it is not for no reason that most of the world’s population is already distorted by the time it reaches adolescence. This organization has worked a lot with teenagers and young people. And let me tell you, by the time a boy or a girl reaches seventeen, there is ninety-five percent chance that he or she is already a very difficult case, almost beyond redemption. Such is the distortion of psyche that happens due to a bad childhood.

In fact, if there is one unpardonable crime, it is bad parenting. You are not even killing someone; you are disfiguring someone and sentencing him to live an entire life. How does it sound? It is like chopping off somebody’s limbs and ensuring that he lives and lives an entire life without limbs. In fact, it is probably possible to live an entire life without these physical limbs, but it is far worse living an entire life with a distorted mind. And the parents, and to some extent the society and the education, they very badly distort the minds of young people.

And it is also something very curious, very regrettable, that often it happens that the more ignorant a person is, the more desirous he is of having kids. It is not always the case, but it is found very frequently. In fact, if a proper scientific survey is done, maybe a statistical correlation can be established. The ignorance quotient will be directly proportional to the number of kids one has.

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