Texts of General Interest (link)
The family is responsible for most social problems!
Dysfunctional families create dysfunctional people
The family is society’s cell! All social problems have their roots in a dysfunctional family environment, especially during early childhood. A dysfunctional family means a dysfunctional culture that inclines to iniquity. Unfortunately, many families offer their children abuse, criticism, or neglect instead of affection. However, on the other hand, an overprotective family (usually with a single child or the first-born or last-born child) makes children overly dependent on their family, struggling to meet their parents' expectations, such as taking heaps of degrees during the university years, to satisfy them.
Family affects our personality and every aspect of our life, such as the criteria for choosing a partner and our relationship with others, for example, being aggressive or manipulative. It may even affect our appearance, outfit, and demeanor. For instance, some male teenagers may subconsciously react to their parents by wearing earrings that their parents do not approve of, or young boys and girls may do body piercing, especially on sensitive body parts, including lips, genitals, nipples, etc. A reactive behavior in a dysfunctional family may take the form of aggression. That explains why many young, frustrated kids join gangs, enjoy bullying, watch violent movies, and play violent ''shoot-'em-up'' computer games.
Psychoanalysis intones that living in an adverse environment during early childhood is essential for developing someone’s character and behavior. Whether Fraud was correct or not can be debated. In any case, of immense importance for boys is their relationship with their mother, and for girls, their relationship with their father. However, the behavior of both parents may weigh differently.
Unfortunately, many parents do not know how to behave toward their children in our contemporary society. Some are abusive and offensive to their children and continuously criticize them. Other parents do not pay attention to their children's needs but neglect and ignore them. Disinterest is the most common feature of many families where parents do not have time to communicate with their children and learn about their problems and concerns. Often, both parents work to earn money. However, they do not find time to talk to their children and discuss their issues, not even their daily news. Other parents become ‘friends’ with their children without realizing it is impossible to be a friend and a parent simultaneously! These roles cannot act as separate.
A dysfunctional family may also affect other aspects of our personality and explain why many people have superiority or inferiority syndrome. Inferiority and superiority syndrome are the two sides of the same coin. People with superiority syndrome enjoy showing off themselves, and some enjoy abusing, bullying, and degrading others, although they subconsciously may feel inferior. Many people who use social media to communicate with others have inferiority syndrome, as they may use fake photos of impressive young people. Thus, many profiles on social media, such as Facebook, have fake pictures of good-looking people they found on the web.
Nowadays, attention-seeking is ubiquitous and shows that our society is hugely egocentric. The young people, because of their superiority or inferiority syndrome, both sides of the same coin, seek the attention of others. For this purpose, they are obsessed with posting, blogging, or vlogging something noticeable on their social media. Many individuals post videos of doing stupid things such as silly pranks (similar to the ''Jackass'' TV show) or ''stunts'' (such as risky front flips, backflips, or parkour). In contrast, others make violent home movies such as ''action movies'' of battles with special forces (always American) or videos with airsoft war or Nerf war, if kids! Some even make homemade horror films.
Commonly, many, especially the younger users, make ‘challenge videos’ where they do a stupid challenge merely to impress their audience, while they think having a social media profile, such as a YouTube channel, is noteworthy per se! Additionally, many people show off their wealth in their videos, for example, their mansion or swimming pool. A video may be costly, and someone with a few thousand dollars may create an impressive video that can add special effects more impressive than the childish Adobe After Effects on YouTube that even kids use.
Many, if not most, people using social media are attention seekers and try to catch the attention of others by blogging and vlogging all day, posting edited images. Often men post ‘catchy’ photos of looking ''studs'' with 6-packs, and women post pics of ''Bimbos''. Others post videos with ‘stunts’ in order to attract attention. Another epidemic is internet ‘trolls’ who have inferiority syndrome and enjoy ‘trolling’ and degrading others on social media or lecturing. They are the best example of attention seekers who use their comments to attract the attention of others, even if they do not believe in their saying!
People with inferiority syndrome enjoy degrading and humiliating others and themselves. Often this may be a reaction to a dysfunctional family. These people were usually criticized and degraded by their parents or both parents or were ignored, neglected, or abused during childhood. Demeaning others makes them feel superior and react this way because of their inferiority syndrome. Degrading themselves is a subconscious punishment towards their family that makes them feel worthless.
Another category of people with inferiority syndrome is spoiled kids, usually only children (without siblings), who strive throughout their lives to fulfill the unfulfilled expectations of their parents. Conversely, many of these children may develop superiority syndrome that, as mentioned above, is the other side of the same coin with the inferiority syndrome.
Many people feel insecure, and this originates in the family environment where they were reared. This insecurity may have various manifestations. For instance, some insecure kids join gangs to find the ‘protection’ and ‘acceptance’ their family nest did not offer. In contrast, others develop anxiety and panic attacks or an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In any way, inferiority or superiority syndrome usually shows a sense of insecurity, a common consequence of living in a dysfunctional family.
Additionally, living in a dysfunctional family is a common cause of delinquency, an increasingly worrying trend. As mentioned, children living in a dysfunctional family often seek acceptance in a gang's nest and adopt antisocial behavior. Additionally, they may incline to delinquency in various ways, including petty theft, assaults, and bullying.
Aggression is a feature that is characteristic of children living in dysfunctional families who often become aggressive, enjoy bullying at school, become gang members, and are abusive with others.
Kinds of abuse and neglect (*):
Abuse
• Physical abuse (including non-accidental injury (NAI). It includes any physical harm (including poisoning), even minor, caused deliberately or deliberately not prevented.
• Emotional abuse such as constant criticism, threats, rejection, and withholding of love, support, or guidance. It often coexists with other kinds of abuse.
• Sexual abuse by an adult or young person.
Neglect
Neglect is the failure to provide basic needs for children. There are four categories of neglect:
• Physical neglect includes inadequate food, clothing, shelter, or a safe environment.
• Emotional neglect, namely inattention to the child's emotional needs.
• Educational neglect is persistent absence from school without a serious reason.
• Medical neglect is failing to seek or refuse necessary treatment.
• Fabricated or induced illness by parents to the child (such as the ‘Munchausen syndrome’).
Many of the above categories of abuse often coexist.
c) Easy criticism and ‘lecturing.’ It is a kind of emotional abuse.
A not rare kind of abuse relates to the elderly, such as financially exploiting their pension or neglecting their healthcare. Moreover, another type of neglect is in low-income families that cannot satisfy the bare essentials of their children such as feeding, primary and secondary education, vaccinations (some may idiotically omit them based on the nonsense they read on the web), or visiting health services. Some minorities, including the Roma (gypsies) in Europe, may even let their children beg on the street, which is also negligence and exploitation.
Family abuse is a significant problem that may affect children or partners (usually women), pregnant, and elderly members. It has been demonstrated that many parents who abuse or neglect their children have often been abused or neglected. That generates abuse and/or neglect towards their children, feeding a vicious circle. After all, it is not a coincidence that the offspring of divorced parents, when they marry, usually end up with divorce too! Family violence dramatically affects children, causing tantrums and frustration for their abusive parents. Children of abusive parents are more likely to abuse their partner and children when they grow up and make their own families. Similarly, children who have been neglected may show neglect towards their children.
Notably, some children living in dysfunctional families may be good parents, but they represent the minority. In the majority, abuse or neglect perpetuates to the next generations! Frustration and aggression of a child living in a dysfunctional family may also affect their social relationships. They may manifest in the form of bullying, playing violent computer games, or joining a gang. Later, this frustration may additionally take the form of oblivion with the help of illicit drugs and alcohol or psychiatric drugs. Today a considerable proportion of society in most Western countries is addicted to alcohol, using it as a way of ‘flying’ and not ‘fighting’ the problems.
Aggression may be a subconscious reaction to a dysfunctional family. A frustrated child may later be abusive in their own family and towards others, and additionally may be aggressive even on sex (such as engaging in BDSM (bondage, dominance & submission, sadomasochism) roleplay), may enjoy watching violent and even graphic movies and scenes on the TV, cinema, or the web (including the YouTube).
Anger control is something that many psychologists and psychiatrists spend their time teaching an outsize proportion of their patients (I do not prefer the term ‘clients’) to whom analysis reveals that it originates in their early childhood and the dysfunctional family they lived. Many people who cannot control their anger were reared in dysfunctional families. In rare cases in which psychopathology plays an additive role, these people can attack or even kill someone else, even for a trivial reason, such as during an argument with someone else, often unknown, on the street! Apart from psychopathology, an additive role plays in contemporary society that unfortunately promotes aggression.
For example, ‘action movies’ that people, even kids, watch on TV, in the cinemas, and on the internet make them addicted to extreme, often unnecessary, violence. Even computer games that children play are incredibly violent. But when violence that a child gets addicted to from movies and computer games comes along with violence in a dysfunctional family, this combination aggravates aggression. Consequently, a dysfunctional family commonly renders a personality prone to violence and worsens matters for a person with established psychopathology.
The contemporary family is in crisis. That is expected to increase problematic personalities inclined to abusive behavior. Today up to 50 percent of families end up in a divorce perpetuating violence from frustrated children. Also, infidelity involves up to 70 to 80 percent of couples, regardless of whether they are aware of it! Seven years after marriage, many, if not most, partners make love only once monthly. In many families, there is tension or indifference between the parents, especially the couples who have been married or together for many years.
On the other hand, same-sex families may face the same problems as opposite-sex families. However, it has not been proven that they have increased chances of causing severe issues to an adopted child compared to opposite-sex families. From my perspective, the worst problem is when children are dumped from one foster family to another and live without stability and security.
Another important aspect is that most, if not all, psychiatric and psychological problems have a background in a dysfunctional family and are affected negatively by a dysfunctional family that often triggers a mental disease earlier, for which there may be a genetic tendency.
A dysfunctional family may largely affect sexual relationships. An example is when someone uses a partner as a substitute for parental affection or a way of subconscious parental punishment. The former may show extreme pathologic jealousy (sometimes alcohol-related), while the latter may show aggressive behavior towards the partner.
Often a relationship becomes an addiction that, in rare cases, may be so intense that in a situation of rejection, the partner who is ''dumped,'' typically the male, may react with violence that may take even the form of murder after splitting or following an attempt to break up. This psychopathic reaction demonstrates superiority or inferiority syndrome. It shows that the person who reacts aggressively, perhaps as a child, was rejected by their parents, so they cannot tolerate rejection. The same is true for people who change partners continuously.
A dysfunctional family may adversely affect sexual relationships as those abused or rejected by their parents are more likely to choose free sexual relations, often neglecting safe sex. They may even lead to prostitution or exhibit paraphilia (= a condition characterized by abnormal sexual desires, typically involving extreme or dangerous activities). Self-punishment may include the form of humiliation, such as by practicing sadomasochism (that becomes a paraphilia when it causes distress) or literally by self-stabbing sensitive areas, such as breasts or the navel area.
These areas are related psychodynamically to a maternal figure, while the pubic area is associated with both parental figures. It is not a coincidence that similar sensitive regions are chosen for tattoos, in which symbols are often phallic and piercing. Promiscuity is often a subconscious punishment against a parent who shows neglect, rejection, or overcriticizing and abuse. So, a promiscuous life is usually an individual reaction against a dysfunctional family, such as other responses mentioned above, including delinquency, bullying, and gang membership.
However, it is essential to how parents react to the sexual life of a teenager's son or daughter and if they are permissive or authoritative. For example, a father may let his daughter spend time together with her date and return many hours after midnight without even making a phone call. On the contrary, other parents may be strict and control everything, even their children's sexual lives, often in an oppressive way. This control can be considered a kind of ‘psychosexual abuse.’ For instance, a father may control his daughter’s sexual life by approving or disapproving of her boyfriend or forbidding her to go out with him.
Parental control is commoner in more traditional societies (and especially in Muslims). In Western countries, a more typical example is when parents interfere in their children's sexual lives by showing their approval or disapproval. Of course, interference varies in different countries. In the US, interference is less prominent. When adolescents become adults, they are ''dumped'' from their family's house and can make and control their own lives alone, such as studying at a university or college, finding a job, etc.
Another example of psychosexual abuse is when parents, mainly fathers and especially the old-fashioned and religious, kick their son or daughter out of the family house when they learn that their child is gay or lesbian, respectively. But it is better to live with people who accept their sexual orientation rather than live in a family where they feel unwanted as their parents idiotically think that homosexuality is an affliction that needs to be treated.
Many gays (the word ''homosexual'' is outdated) grew up in a family where abuse, neglect, ignorance, or criticism superseded affection. However, in nature, homosexuality is not uncommon, as it involves 1,500 kinds! So, this observation, along with ''gay genes'' and neuroanatomical changes in the brain of gays, has replaced the obsolete Freud’s approach. According to psychoanalysis, many gays lived as children in dysfunctional families and could not solve the Oedipus complex of boys or the Electra complex of girls. This notion is outdated, although there may be elements of truth, at least for some gays and lesbians.
How to deal with dysfunctional families
Psychotherapy
In psychology, things are not black and white as there are many theories, often contradicting, on treating psychological problems. The ideal approach would be a combination of cognitive-behaviorist therapy (CBT) with psychoanalysis and schema theory, using an integrative approach. This psychotherapy would be a perfect combination therapy like the ‘theory of everything’ in physics! However, in psychotherapy, there are currently many ‘schools,’ while a united approach is still far, but not a utopia.
Psychotherapy may not be needed only for a child. Still, it is usually necessary for its parents or guardians, as the parents make a dysfunctional family, while children are generally the victims. Apart from psychotherapy, parents must follow some rules for raising their children. Parents can prevent abuse or neglect by analyzing the reasons for their behavior so that the vicious circle ends. Furthermore, they must realize that children react to their abuse or neglect with a negative ‘reactive’ behavior used to seek their parents’ attention. This behavior is sometimes childish or other times aggressive.
In our society, we all tend to be manipulative! However, parents must keep in mind that children, like parents, are apt to be very manipulative! Even toddlers are attention seekers of their parents using, for example, their cry. Other young children try to attract their parents' attention by bickering with their siblings. Many children are manipulative and often show jealousy against their siblings seeking to monopolize their parents' attention and affection. However, the parents are responsible for encouraging or not the manipulative behavior of their kids.
A family psychologist can help the members of a dysfunctional family effectively and make them by analysis (psychodynamic approach and scheme theory) to realize why they act with a negative behavior to avoid it (cognitive-behaviorist approach). Parents who need consultation should not defer it as there are no official family schools for parents to know which behavior is appropriate and which is wrong to have a happy family. However, a consultation must start when children are young. So, the ''the sooner, the better'' approach is essential, as it is difficult to change things when a dysfunctional behavior perpetuates. By postponing psychotherapy, people become ''reactive'' like a brick wall to consultation and are prone to denial and relapse.
The parents hold the key to psychotherapy. The whole family often needs to consult a therapist because problems tend to affect all members and perpetuate. A psychologist may effectively help couples with enduring issues because parents' tension and quarrels cause anxiety and frustration in their children. So, in these cases, couple therapy is mandatory. However, when problems perpetuate and cannot be solved, divorce is better for children than living in a dysfunctional family in which their parents do not feel affection for each other.
In a divorce, many parents become vicious and use their kids like ‘tennis balls’ to take revenge on their ex-partner! Usually, the couple's problems begin years before the divorce, which comes as ‘the tip of the iceberg.’ Consultation with a child psychologist may prevent some of the adverse effects of a divorce. But it will not stop all, as divorce causes permanent scars in a child's heart and is a reason for frustration.
Suggestions for keeping the family bonds firm
These recommendations apply to typical families and guardians and stepparents in all kinds of families, including foster families, families that adopt a child, and opposite-sex families.
• Parents should treat all children the same way and never treat a child differently, as usually happens with boys (gender bias) or the first or last-born child. They should never show discrimination between their children, favoring a child among its siblings. Punishment must be equal for all children. Otherwise, later in life, siblings may despise others.
• Many times, children are jealous of their siblings, especially babies or toddlers. Their envy usually shows the insecurity that their young sibling will monopolize their mother's affection. Often, jealous kids try to attract their parents’ attention in numerous ways, such as convincing them to sleep together in their bedroom at night, grabbing their mother's legs to caress her, or bugging their siblings, etc.
• Parents should always treat their children equally regardless of age, as children understand even the minor differences in their parents’ behavior and preferences. Parents should pay the same attention to their children and encourage teamwork. There are many ways to be a team with their kids, such as playing home table games, participating in sports, visiting a fair, entertainment, a theme park, or the zoo, going to the movies, playing at a playground, going out for a walk, strolling to the park, playing at the playground, etc.
• Parents should respect their children and speak to them politely and not abruptly. They should not shout at them, as if they are sergeants commanding in the army, saying ‘get out,’ ‘shut up,’ etc.
• In case children have behavioral problems (aggression, social isolation, suspicion of taking drugs, and others), parents should consult a child psychologist and, when needed, a child psychiatrist. Behavioral problems are rare in a family with solid relationships between its members. It’s unacceptable for parents to hand over their teenager who is taking drugs to the police (to be imprisoned) instead of consulting a psychologist and visiting a drug rehabilitation center to speak to an expert.
• Parents, as well as schools, should also mind the sexual education of their children when they enter adolescence. Sexual education is helpful as, for example, many teenage women end up as single mothers with a baby because they ignored contraception and their partner dumped them when he learned about the unwanted pregnancy. Apart from contraception, safe sex is another issue that should be considered.
• Parents should listen to their children’s opinions and discuss their problems. When they talk with their children, they should not interrupt them, impose their views, or degrade and criticize them. Undoubtedly, a universal problem that children and teenagers report is that communication with their parents is poor. Many parents use presents to replace and ‘buy’ their interaction with their children. However, it is not the duration they spend with their children but the quality of time that parents spend with them. Many parents claim they do not have the time to stay with their kids. However, a good quality relationship can replace a deficient quantity of time spent with their kids.
• Parents should avoid labeling kids about the character they think they have. Parents should also avoid using stereotypes and prejudice as this has a deleterious effect on their relationship with their children.
• Fathers should avoid encouraging aggression in their boys, such as engaging in aggressive sports such as rugby, playing violent computer games and watching violent movies, wrestling with their siblings, enjoying bullying, etc. Parents should supervise their kids to prevent them from playing violent computer games and watching violent or sexually explicit movies on TV or the web. They should use special filters for children and always discuss and have control over what their children watch and which sites they visit. It is preferable to allow their children to use a laptop, desktop, or tablet in a place where they can supervise them, such as in the living room rather than in their bedroom. Parents should keep their children from surfing aimlessly on the web. Additionally, parents should not use the TV or the internet as a babysitter.
• Parents should avoid imposing on their children to fulfill their expectations and unfulfilled dreams. For instance, teenagers should study what they wish and not what would fulfill their parents' expectations.
• Any abuse or neglect from the parents' side is unacceptable and inexcusable. Similarly, any kind of aggression between siblings is unacceptable.
• Some kids get used to staying babies, so parents need to encourage them to wean themselves from their nest. For example, some children sleep with their parents at night, use a feeding bottle, suck their thumb, wear diapers, etc.
• Siblings should be encouraged to participate in games and sports, and no one should be excluded from games. Parents should encourage teamwork and collaboration while discouraging competition and aggression, especially among boys.
• Parents should always reward their children when needed, for instance, when they are good pupils at school, tidy their room, or participate in house cleaning. This reward may be verbal, merely saying ‘bravo’ or ‘thank you.’
• Parents should discourage children from watching TV endlessly or surfing endlessly on the internet and encourage them to engage in sports, games, intellectual board games (such as Monopoly (TM) or puzzles or ‘trivial pursuit (TM)), help with housekeeping, house cleaning, and cooking, etc.
• Parents should sit down and talk with their children about what bothers them and encourage them to express their feelings. They can use a video camera, and every kid separately can express their feelings alone in a room after all the family gather and watch the videos and discuss them if the child has something that would not have a problem to share with the rest of the family members and does not need to keep it private.
• Parents should not put up with children's manipulation or aggression.
• Parents should avoid giving snacks and cookies all the time to their children. On the contrary, they should encourage a healthy diet. Children should not eat alone in their bedroom or on the sofa in front of the TV but have lunch or dinner along with their parents and have the chance to discuss matters that bother them. But this discussion should not end up in a family quarrel or dispute.
• The phrase ‘I hate you’ from a child to its parent, or vice versa, is unacceptable. Parents should pay attention to rebuilding their relationships with their kids.
• Parents should avoid spoiling their children. They should also avoid ‘buying their love’ with gifts.
• Parents should raise their children and not just spend the day with them. Children do not need their parents to be friends because they already have friends! Parents are parents, not friends!
• Parents should not swear as children learn swearing from their parents! Any vulgar phrase uttered by a parent, or a child is unacceptable. Parents give their kids the worst example with their screams, swearing, and aggression. Consequently, children who live in a hostile family environment when they grow up often imitate this dysfunctional behavior and cannot control their anger.
• Sometimes, it is better for parents to ignore their children’s outbursts.
• Parents should avoid continuously criticizing their children because criticizing creates negative feelings. Children who have grown up in a family where parents criticize them tend to heavily criticize themselves.
• Family members should respect each other as a team and discuss family matters. Parents should listen to their children without interrupting or lecturing them.
•Parents should avoid permitting their children to sleep with them, even if they are babies!
• Children should not have a TV set, computer (desktop or laptop), or tablet in their bedroom, while young children should not have a smartphone. Parents should not have a TV set in their bedroom unless they prefer to watch TV than make love! A TV and a computer should only be in the living room where children can be supervised if they watch graphic or explicit content. Children should not watch TV or surf aimlessly and endlessly on the internet. Special parental control options are available when surfing the web, so the parent must activate these programs.
• Boys are apt to copy their father’s abusive, aggressive, or disrespectful behavior against their mother, and when they grow up, they tend to act the same way toward their partner.
• A parent who is mentally ill needs special counseling and should never be left to raise their children without being assessed by social services if they can harm them. Additionally, social services should assess and consult families with problems such as abuse and neglect. In case of relapse, these children should move to a foster family, always after a court's decision. Neighbors, friends, and relatives must help the dysfunctional families and refer them to the district social services. In case of abuse of any kind (physical, sexual, emotional), the police and social services should be notified.
• According to a psychosexual approach, parents should avoid lip kissing their kids, something that some do in the US.
• All family members should express their negative feelings and avoid keeping them buried inside until they outburst with aggression.
• Parents should cooperate and agree on raising their children and not undermine each other. They should also love all their children the same, something that seems trite. However, many parents show objectiveness showing more affection to a specific child, such as the youngest (like Benjamin). Usually, a mother is more attached to her boy and a father to his girl, but this is normal and follows Freud's doctrines.
• Parents should keep in mind that, usually, a child's negative behavior is a reaction to gain their attention. So, no kid is born mischievous!
• Often, a child, especially if spoiled or insecure, attaches with sheer tenacity to one or both parents, seeking their affection and approval. However, parents should neither feed this insecurity nor a child's expectation to follow their agenda!
• Parents should encourage and motivate their children using positive expressions such as ‘I want you to know that you are really good,’ ‘I am happy you listen,’ ‘and you were amazing.’ But parents should avoid praising their kids with words such as ''you are perfect/ terrific/outstanding/excellent'' or ''you are the most handsome/ pretty'' as praising makes kids smug and arrogant!
Safety comes first! • Parents should not leave their children unattended to play on the street or swim alone in a swimming pool. For instance, prudent parents mind their children having their seatbelts fastened, which seems obvious; however, many omit it! A responsible sibling may safeguard the younger.
• Parents should not punish a kid that urinates its bed or sucks its finger or stutters or wears clothes of the opposite sex or has weird behavior. Punishment usually increases the problem, which generally originates from the dysfunctional relationship between the child and its parents. So, in behavioral issues, parents should always advise a child psychologist or, when needed, a child psychiatrist.
• Parents should be polite to their children and vice versa.
• When a child talks about their feelings and says they are frustrated about something, parents should encourage them to express themselves and not keep the problems inside. For instance, a parent may say, ‘It’s wonderful that you talk and express your feelings!’ Parents should learn to listen to their kids.
Conclusion
In conclusion, four things are the gold standard for serenity in a family:
1. Exhibiting mutual affection and respect.
2. Motivating positive behavior.
3. Showing intolerance to any unacceptable behavior.
4. Rewarding positive comportment and demeanor.
Thanks for reading!
Reference
(*) Child Abuse and Neglect, p. 886 – 887, Oxford Handbook of General Practice, C. Simon, H. Everitt, T. Kendrick, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press, 2005.
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