What Are The Effects Of Father Abandonment?

What are the effects of father abandonment?

Many children are growing up in the world without the presence of a parent. Dropout rates remain very high, especially in Latin American countries. For some, this is due to social problems such as unemployment and poverty. For others, the most important factor is culture: in some settings, abandonment by the father comes to be seen as relatively normal.

There seems to be a strong relationship between unplanned pregnancies, especially in adolescents , and father abandonment. This, added to macho patterns of behavior, mean that many men do not evaluate the fact of abandoning a child as negative.

While it is true that a human being can grow and evolve without having a committed father by his side, it is also true that those who do have him have many and better opportunities in life. And there are also cases in which paternal absence becomes a burden that significantly deteriorates existence.

Why do we need a father and a mother?

Psychoanalysis postulates that maternal love is voracious and totalizing. The mother has a global influence on the life of her baby. She is everything. It affects the big and the small, the trivial and the important. She is the environment, the universe where the life of a child takes place. Dependence is absolute at the beginning of life.

Mother with daughter

The strong bond between a mother and her child tends to last over time. The child knows that he depends on her for everything and bows to her logic. His is a basically unconditional love and this gives the little one security.

Some of us are fortunate to also have a father. Finally, there is a world beyond the mother. The father is a universe over which the mother does not have full control. It is the other shore of reality. A third party that enters to modulate that relationship of absolute dependence. It represents the limit for this symbiosis between mother and child. Symbolically it is the law. And it is also the floor from which we learn that the world will not adapt to us, quite the contrary.

The different forms of abandonment

Just as there are many ways to accompany a child, there are also different ways to leave him. The absent father, in principle, is one who leaves the mother physically and psychologically alone in raising her child. He ignores the economic contribution, the housework and does not care what happens to the child.

There are also those who leave emotionally, but not physically. They feel that children are the mother’s business. They are there, but they do not believe they have any responsibility in raising the children. They don’t talk to them, they don’t spend time with them, they have no idea how their life is going. They limit themselves to paying the bills and giving the occasional order, from time to time and at their convenience. They do not interact with the little ones.

There are also those who do not give up emotionally, but physically. They formed another family or they are far away. Still they try to be aware of what is happening to their children. They can never dedicate as much time to them as they would like, but they have it on their mind and in their heart.

The different consequences of abandonment

Each type of abandonment generates its own consequences. In the case of the completely absent father, the consequences range from serious to very serious. If the father figure is replaced, always partially by someone, the effect will be less. If only a void remains, the echoes of that absence will likely be nothing short of devastating.

By not having a third party in the mother-child dyad, it will be very difficult for the child to individualize. You will probably have a hard time exploring, broadening your horizons, and trusting your abilities. It will carry a feeling of having been excluded, of having an affective deprivation. It does not serve that the mother is “father and mother at the same time”. Even if she wants, her presence will never replace that of that third party that will always be needed.

Blurred daughter and father

Children abandoned by their father have a much harder time adjusting to the world and reality. They are also likely to develop a fear of deep bonding. And they can become “dropouts” themselves. If they are girls, they will mistrust men, or they will trust too much, always to repeat the abandonment they want to overcome.

When abandonment is partial, the consequences are less obvious. The same features appear, but nuanced and to some extent diluted. In any case, the absence of the father opens a deep emotional wound, especially in the first years of life. His emptiness will never be filled and, instead, the trace of his lack will be very difficult to erase.

What does the research tell us?

According to research carried out by Arvelo (2002), father abandonment is associated with a greater number of emotional, cognitive and language problems and male children. Apparently, these problems are related to identification processes, in which the absence of a male role model in the home would affect males more for gender reasons.

The author also points out that “ poor school performance, transgressive behaviors, depression, school problems, frequent lies, rebellion and communication difficulties” are observed in children .

According to the research team of Laura Evelia Torres (2011) from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, the role of the father is important because his figure imposes challenges. According to Torres and his team, parents establish more challenges for their children, which leads them to try harder and thus open up the possibility of traveling new paths and perspectives.

The results of their research affirm that mothers support and consent, but fathers are the ones who seek that their children develop their potential, present them with challenges and promote a feeling of achievement that is transferred to other activities.

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