Parents or peers

PARENTS OR PEERS?

Danièle Starenkyj©2015 www.publicationsorion.com

In South Africa's Kruger National Park, young elephants taken from their mothers and large bulls in 1980 were sent in groups to various reserves across the country. By the late 1990s, they had reached sexual maturity. They had become delinquent beyond all imagining, killing a human, charging tourists, attacking rhinos (an animal normally avoided) by throwing sticks and water at them, killing up to twenty of them, and, shockingly, some even began to mount female rhinos.

Questioned, zoologist Marion Garaï examines the aberrant behavior of relocated male elephants. She refuses to stigmatize them as "very delinquent" and insists that they are orphans. In traumatic circumstances, they were brutally torn from their mothers and cut off from the older males. They were thus deprived of an education worthy of their species to which they were entitled. Detached from their parents, they developed in contact with their peers who knew no more than they did about the dignified way of being a gentle, faithful, sensitive, intelligent, reasonable, and even chaste elephant, with a sense of responsibility and family. Indeed, this is how, for centuries, the cultures with which these enormous vegetarian pachyderms coexist have known and described them...

Marion Garaï claims that the origins of such madness are the breakdown of social ties, the absence of family life which conditions behavior, and the absence of "old males who normally take charge of enforcing a certain discipline among the young during the mating season." As proof, the zoologist suggests that in another reserve in Natal, young males, also coming from Kruger without their mothers and without old males to keep them in check, have started to act like thugs (1).

In 2004, Dr. Gordon Neufeld, a clinical psychologist, and Dr. Gabor Maté, a physician and psychotherapist, reminded parents of the fundamental human need for children to bond with their parents (2). They denounce the increasingly common peer modeling among young people in our society. Why? These specialists in human nature declare that peer modeling—friends—creates an aggressive and precociously sexualized youth culture. This replaces the natural authority of parents, the true, healthy source of contact, security, and love for children. However, as several contemporary experiments demonstrate, groups of young people—whether animal or human—separated from adults, and by default raised only by each other, develop behaviors of intimidation, aggression, violence, and self-destruction (alcohol and other drug use, dropping out of school, mutilation).

What zoologist Garaï calls the breakdown of social bonds, Neufeld calls "the destruction of the natural generational hierarchy," the true cause of these devastating behaviors. Young people, cut off from their parents who no longer play their normal role as guidance points, have no choice but to resort to instinct and impulses. "The instinct to dominate arises when there is a loss of appropriate attachments."2 This results in an intolerable void of attachment that the child seeks to fill—but in vain—with the feeling of power that comes from controlling an equal as weak as oneself.

We must ask ourselves what are the causes of this generational catastrophe. Some studies point to our materialistic society, which increasingly demands from parents an unwavering commitment to their work . The expression 24/7/365 seems to have positively become the mark of the model employee ready at any time and in any place to answer the phone, check emails, spend evenings and weekends at the office, and bring files home during vacations. By the same token, such a society pushes children deprived of the active presence of their parents to become attached to their peers. Under the pretext that the child needs to be socialized, it justifies that he or she spends, every day for at least eight hours, from nursery to school, including daycare, with other children, and not with adults in his or her family.

Other studies, including a very recent one3, point to social media and electronic gaming culture, which isolate adolescents from their parents for 9 hours a day—in addition to the hours spent at school, eating, and sleeping. The conclusions of these studies should surprise no one: our young people, molded by virtual peers in mobile applications, electronically isolated from their parents, suffer from intense loneliness, a tragic loss of identity. Electronic interactions, no more than interactions with peers, create attachment, commitment, or intimacy. In this world, the human thirst for love is not quenched.

Let us remember 4 that the secret of resilience, this ability to bounce back when life has scorned us , is an outstretched hand that we grasp with gratitude. Let us insist: it is impossible to exercise this ability to overcome trials without someone agreeing to bind us to them, and without us taking pleasure in being attached to a human being concerned with giving us back the certainty of being loved . The child is called to grow. He will only do so happily if he is attached to caring parents, with “bonds of humanity, ropes of love”5.

The most human profession there is, the most noble, the most altruistic, the most obligatory, remains that of parent . It is the most fundamental profession. It is the profession that truly forges the future. May parents, aware of their strength, take on this responsibility and learn to live a new paradigm: the equal role of men and women in the face of life to come, which is coming, and which has come. Thus, the full blossoming of humanity will be honestly and respectfully promoted .

Danièle Starenkyj©2015

1. Starenkyj D., Becoming a Parent – ​​Living a New Paradigm, Orion, 2014.

2. Maté G., Neufeld G., Rediscovering Your Role as a Parent, Éditions de l'Homme, 2005. Original English version: Hold On to Your Kids – Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers, Vintage Canada, 2004.

3. Landmark Report: US Teens Use an Average of Nine Hours of Media Per Day, Tweens Use Six Hours, New Media Use Census from Common Sense Details Media Habits and Preference of American 8-to18-years-old, November 3, 2015.

4. See the article by Danièle Starenkyj: “Filiation: always a question of the heart”.

5. Starenkyj D., Reflections for a Better Life, Orion, 2015.

photo: Marïphotographie