Unmastered Masturbation Conflict
<< The Father-Child Relationship >>
Robert A. Furman, M.D.

¹ Director, Cleveland Center for Research in Child Development and the Hanna Perkins School.
Training Analyst, The Cleveland Psychoanalytic Institute.

In The course of life: Middle and late childhood, pp. 221-232. NY: International University Press, 1991

In the discussion to follow I have in mind the average devoted father who has entered the developmental phase of parenthood. Not all fathers, just as not all mothers, are successful in achieving this goal, but this need not deter us from delineating this role, to which we hope all fathers aspire and which many reach as they mature. I shall begin with some observations of Winnicott’s.

The Father’s Role in Helping His Wife to Mother

Winncott (1964) says that with her newborn the mother should behave in a way which at other times in her life we would have to consider pathological. She should withdraw her investment from the reality world around her to invest herself primarily in the unit that she and her baby constitute. In this exclusive investment she will accommodate to the transition from the baby within her, a part of herself, to the baby without, still essentially a part of herself. She will use this unique closeness to get to know her own baby’s particular cries and signals, what makes the baby comfortable or uncomfortable, and how to provide the responses from which the baby will learn to recognize her as the one who fulfills its needs and to experience her as the source of pleasure.

Winnicott defines clearly his view of the father’s role at this phase of life, a role which in many ways is never to change — modify, yes, but never entirely to disappear. This role is that of protector of the mother-child unit and relationship, as if he were to encompass them in his arms, keeping them safe from outside interferences so that the mother can devote herself to establishing her relationship with the baby.

This primacy of the mother with the child is something some men, perhaps particularly men who work professionally with children, may have difficulty appreciating emotionally. We all know it intellectually, but I have worked with mothers, the wives of such professionals, who have felt that their husbands acted as if they knew better than they did and subtly, ever so subtly, undermined the primacy of the mother’s caretaking role. I was no exception, but was helped very much with this by our pediatrician, whom I called when our first baby first became ill. He was an old and dear close friend of mine and so I elected to do the phoning as a kind of comrade-in-arms. His first words to me, when I paused long enough for him to say anything, were, “Please get off the phone and let me talk to the baby’s mother.”

The view of the father’s initial role of protecting and supporting the primacy of the mother-child relationship may say something about my suspicions and reserve about those who see the father’s early role as that of a mother substitute. If that is what the mother wants and needs at some moments to get some respite so that she can better return to her tasks as need-fulfiller, all fine and good. That would make him a mother substitute at her wish, at her beck and call, in response to her needs, not in response to his own. Some fathers may need to start their relationship with their child through feeding, diapering, doing some of the mother’s tasks, and that is all right too, as long as it does not interfere with the mother’s mothering. What I am addressing here primarily is how a father deals with his maternal side. All fathers have such a side, not just professionals who work with children. One hopes that early on in his parenting a father will learn to gratify this part of himself vicariously, through his pride in, support and protection of his wife’s maternal role. In doing so he is of enormous help to the mother and to his child.

In addition to the first months of life, there are two other specific times when the father’s relation to the mother may be crucial for the child’s well-being: in the toddler phase and at all those times when a mother has to be there to be left (E.. Furman, 1982). During the toddler phase, perhaps more than at any other time — though not exclusively then — a mother’s adult personality makeup gets a severe test when she spends hour after hour, day after day, week after week with dirty diapers and bottoms, runny noses, food all over the floor and the child’s face and clothes. It is difficult to confront constantly these early instinctual manifestations, and every woman will need an opportunity to have very civilized, very adult times with her husband to re-cement her adult personality. We often say that the best thing we could do for our nursery school teachers at the Hanna Perkins School would be to offer them a candlelight dinner each Friday night, complete with tablecloth, china, crystal, and wine. Similarly, the mother of a toddler periodically needs special civilized adult times, be they just simple times of adult conversation.

As for the times of being there to be left, some of these impinge primarily on the mother — for example, weaning and the start of nursery school. At those times a husband who understands and is there for the mother after she has been left by the child can be a big help. At later times — going away to college, living away from home, marriage — the being left is still hard, but it is more readily understood because it affects both parents more equally. It is shared and they can help one another.

The Father’s Role in Loving His Child

I would like at this point to move to some of our experiences with children in single parent homes whom we have gotten to know at Hanna Perkins. The observation was first made in A Child’s Parent Dies (E. Furman, 1974) that the loss of a parent denies to a child a source of love as well as a person to love. This deprivation is especially serious for children who lose a parent in their first two or three years. Even when these children receive the best of early help, it has been impressive to note the unfortunate aftermath of their having sorely missed the extra love from the absent parent. This is not always the case, but it is a frequent enough occurrence; well enough studied, to allow us to draw some fair inferences about the role a father’s loving of his child plays in his child’s development.

We have particularly observed the combination of lowered self-esteem, difficulty in mastering aggression, and difficulty in integrating a helpful conscience. Although each of these is a most complex issue, deriving from many sources, it is possible to see and perhaps understand how these problems relate to one another. The lowered self-esteem perhaps manifests itself earliest. We see it in a lack of adequate pleasure in accomplishments and in a tendency to have one’s feelings hurt too easily. The difficulty in mastering aggression shows next, in the exaggerated anger that flares up in response to what otherwise might be experienced as minor hurts to the feelings. Then, as latency starts and a conscience begins to be integrated into the personality, we note a great many more of the externalizations appropriate to this age. All children experience some difficulty in learning to listen to the “inner voice” of the new conscience, which tends to set higher standards than they can meet. Young schoolchildren often avoid this unfamiliar painful inner conflict by attributing the demands of conscience and its punitive role to the outside world, to the principal who is seen as an ogre or to the parents who are perceived as excessively strict. With the single parent child, however, these developmental manifestations are greatly exaggerated and not easily outgrown. There is an increased need to provoke punishment from without, because the child unconsciously prefers it to the threats, reproaches, and punishments meted out by a conscience which is much too harsh.

We hypothesize that the lowered self-esteem comes from inadequate supplies of love, from missing out on that extra source of love from without that may be available with two parents present. A deficiency of that love inside, a love that should be self-protecting, may mean a deficiency of the love that can tame the aggression all must struggle to master. If there is enough love it helps the toddler to fuse anger, to modulate and tone down its harsh destructiveness for the sake of loving. Likewise, it helps the preschooler neutralize aggression, transform its energy into zest, and invest it in constructive activities. When there is not enough inside love, we find that these important steps in personality development are impeded. We also feel that when this anger, which has remained too harsh and too unmodified, later fuels the developing conscience, it accounts in part for the child’s trouble in integrating such a conscience and learning to live with it.

If we understand our experiences correctly and if our hypotheses are valid, it is clear that the loving of his children that a father does, contributes to a child’s self-esteem, to the mastery of aggression, and to healthy conscience formation. These contributions, often so silently made, seem so significant that I mention them explicitly. It is true that some children with one parent escape these difficulties, but the risk of problems arising in these areas is much greater without a father’s healthy contribution.

How can a mother help her child if a father is not available in the home? It is important to realize that a mother cannot be both a mother and a father, that there will be a void in the fatherless family. The child will know and feel this. The mother cannot fill this void, but if she can acknowledge it openly and sympathize with the child’s feelings about it, she can preclude the development of a gulf between them which could interfere with what she has to offer as a mother.

This brings us to another area of relevance to our topic. I shall start with an observation from one of the classes in a high school that took our course in child development (E. Furman, 1981). The question always arises whether in a single parent family, say with the father absent, his role cannot be filled by an uncle, a grandfather, or a friend of the mother’s? I was interested in the discussion of this question by the high school students. With surprising ease and unanimity, but not without careful deliberation and discussion, one group summed it up rather well by saying that unless the man was the child’s father, married to the child’s mother, he was just different. It just was not the same. They all agreed that something is better than nothing, but that did not change their feeling that for the healthiest and happiest resolution of early childhood there should be a family unit consisting of mother, father, and child.

What these students were addressing is that crucial period of life that marks the transition from preschool to school age, the period of life marked by what psychoanalysts call the resolution of the oedipal phase. It is difficult to discuss our research about this crucial period without becoming either too theoretical or else simplifying the essence out of our thinking. I hope you will bear with me as I try to skirt between these twin dangers.

Preschool teachers know well the struggles of their charges to keep instinctual feelings and thoughts out of their learning; when children have made the transition to becoming schoolchildren their sexual wishes and strivings have become more quiescent or latent — hence our designation of the period as latency. One second grader in analytic treatment described this well for me when he said that he knew one day he would like girls, as his teenage brother now did, but for him this was hard to believe, as right now girls seemed so “yucky.” Teachers know also that a great repression or forgetting of the earlier years ensues during this transition and that the teachers and experiences of the preschool years are apparently almost totally forgotten by most school-age boys and girls. Preschool teachers know also that conscience formation is something that ensues from the struggles that mark this transitional period. For example, kindergarten teachers cannot leave a class alone for a moment at the start of the year but may by its end have some children who can manage on their own to stay in control for brief periods. These children have become schoolchildren, latency children with consciences that can function adequately if demands are not too great.

These are the observable phenomena of this transition, well known to the observant educator of children of this age; instinctual wishes become latent; a repression sets in; and a functioning conscience now appears. How all this comes about is perhaps not so easy to describe, and we still struggle to understand all that goes into this transition, what motivates it and sustains it. It would appear as if the preschooler follows the dictum, “If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.” For the little boy this means surrendering his competition with his father, giving up his instinctual wishes for his mother, and modeling himself on his father. All this somehow ends up with the boy taking into his personality an image of his father that becomes the focal point for his developing conscience.

What we have emphasized in our thinking has been the attempt to understand how some boys and girls come through this transitional period confident and content regarding their sexual identity and as kind, caring, considerate, and giving people with reasonable consciences, while others come through as if chronically discontent with themselves and as rather nasty and selfish human beings with great troubles with their consciences. We believe that fathers have a great deal to do with how this transition period is concluded regarding these vital characterological features.

When a father fulfills the “average expectable” role with his son, one of kindness, pride, and respect, he is experienced as a man who cannot be wished ill without great internal stress and pain. A most difficult conflict arises, an irresolvable one unless the boy decides to bow to his love for his father and to the reality of the impossibility of his wishes for his mother. As the oedipal father goes inside somehow to become the boy’s conscience, it is more a loving father that is then taken in, and a conscience is thereby formed that has a good chance of becoming a helpful aid to growth and development, not just a punitive force and voice. This inside father also becomes a source of identification with the father, acquiring in this way his kind, affectionate, protective aspects. To the extent that reality plays its role in the boy who surrenders his wishes, there is less loss of self-esteem, less sense of being the vanquished in a vital struggle. All the years of the father’s caring availability pay off for the son when he masters this transitional phase with a healthy identification with his father and thus acquires his positive attributes.

As regards daughters I would emphasize a father’s ability to give and be given to. A little girl’s ultimate wishes regarding her father in the transitional period revolve around giving and receiving, the wish to receive and in turn give a baby to the father being the unconscious core. It is easy to see how a father who enjoys his daughters, enjoys their femininity, enjoys supporting it with the gifts he gives them, is a great help to a little girl. He makes her femaleness something prized and respected. He helps further by accepting her gifts to him, by admiring and enjoying her efforts at sewing, cooking, and doing other jobs her mother has taught her. The girl’s more instinctual wishes will of course be there in full force, but as these are met by the father with affection and not excitement, so he facilitates mastery of their instinctual base.

The Father’s Role in Helping Children Develop Sensible Values and Attitudes

In considering the father’s relationship with his school-age children from 6 until puberty, and his role in helping them with developmental tasks, it is not necessary to distinguish relationships with sons from relationships with daughters.

The school-age child must integrate into a developing personality the new conscience and new character attributes that are outcomes of the transition from being a preschool child. These new aspects at first seem a bit foreign to the child, the conscience sounding almost like the voice of another telling him what is right and wrong, and not to do the wrong. It takes a while before the conscience is truly his and assists him by having him know when something is wrong. Then there is no issue about doing or not doing it; since it is wrong, it won’t be done. It takes a while also before this conscience is solidified, so much a part of him that it is immune to almost any stress or temptation. At this point it has achieved full autonomy.

But until then, the conscience will seem a bit like a foreign body. Initially the conscience is crude and harsh, rather like a caricature of angry parents as seen by a very young child. As latency unfolds, however, the child will see that when parents get angry they are not angry in the way the conscience is; with the help of these experiences the harsh voice of the conscience will come more into conformity with the real and more gentle voice of the parents.

In similar fashion a child can come to see that earlier impressions of the father as only intermittently kind may have been incorrect, and the reality of the father’s consistently available kindness can buttress identification with this aspect of him. Some fathers can even discuss with their children aspects of their own behavior that they hope their children will not have to copy. The father who is realistically and consistently available does much by his simple presence to enable his child to mature and to integrate both conscience and personality attributes.

School is another major developmental task for the child of this period and here again the father can be of great assistance. By his interest in school and schoolwork he tells his children of his attitude to work, and of his aspirations and hopes for them. A positive attitude in this regard may assuage any apprehensions the children may have about competition with their father and supports the maturation of the character attributes of perseverance and responsibility.

Throughout this period a very important factor is the father’s protection of his children, both sons and daughters. I do not mean simply protection when they are ill, or keeping them safe from danger, but include also protection from demands that are too great, that are not age-appropriate, as well as from demands that are not strong enough. Such things as allowance management, job management, and responsibilities at home can be a part of the father’s relationship with his school-age children. How he does his own jobs around the house certainly sets an example for them; equally important, he can make sure they have age-appropriate expectations set for them, ones he supports and assists. I used to concern myself mainly with fathers whose expectations exceeded what was appropriate, but lately I have encountered increasing numbers of fathers whose expectations of their children are too low, in this way subtly telling them not to compete with him or implying that their efforts are not worth the trouble.

In addition to supporting new steps in personality maturation, and to supporting school and work, the father retains his long-standing role in introducing aspects of the world that particularly appeal to him. He has the opportunity to share his own special interests in a way that shows his children how to play joyfully and work joyfully. The mother, of course, can show these capacities herself, but how much more meaningful it is when her example is repeated by the father.

I worry a bit that what I have said about the father’s relationship with his school-age children might sound too much like a recommendation that he be a model to them during this period. I worry because I hear so much about “role modeling” that sounds superficial, as if the idea were to act in certain ways at certain times for the benefit of the children. Rather, what I am trying to point out is the flexibility of the healthy school-age child’s personality, a flexibility that enables it to be modified with the help of the father’s reality as a person. It matters what he is as a person, what his values are, and it matters particularly in this period in which the foundation for adolescent development is being completed. It matters in that it can provide a sensible reality that contrasts with and counteracts the child’s unrealistic fantasies, born of his wishes and urges.

The Father with His Adolescent Children

In adolescence what I often call “due bills” are called in. The time for personality modification in some areas has passed with latency, and I hope this point will underscore what I have said about a father’s relationship with his school-age children. (Modification in latency does, of course, have its own limitations, as we are all aware. I hope this highlights, in turn, the importance of the father’s relationship with his preschool children.)

I am not implying that what a father does with his adolescent children is of no moment, as this is not the case. Because the adolescent suffers lapses in control, may in fact have to have such lapses, in order to see what that is all about, a father’s consistency with his own control becomes all the more important. I know of one father who jokingly said to his adolescent daughter, “In our family there is no generation gap.” He received the sharp rejoinder, “Oh yes, there is, and don’t you forget it.” Unruffled, persistent consistency — steadfastness — is what the adolescent boy or girl asks of a father. It is a tall order, one they cannot ask of themselves, but it is precisely because they cannot ask it of themselves that they so wish to find it in both their parents.

How Does One Become a Good Father?

In concluding this whirlwind tour of the father-child relationship from birth through adolescence, a few brief words seem in order about what may enable a man to father well. I believe a man learns to parent, to put another ahead of self, primarily from his mother; but he learns how to father from his father. He will succeed in his own fathering endeavors to the degree he is able to integrate these two examples within himself, aided by the marital relationship within which his fathering develops and unfolds.

By way of conclusion let me repeat that this was no attempt to be inclusive with the very vast topic of the father-child relationship. What I am struck with as I think back about the material, is how much my effort has been centered on elucidating the method of action of something so easily taken for granted — the quiet, loving role of the good enough father; his protection of the mother-child couplet, the role his loving plays in promoting mastery of aggression, successful conscience integration, development of adequate self-esteem, mastery of the oedipal phase, passage into schoolchild status with the acquisition of many character traits we so admire and cherish. We all know of the father’s traditional roles of protecting and loving. I think what I have been doing is describing the mechanisms by which these roles are fulfilled and how they facilitate a child’s emotional growth and maturation.

REFERENCES
   Furman, E. (1974), A Child’s Parent Dies. New Haven: Yale University Press.
   Furman, E. (1981), The high school course in child development. Parent Education    Newsletter of the Family Health Association of Cleveland, 9(1): 1, 4.
   Furman, E. (1982), Mothers have to be there to be left. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 37:15-28. New Haven: Yale University Press.
   Furman, R. A. (1991). The father-child relationship. In S. I. Greenspan, & G. H. Pollock (Eds.), The course of life: Middle and late childhood (Vol. 3, pp. 221-232). Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
   Winnicott, D.W. (1964), The Child, the Family and the Outside World. New York: Penguin Books.

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