Innocent, fragile and helpless; that is how we are all born into this world, regardless of who we become later in life. As an infant, we know nothing of the world, therefore we must rely on the first people we meet and the people closest to us in those early years – our parents. From changing our nappies to feeding us, a parent is a child’s first teacher in life. Typically viewing our parents as wise, who know the answer to everything, we idealize them. We assume they have everything figured out and life is easy for them because they are adults. However, when this pristine vision around them is broken, we start to see our parents as people. perhaps it is when we come to realise that they do not know any more than we do, we start to become adults ourselves. This change in perspective shifts our identity and allows the path to open for us to grow out of our childhood and into adulthood.
According to psychologist Karl Jung, we are each made up of a “persona”, differentiated from the authentic self. A “persona” is the personality that an individual projects towards others, which allows them to adapt to societies demands, finding a compromise between one’s innate psychological constitution and society. Therefore, one could explain the realisation of parents being average human beings (and not super-human, perfect beings) as a collapse in the parent’s persona. As the parent no longer holds the image of just a parent, but they also convey their normality and humanity, therefore shattering the illusion of “the perfect parent” in the eyes of the child.
Furthermore, although parents have a big role to play in their child’s life, I do not believe they determine the full development of the child. Everyone is affected by their surrounding environment, the social construct built around them and the private sphere of their family. Each day has a new part to a child’s development, as they are continuously learning and taking in the world around them, like a sponge to water. However, this philosophy of learning should not stop just because one “becomes” an adult. Instead, I believe we stop learning passively, taking up and copying behaviours, to learning actively, which means adding to our own interpretation. This might be the reason why your parents place so many hopes and dreams into your childhood, enabling you to have the freedom and explore everything. Whether it is playing an instrument, experimenting with different sports, understanding your passion for a certain subject, your parents push you on and want the best for you. “But perhaps no parent can truly see their child. When [they] look [they] see only the mirror of [their] own faults” (Madeline Miller, Circe, 2018).
All in all, we are all children at some point in our lives. The moment we realise our parents are just people and not the idealised superheroes we have seen them as throughout our childhood, is the moment we lose a part of our childhood. This forces us to delve into life, fiercely and independently from our parents, growing into our own skin and changing the looking glass with which we see the world.
Dolphinmind 