BANJI TITLES

Think it no less an abuse

5 year old Titi (not real name) will not do her assignment despite persuasion from her semi-literate mom. I walked into the situation and intervened almost immediately. I didn't shout at her; I only requested that a cane, which I call 'rod of correction' be given to me. "I have a cable I use on her," the mom said to me. I turned it down immediately and told her that using a cable on her child is child abuse, not discipline. The young lady I had also told to get me a cane had gone for a short conduit pipe and I told her what I said to Titi's mom that, using a conduit pipe on Titi is tantamount to abuse. Later a small cane would be fetched for me that did the magic. On sighting it, Titi adjusted and did her assignment in record time, to the surprise of her mom. By the way, that's a quick example to cite of child abuse in this part of the world. There are always news—mild, harsh, disheartening and traumatizing— sexual, physical, verbal abuse on the pages of the national dailies. 

Yet, in studying a number of these reports, I have yet to find one that reckons children as arbitrators in marital conflicts a form of abuse. It is the norm to turn to children when every voice of reasoning has been appealed to. By this revelation, abusers will be quick to argue it shouldn't be added to the list. Like or loathe it, it is no less an abuse to bring or drag children into marital conflict(s). By age and, or spiritual, or cultural ethos, there should be an agreed figure taken as an arbitrator in the case of marital conflict. Children should be spared the psychological trauma that has downtrodden them, and affected their total development, and dwarf their academic performance.

It should be no less accounted for as an abuse when women are demanding what their husbands failed at from their children. It is understood that a void is almost always created when a party in a marital relationship fails at certain expected responsibilities. But, should children be made to pay the price? It is such an abuse that informed statements like awon omo mi ni oko mi (my children are my husband). What a grave substitution! Particularly disturbing is the enormity of such aberrational demand in time, emotion and finance. If care is not taken, the woman won't mind sharing the time her son should spend with his wife and family. Some can be so wickedly they want the lion share of their son's time, if not all. Oh sure, instances abound. 

Admittedly nature abhors vacuum. Women by nature will always seek a willing recipient—child(ren), associate (male or female), pastor, counsellor—of their emotion, an act that usually makes them vulnerable. They should desist from discussing such with their children, especially in their formative ages. Many children have been found not to understand fully the enormity of such demands. As such, they struggle at it. Sadly, it becomes an offence against them when they fail. 

Imagine when children learn first-hand from their mother "how to mock their father's manners, to belittle his work, to sneer his lack of formal education and in general to degrade his manhood." Something in those children is being damaged unconsciously. This is no less an abuse! 

A family depicted all this and more. More detailed excerpts can be seen below. 

The meeting of the couple…

When she (Gertrude Morel, nee Coppard) was twenty-three years old, she met, at a Christmas party, a young man from the Erewash Valley. (Walter) Morel was then twenty-seven years old…

The consummation…

The next Christmas they were married...

Things began to fall apart…

The next Christmas they were married, and for three months she was perfectly happy: for six months she was very happy. 

I should think that you paid close attention to the writer's choice of adverbs—perfectly happy; which later morphed to very happy—to depict the deterioration that had set in in the marriage, just in six months. The same experience, vividly described by the choice of adjective 'happy' is modified with two different adverbs to show temporal differential of the same/similar experience. 

Then, things really fell apart...

According to the author, all that happened in the marriage--the stark opposite that they were in matters of philosophy, religion, education; and the discovery that her husband never owned the house they lived in--  "was gall and bitterness to Mrs. Morel."

"She said very little to her husband, but her manner had changed towards him."

Then she did something we are familiar with…

Gertrude Morel was very ill when the boy was born. Morel was very good to her, as good as gold. But she felt very lonely, miles away from her own people. She felt lonely with him now, and his presence only made it more intense. 

The boy was small and frail at first, but he came on quickly. He was a beautiful child, with dark gold ringlets, and dark-blue eyes which changed gradually to a clear grey. His mother loved him passionately. He came just when her own bitterness of disillusion was hardest to bear; when her faith in life was shaken, and her soul felt dreary and lonely. She made much of the child, and the father was jealous. 

At last Mrs. Morel despised her husband. She turned to the child; she turned from the father. He had begun to neglect her; the novelty of his own house was gone, he had no grit, she said bitterly to herself.

 

There began a battle between the husband and wife—a fearful, bloody battle that ended up with the death of one. 

It just didn't begin a battle between Mr. Walter Morel and Mrs. Gertrude Morel, it was to begin rivalry/hostility between father and children.  

"The house is filthy with you," she cried.

"Then get out on it—it's mine. Get out on it!" he shouted.

"And I would," she cried, suddenly shaken into tears of impotence. 

"Ah, wouldn't I, wouldn't I have gone long ago, but for those children." 

She stayed in an abusive marriage because of her children, and it became her practice to tell the children things that mocked their father's manners, belittled his work at the mine, sneered his lack of formal education and in general to degraded his manhood." It became the norm for her to use invectives and scathing comments on him before the children. She said to him, "Look at the children, you nasty little bitch."

Then, the consequence…

"She (Mrs. Morel) hated her husband,…William hated him, with a boy's hatred for false sentiment, and for the stupid treatment of his mother. Annie had never liked him; she merely avoided him."

The children hated their dad. In fact, one of his sons prayed that he died! "Paul hated his father…'Lord, let my father die,' he prayed often. He had even desired that his dad be beaten up by his elder brother. She prevented it, though. "Why didn't you let me have a go at him?" said William, when his father was upstairs. "I could easily have beaten him." "A nice thing—your own father," she replied. "Father!" repeated William. Call him my father!" "Well, he is—and so—". 

Their mom, Mrs. Morel almost had a similar challenge growing up captured thus:

"Mrs. Morel—Gertrude—was the second daughter. She favoured her mother, loved her mother best of all…She remembered to have hated her father's overbearing manner towards her gentle, humorous, kindly-souled mother."  

Notice carefully in the excerpt above that she nurtured hatred as a kid too, but it wasn't towards her father, but his "over-bearing manner towards" her mom. What a difference! But lo, her children hated their father! 

Mrs Morel says to her son when he told her of a girl he has been seeing…

"…I've never—you know, Paul—I've never had a husband-not-really"

It is obvious she has made a husband of Paul, her son. She wouldn't want her son to marry because of the strong, strange emotional attachment she had with the son. It was such a queer coupling between mother and child that the son said, "But I shan't marry. I shall live with you, and we'll have a servant."  

The son, Paul, would fill the emotional role of his absent dad…

He stroked his mother's hair, and his mouth was on her throat. 

…His mother kissed him, a long fervent kiss.

"My boy!" she said, in a voice trembling with passionate love. 

Without knowing, he gently stroked her face.  

The excerpt above might be a case of extreme aberration between mother and child which many may assume rather impossible in contemporary times. Wait till you are inundated with substantial evidence. Children, particularly males, in abusive marital relationships have had problems forming any normal relationship with other women. It was the case with Mrs. Morel's endeared son, Paul. While his dad was recuperating at the hospital, he declared himself "the man of the house". In other words, " I am what my father isn't." What an abuse. 

The excerpts were taken from D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers.