“Directly after God in heaven comes a Papa”
Wolfgand Amadeus Mozart
Both mom and dad love their child. But is there a difference in their love? Of course there is. Father’s love is not like the love of a mother. A father is a different way of looking at the world. Yes, both dad and mom love their child at all times – when he or she is nice and when he or she is naughty. However, there is a difference.
A mother’s love for her child is absolute. A father, on the other hand, is capable of not showing his feelings; his love has to be won. A father means support, strength, and a source of creative inspiration. A father is someone who teaches life and makes it clear that things may not always be our way. He hardens the child.
A child perceives mom and dad as the most important part of own self. And at first, the mother is essentially the child’s world, and later she brings the child into the world through herself. The child learns about the world through the mother, sees the world through her eyes, and focuses on what is important to the mother. Consciously or not, the mother actively shapes the child’s perception. And the child is also introduced to the father by the mother – she conveys the degree of importance of the father.
Sometimes it happens that relations between a father and mother do not make it through a crisis and collapse. In this case, when the mother is offended, no longer loves, cannot trust, does not respect the father, she, looking at her child and finding some similarities and manifestations of the father, will consciously or unconsciously convey to the child that this “masculine part” is bad. And the child, out of mere desire to survive in such a family system, abandons the father. And he essentially gives up his “masculine part”.
Speaking of girls, they value their dad’s attention. If the mother supports this, then father shows the daughter that she is beautiful, and he loves her. In the future, this experience of communicating with a father that will make a girl feel like an attractive woman. Daughters with “no access to the father” are psychologically little girls irrespective of the fact that they have long since become adults.
People who do not like themselves, consider themselves ugly, do not accept their individuality, are prone to excessive self-judgement and condemnation of others – usually these are children whose mothers condemned and rejected the importance of the father in the child’s life.
What should adults do if there are misunderstandings and even hostility in their relationships? It’s important not to mix couple’s internal relations with parent-child relations. This can be unbearable for a child. A woman needs to distinguish between the “partner” and the “father”: if your husband is a bad partner for you, it does not mean that he is a bad father.
It is increasingly becoming commonplace, when immediately after a divorce, a mother tries to prove that the child’s dad is bad not only as a partner, but also as a father. Later, the father returns and wins the child’s attention and trust. And this changes the child’s relationship with his or her mother.
A mother who cannot accept her child’s father cannot fully accept the child either. She cannot love the child unconditionally. As a result, the child may lose access to both parents.
Masculinity is much more than just resembling a father. It is the law, spirituality, dignity, an inner sense of relevance, self-realisation, and material income. All of this is possible when you have a positive father figure.
No matter how positive the mother is, it is the father who initiates the adult part inside the child. Helpless people are usually those who had no access to their fathers.
Is a father really that important?
Yes, each of us is a continuation and the result of the merger of two streams – maternal and paternal. When a child accepts both parents, agrees that the parents are who they are, he or she automatically gets a chance to grow and develop fully. This is the parental blessing.
