Father’s role: integrating parenting
By: Santiago Ortega Serrano
Summary:
A review of father’s participation from desire of pregnancy up to the first years of life. The father’s active role and the mother’s support role as well as that of the couple is explained from a psychoanalytic point of view. A review on the partner’s help to have a good fatherhood and motherhood, without eliminating the specific roles of men and women. We establish the integration of roles, of both fathers and mothers, to give way to parenting and thus reflect on the integration, making emphasis on what it is to be a father – a couple.
Keywords: desire, pregnancy, parenting, father’s role, integration, couple.
When reviewing the bibliography on ‘father’, we realize that what we found does not cover what we want. There are a lot of theoreticians that talk about the role of a father as an interruption of the mother-son dyad (Benedek, 1983; Solis Ponton, 2003); others, state that the father is the one who imposes the law; many other modern authors talk about a more active participation of the father. After reviewing all these theoreticians, there is a possibility of integrating their more relevant contributions.
On the other hand, there are those that propose that the mother is the main participant in the children’s psychic and emotional development; more modern ones state that the father also has a lot of responsibility. That is why in this article we try to explain that both, mother and father, participate in the healthy or pathological development of their children, in their active presence or actual absence.
Several studies mention the desires and fantasies during the mother’s pregnancy. Therefore, some wonder if the father has certain fantasies during pregnancy.
The last topic is an important reflection where a question is left open to make further research work. It is that of being a father – being a couple and the work required to have an integration.
It is important for parents to discuss about their desire to have a child, so that we can study the link before pregnancy. Psychoanalysis has taught us that unconscious motivations weigh more than conscious ones. When talking about a relation between two people, we have to talk about projections, motivations, fantasies and desires deposited in each other. Talking about the father’s desires about his child, takes us directly to the relations and links that will be established with the child and within the couple.
Lebovici (1995) states that there are five psychic representations of the mother in regards to her baby. Two of them will be highlighted in this article. First, we have the imaginary baby that has to do with the mother’s conscious and preconscious fantasies on her child; and second, the fantasmatic baby which are the mother’s unconscious fantasies. It is important to ask if it is only the mother the one who has these psychic representations. Wouldn’t it be that the father is also having an image of his child? It is a fact that that is true. Both parents have images, desires and fantasies about their child, both consciously and unconsciously. The father, for example, has fantasies about his own father and when he has a reproducing coitus he reaches the goal of his rivalry, as he can finally reach independence an have his own object-mother that frees him of his oedipal jealousy. At the same time, he can reaffirm his virility and overcome his regressive trends by knowing that he is not castrated (Anthony, Benedek, 1983).
On the other hand, in the desire for a child, he projects his aspirations for his ideal self, for what he always wanted to accomplish, for what he never had, for the father he wanted to have… nonetheless, these aspirations could interfere in the fatherly love, turning his child into his own illusion and not respect his/her individuality, maybe becoming his own father.
An important topic is the desire to be parents, which leads us to the couple’s interrelationship. The fact that both participate in this pregnancy desire and in pregnancy itself allows the father to prepare himself and support the mother for childbirth. So, the mother should allow the father to participate in this process because “the father needs affective support from the mother to be an interested father” (Lebovici, et.al. 1995, p. 78). Unconscious desires vary and they depend on the development history of the mother, father and the couple. They should always exist and it would be ideal if they are understood so that we can have the child’s separation and individualization, moving away from the parents’ desires. They would decrease the narcissistic fantasies or the fantasy to form a symbiotic totality, or that someone will come to save the relationship (Vives, 2001). Eventually, the child is desired and imagined by his/her parents. He/she is the product of their desires.
Under the best conditions, during pregnancy parents have a psychic development that will prepare them for parenting. During this period both, but specially the mother, have fantasies of desiring and loving their child as they would have liked to be loved and desired. At this time, she will need his support. Both will be gratified by seeing the embryological development of the unborn child during their visits to the gynecologist, when they start being conscious of what it is to be a father, a mother, parents.
If we wanted to study the father’s role, we must start by defining the role the father will play. These roles can be divided into two: support to the mother and regarding his child. In regards to his support to the mother, the father’s role could be summarized in the following words: support and suppression. For several authors (Solís Pontón, 1999; Vives, 2001; Winnicott, 1999), from pregnancy and in the first months of a child’s life, the mother will have certain regressions and identification with her child, a “primary maternal concern” for the desire of being a good mother, recalling what her mother was for her. It is there where the father can suppress her so that she can perform a good motherhood. A father can be a “sufficiently good mother” so that she can be one for her child. That is why the father indirectly participates through the mother and directly with the baby giving way to the tryadification process. “The father gets in touch with his wife and with the baby directly and indirectly” (Barriguete quoted by Solís Pontón (Eds.) 2003, p. 31).
It is here, without having to make a categorical separation as it is an integrating process, where we have to discuss the father’s role regarding his son. In the first months, the child’s father has almost no participation in the mother-child dyad. That is why he has to gradually interrupt as the third one. I think that one of the main tasks is that of “acknowledgement”, that he can acknowledge himself as the child’s father. This is a psychic process that starts in pregnancy and what favors him most is the “father’s active role”. While the mother rests, the father can lull, hold and suppress his child gradually working on the triad. On the other hand, he will be looking for his child’s smile that can help him in the differentiation and gradual integration of the father imago.
In these sudden searches where the mother rests and the father looks for his child, we can have what Benedek calls “genuine fatherliness” which enables the father to act toward his son being sensitive to the empathic response (Benedek, 1983). So in this so-called intimate spaces, the father accepts his own affectionate feelings and can project them to his child. Asides from acknowledging his child, the latter can integrate his/her father.
Just as the mother’s breast is an erogenous zone, in the father’s case it is the neck and this is good for the child’s motor development because the father’s figure drives the child to have a strong contact. Pushes, holding him and tickles can cause a certain amount of healthy aggression to counteract the world. When playing, the father can have certain regressions and have an infantile game; the child can identify himself with his father, favoring maturity and growth in both of them and facilitating the development of the child’s individual sense.
Barriguete introduces the concept of “sufficiently good father”. He is the one who lets the mother shine, who can share and contribute with his creativity with his baby and wife, and he is the one who helps to obtain the capacity for lulling (Barriguete quoted by Solís Pontón, 2003).
Regarding the psychic development and the importance of the paternal role, we could mention some considerations that have a big impact on the child’s psychic development. For Margaret Mahler from 15 to 24 months, the father will appear in the child’s world, just in nearness (Mahler; Pine; Bergman, 1995). In this stage he appears as an important identification mechanism. That is why the father’s participation must start before so that the child can integrate and internalize the father’s total figure as well as his implicit role (Kernberg, O., 1996), specifically in this stage where gender differentiation is made and the child can identify himself with the paternal figure.
There is no question that the word that can help us understand this process, the fact of being a couple and parents is “integration”. To finish, I have to underline three important points where I could summarize the importance of parenting.
First, something that has to do with the work of the psychologist, is that in the couple’s mind the best is to have a psychic development that would allow this integration. The fact that each member of the couple would integrate being a child’s father/mother with being the sexual partner, could benefit the links established with the children and with the spouse.
Second, this integration can give way to a communication about children, as well as about the couple, love, affection or the simple daily life.
Third, by being integrated as parents / couple, this will favor the child’s separation and individualization who will consider them a couple.
These three considerations can be taken into account for the future studies of parenting and family roles. We have to talk about integration to have a better structure in all aspects of our lives. Eventually, in this constant research we can say that the child will have a better development as long as the couple is matured enough. At the same time, to talk about parenting does not mean that the father will replace the mother’s roles because each one of them has his/her own roles. The father’s active role is basic for the best development of the child and parents. An active participation of the father means that he must be more involved as a father. The more we talk about integration and roles, the human being will be better integrated.
Bibliography
Anthony, E; Benedek, T. (Eds.) (1983). Paternidad y providencia. Parentalidad, Buenos Aires: Amorrortu.
Kernberg, O. (1996). La teoría de las relaciones objetales, México D. F: Paidós.
Lebovici, S; Weil – Halpern, F. (Eds.) (1995). El padre. La psicopatología del bebé, México D. F: Siglo Veintiuno editores.
Mahler, M., Pine, F. y Bergman, A. (1995). El nacimiento psicológico del infante humano. Simbiosis e individuación. México: Enlace editorial, S. A. de C. V.
Solís Pontón, L. (Eds.) (2003). La construcción de la parentalidad. La parentalidad, desafío para el tercer milenio. APM, México D. F.
(2003). La función del padre en la consulta terapéutica padres – bebé y en el tratamiento de los trastornos de la alimentación del bebé. La parentalidad, desafío para el tercer milenio, APM, México D. F.
Vives, J. (2001). Cuadernos de psicoanálisis No. 24, 1 - 2.
Winnicott, D. (1999). Los proceso de maduración y el ambiente facilitador. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
