Each human being carries a view of persons, families, and communities
shaded by the views of his nuclear family. The past usually is
corrected; it is never erased. So in his family of origin man
internalizes ideas of "right-wrong," "appropriate-inappropriate,"
"expected-unexpected." Each family's shaded world echoes its
procreators' familial, psychosocialeconomic, religious and experiential
breadth, closely resembled or distorted. Two persons, perhaps more,
usually husband and wife, bring shaded views together in some
combination or balance that becomes the "stuff," the authority, of {41}
their children's worlds. Thus, children see their early worlds through
the complementariness and conflict of this initial home view, acting at
times with it; at times against it.
Adults, in response to and through one another, procreate new sensitive
beings whom they want and/or do not want and whom they may and/or may
not experience as their responsibility in varying degrees. Marcel, a
French existentialist philosopher, views procreation and responsible
parenthood as quite different. My past nursing experience substantiates
this. Marcel expresses my bias about responsible parenthood, and this
statement is also worthy of consideration by nurses in positions of
authority to others. He says, "We have to lay down the principle that
our children (or those for whom we care) are destined, as we are
ourselves, to render a special service, to share in a work, we have
humbly to acknowledge that we cannot conceive of this work in its
entirety and that _a fortiori_ we are incapable of knowing or imagining
how it is destined to shape itself for the young will, it is our
province to awaken to a consciousness of itself."[5] Think of this
statement of responsible authority. How has it been evidenced in
families and nursing situations of your nursing world? What are your
expectations of your patients or nurses with whom you work?
Teilhard de Chardin, paleontologist, biologist, and philosopher, like
Nietzsche, depicts man as lacking a fixed nature with his own mode of
being as his fundamental project.[6] Initially, each person takes on a
mode of being in his world dependent upon his degree of freedom and the
how and what of the world as presented by his family and perceived by
him. The world as presented is reflective of the family's culture, their
provincial world view, their unique experienced "here and now," and the
times. Metaphorically, the family's lived world, how they experience at
this particular cross-section of their lives, can be symbolically
described as a kaleidoscopic telescoping of its past and anticipated
future. Now, this would be what was presented at any particular time.
What would a child's perception do to this metaphorical symbol? The
child's current human development and his narrow experience would be
like a circus house mirror that would interpret the metaphorical symbol
distortedly. Witness a three-year-old speaking questioningly and
complainingly about her tension headache to her mute, nonperceptive
doll, and asking her to please, please stop making such a mess and
racket.
The earliest childhood views of family and community are influenced over
time, gradually and abruptly, and grow in complexity. The child's
puzzlement is aroused by others' comings and goings, happenings within
the family, immediate neighborhood, and adjacent community, and the
world presented through books and technologically, on radio, television,
and tape recorder. Each child attends these presentations with varying
measures of complacency, questioning, bafflement, and involvement.
{42}
For instance, for myself, as a child there was the excitement of the
construction of a new house in the woods next door and meeting new
neighbors. Initially my parents expressed their differences from
ourselves. The differences they perceived were followed by negative
projections on these unknown folk. Were these others really humanly
different? I investigated; my family investigated. The folk became
persons. They expressed themselves differently in volume and sometimes
in language. They looked different. Yet they were not fearsome. They
felt, cared, responded, and worried much as we did. Mutual knowledge
allowed increasing closeness and liking.
Forbidden! This was the neighborhood across the tracks. I cried when an
uncle teasingly proclaimed one day that my missing mother was over
there. Later I attended school with both white and black children who
lived over there. And again, each was different, yet not different; each
was knowable, likeable, and loveable.
Adult family members whispered about a neighbor woman from across the
street. She was apparently hospitalized permanently. When I inquired as
to why, eyebrows were raised and strange looks were exchanged. I was
told in a not believable way, "She broke her leg falling off the back
porch."
A neighbor husband and wife frequently could be heard fighting both
verbally and physically. Family talk at our house depicted the husband
as "evil," the wife as a "poor soul." I did not enjoy being in these
peoples' house. Perhaps the violence frightened me; perhaps I was
uncertain when it might erupt? Perhaps I was concerned that I might one
day somehow become part of such a situation? Now, looking back over the
years, I would guess that both this husband and wife were "poor souls"
struggling with their humanness as best they could.
An adolescent girl lived down the block. She was labeled as "strange,"
"peculiar," "odd," "crazy." Often one saw her talking to herself,
skipping and rotating as she moved along in her always solitary and
mysterious way. All expressed great sorrow for her always solitary and
mysterious way. All expressed great sorrow for her elderly mother and
father on her admission to the "State Hospital." Years later I wondered,
and still wonder what happened to that girl, herself? What kind of an
existence has she experienced?
During these early years there was also separation from and loss of
close loved family members. When I was three and a half a great aunt who
always appreciated my side of things moved out of our home due to a
family argument. Perhaps most confusing of all during these preschool
years, at four and a half, my father died suddenly. "They" said that he
went to heaven, that God called him. Why did he go? Why would he leave
us? Most important how could he leave me? What had I done wrong? Was it
that I had not loved him enough? Been good enough to him? Was he angry?
What kind of God is God, anyway? Is he benevolent, malevolent,
indifferent? Is he real: is he believable? What can one expect and how
should one act toward authority and power? The world didn't feel like a
very safe place nor did persons appear to be dependable.
Then there was school. With additional authorities and peers there arose
new wonderment and expectation. The way one was to be in school was
{43} different from at home. And what was happening at home while I was
at school? Could I depend on things being safe? In kindergarten I made
an ash tray of clay for my already dead father.
In my child world there were books, radio, and the movies. Today
children experience these, as well as television and record players. For
me, books, radio, and the movies brought into my world new aspects of
fear, excitement, joy, love, horror, violence, imagination, and
suspense. They depicted at times the ideal and at times the abysmal.
Sometimes, despite everything, good triumphed. At other times regardless
of the effort invested all was lost. Where was the harmony of logical
reason? Is our world absurd? Are we absurd to respond to it with an
expectation of reason?
For each child there are very special, long-remembered events: being
taught to swim by one's father, family picnics, trips into the world
beyond city or country, going to the circus, a world's fair, a zoo or a
fantasy land. There, also are the events of being loved and loving
deeply, linked somehow with times of feeling unloved and unloving.
More than earlier, today there are multiple community groups for
children where activities are guided and supervised. Within these
situations and in the free play of neighborhood children, there is
always the confusing, enlightening, and frequently distorted information
gained through discovering your relationship with both boys and girls.
Exploration by children into their sexual similarities and differences,
a healthy pursuit, in the past more than today often aroused parental
furor. Furor and different reactions from different involved parents
lead to further child confusion and focus.
Within childhood peer relations there are games, play, and schoolwork
that allow the child to come to know personally the meanings and
feelings of competing, collaborating, fighting, winning, losing,
destroying, building, aggression, passivity, constriction, freedom, and
choice.
Then there is adolescence with all its moodiness, questions, fears, and
experimenting related to adult modes of being. The moods are a mystery
and the questions often unanswerable or the answers contradictory.
Norman Kiell in _The Universal Experience of Adolescence_ says that as
adults we forget the intensity, turmoil, and concretes of this period
and that perhaps we have to.[7] Yet, it is not possible that the
instability and discomfort of spirit lived in adolescence does not leave
its ingrained tracing as part of our eternal presents.
When the focus of our responsibility shifts from play to work, during
these early years of becoming, depends on our particular circumstances
and abilities. For most persons there is a tipping of the balance
between these. Hopefully neither extreme is the master. Fortunately, in
many instances, as the child's work as been to play; the adult's work
world, his world of responsibility is lived, experienced by him, to an
extent as play--it gives satisfaction and pleasure.
{44}
Some adults select another and are chosen by this other for a sharing of
their worlds. Some go it alone. Some procreate new beings; some create
in other ways; some give-take and exist; some just lean. These last
appear to be, and yet to not be, "all-at-once."