Glad, sad or bad fathers

I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day on inter-generational trauma. I had a bit of an idea what it meant but asked him to explain his interpretation of the concept. My friend gave the following unpalatable, but vividly honest, narrative.

“When I was five-years-old I saw my father repeatedly bash my defenceless mum. A generation later my son observed me doing the same thing to his beautiful mother. Regrettably I was called to a police station 20 years on to assist my son with a bail application for assaulting his frail partner - a long-term high school sweetheart. And I was horrified to learn later that this savage beating took place in front of his son, my grandson, who was cowering under a bed.”

Yes - very succinct - I now knew exactly what inter-generational trauma meant.

Continuing with his story, my friend said he refused to assist his son with financial assistance (surety) at the police station on that cold wintry night as he felt the "bloody idiot" needed to be taught a lesson.

He provided a sobering account of the events that unfolded in the early hours of that morning: everyone else in the small rural township was fast asleep, except perhaps the residents in the immediate neighbourhood of his son’s rented housing commission home who heard the unmistakeable plea from his daughter-in-law for the beating to stop, but sadly there was no manly or neighbourly intervention forthcoming. And you guessed it, dozens of body blows later a couple of car loads of police arrive and the son stops the one-sided fight and surrenders without a struggle - strange that!

I was told that several days later the entire unsavoury incident was dismissed by family and friends as if it never took place. My friend used a throw away line of "it happens in every second household in the street on most pay nights: a consequence of a long day of heavy drinking and unsuccessful punting on the pub Tab and gambling on the pokies".

I gathered that on this night someone had to wear the blame for his son’s past and present failures and of course the wasting of irreplaceable money; potentially food, rent and car payments, on gambling.

I often wonder why perpetrators of domestic violence don’t take their frustrations out on someone in the pub and spare their loved ones at home the indignity of being violated: too high risk I guess - the other fellow might hit back and, worse still, hit a lot harder.

The only reminder of that night, black eyes and swollen lips, were conveniently hidden from public glare as the ashamed victim confined herself indoors and took no visitors. It’s a pity a child’s memory isn’t as forgetful as the convenience of condoning adults.

As I heard this depressing, but not unfamiliar story, I could tell my friend was concerned that the next generation in his patrilineal line not venture down that same path. Only time will tell if the offending son will mend his violent ways and become a more loving nurturing father and save what little respect his son might still have of him.

I asked my friend where he thought it had all gone astray in his family.

“Stephen - no one taught my generation how to be a good father.”

I guess the puzzled look on my face gave my friend the signal to further explain himself. He added that all his hometown mates, in his 40 to 45-year age group, have had similar experiences: of only seeing their fathers drunk, gambling, fighting other men or their partners. And in some instances, dying from alcohol related illness before the boys had reached their teenage years.

Although he fondly recalled going fishing and hunting occasionally, they were but only brief moments of respite that punctuated bouts of alcohol-induced domestic violence that made the family even more dysfunctional. He told me he knew there must have been another side to life, but sadly he never got exposed to it during his formative years.

Gregory Phillips, a Waanji man from north-west Queensland, in his book Addictions and Healing in Aboriginal Country, says Aborigines experience three different types of trauma: situational, cumulative and inter-generational.

Situational trauma includes that which is attributable to a discrete event or series of events. For example, a death of a close relative may cause extreme grief, which, if not resolved and healed, can become a post-traumatic stressor. Cumulative trauma included that which builds over time, is often more subtle, and may for example manifest as a repressed rage at subtle racism or sexism experienced over many years. Legacies of unresolved trauma that are experienced between generations, such as Holocaust survivors, or those affected by forced removal and separation are called inter-generational trauma.

As I thought about all these issues of inter-generational trauma, my mind wandered back to 100,000 years to a place in time where the first Australians lived a life often described by the experts as the only "pure democracy" practiced on the planet: an organisation of people without a chief who operated a horizontal form of communal life.

Our ancestors lived in harmony with each other and were happily sustained physically and spiritually by their environment. They numbered in excess of a one million inhabitants, living in 500 discrete tribes, speaking a similar number of distinct languages and many more dialects. Under their respect of moiety, skin grouping and totemic affiliation they adhered to a strict set of lores that gave meaning for their connection to kin and land.

Mother-in-law and sister avoidance made for harmonious fulfilment of family obligations. A son’s relationships to members of his immediate and extended family - father’s brothers being fathers and mother’s sisters being mothers and their respective children being brothers and sisters - also allowed for members of the community to assume their rightful role of nurturer of life’s skills and stages of initiation. Sons were taken under the watchful eye of their mother’s brothers (uncle) to go through life training, an arrangement that took out the familiarity component they would gain through an association of the father figures in their life.

Perhaps if the uncle obligation (mother’s brothers) was still practiced today, my friend wouldn’t be engaging with me about the loss of his parenting skills as a result of the absence of a father figure in his life.

I know it worked for my father who left school at the age of 14 to live and work with his mother’s brother to be taught the ways of the world (living off the land and gaining work skills in the rural sector). It didn’t do him any harm - he is still a strong, proud, black man who is very popular with his peers and highly regarded for his integrity at the ripe old age of 74. Dad never hit my mother, I never hit my wife, and I trust my son won’t hit his future wife. I’m confident that a majority of Aboriginal men fit into this category.

The traditional kinship organisation structure worked for our people for over 100 millennia. So what happened to others?

Piero Giorgi, in his book The origins of violence by cultural evolution explains, in part, his hypothesis on the origins of violence:

• Domestication of plants and animals generated a food surplus and large human settlements.
• Food surplus led to specialisation of tasks.
• Job specialisation led to social stratification.
• Astronomy became the dominant profession.
• Religious concerns provided astronomers with additional power.
• Direct violence became necessary to maintain social stratification.
• Conflicts of interest with neighbouring hunter-gathers led to wars of defence.
• Taxation and enforced trading led to wars of conquest.

If only the white man who sailed into Botany Bay, land of the Eora people, in 1788 had seen past the absence of their typical community landscape - permanent dwellings, agriculture, enclosed properties and grazing - they might have gained a better appreciation of the apparent cultural dissimilarity and adopted a different approach to sharing this country with the original inhabitants.

What the first Australians observed from the safety of thick canopy was a different society where life revolved around a master and slave mentality of its population and punitive retribution was as free wheeling as politicians’ promises on election eve.

Sadly the end result of 218 years of contact has seen the introduction of new concepts such as inter-generational trauma.

Alice Miller in her book, The drama of the gifted child, speaks of the creation of “unwell individuals and or communities” and discussed six critical components:

1. living in a culturally unsafe environment;
2. being profoundly hurt as a child, as people;
3. being hurt, but being prevented from experiencing or expressing the pain of that hurt;
4. having no one in whom we can confide our true feelings, not being being heard, acknowledged in our pain;
5. having a lack of education or knowledge, therefore being unable to intellectualise the abuse; and
6. having no way we can transform our pain, without repeating the cycle of abuse on ourselves and others

Indigenous educator, Professor Judy Atkinson in her book A returning to wholeness addressed Miller’s observation by referring to: creating culturally safe places; finding and telling our stories; making sense of our stories; feeling the feelings; moving through layers of loss and grief ...  ownership … choices; and reclaiming our sacred selves.

I’m now aware of inter-generational trauma, thanks to my friend’s narrative, and acknowledge that much needs to be done to address the ills of our communities. I am confident that with a "whole of community approach" to addressing our concerns we share on domestic violence and its consequences, we will overcome the imposition of all the white man’s bad ways he brought with him when he stepped ashore from the first fleet in 1788.