An absent parent is a parent who is not physically and emotionally present with a child. His absence disrupts the mental health of the child.
Parenthood is said to be completed when both parents accept their due roles and bend before the rules knowingly.
They know that being parents, it is their prime responsibility to be there for their children whenever the time calls for it.
This is why they are super conscious of their presence because they are well aware that impactful parenting calls for both parents to understand the responsibilities enforced upon them.
KEY POINTS
- An absent parent is the one who is absent from a child’s life completely.
- He sometimes pays for the expenses of the child while other times abandons the child completely.
- Due to an absent parent, a child is unable to live a normal life as he/she has an everlasting trauma resulting from the negligence.
- When the child receives negligence from an absent parent, he loses trust in anyone else and has a hard time believing others and forming new relations.
An Absent Parent
Just like a picture has two sides, in that familiar manner, not all parents are equally considerate of their parental duties. Some of them are forgetful and resentful of the responsibility of parenthood due to their personal clashes.
In these cases, parents often end up divorcing each other and the custody goes to one of the parents by the law.
Though regulations also bound a parent to be there for the child at particular instants and pay all his bills and spend on him. Sometimes, an absent parent doesn’t want to build any kind of relationship with the child and in that case, abandons the child completely.
In both cases, an absent parent, say it either the mother or the father, is not fully aware of the demands of the child.
An absent parent is a parent who doesn’t stay by the child when there is a need and does not even look after his personal and academic life. For an absent parent, the child is no more than a duty that needs to be fulfilled rather than a responsibility that needs love and warmth.
How An Absent Parent Impacts A Child?
It is natural that whenever a relation that is most essential to us and most close to us, somehow gets lost in the stream of time, we are more likely to live with that trauma throughout our lives.
In the same way, an absent parent is the one whose absence wilts the smile on a child’s cheek and gives him/her lifelong insecurity and trauma.
Here are some of the impacts which are developed by the absence of the parent on a child’s life.
- Trauma
- Aggression
- Fear
- Insecurity
- Emotional Dependence
- Fear of Attachment
- Introversion
- Anxiety
- Mood swings
- Insomnia
Trauma
Whenever a parent chooses to leave a child willingly, its direct results fall on the child’s life. A child who grows with the thought that his/her parents willingly decided to leave him/her at the mercy of others, remains dissolved in the past.
He/She is unable to come out of the wounds of the past because of the society in which he/she lives. Consider this common example: A child who grows up in an incomplete family and never finds any trace of one of his/her parents when finds other children living happily with their own families, sadness strikes him/her every time.
This is why his/her growth stops and all the focus remains on the past from which the child is still unable to recover. This inability to recover from the wounds of the past stays with him/her till the end of his/her life and he/she gets down unnecessarily and without a proper reason within every difficult situation.
These children also portray a certain behavior that whenever they come across a difficult situation, they hold the absent parent responsible for the demise.
Aggression
It is natural for a human to show aggression upon the thought of being left out or abandoned by your blood relation. Especially, when the blood relations include your own biological parent, then the pain intensifies.
A child who grows with one parent feels angry over the other and is unable to forgive the absent parent for this. This is because, somewhere in his/her mind, he/she believes that the kind of life he/she is living has much to do with the actions of the absent parent.
Often these children are often bullied in school by other children. Emotionally killing the absence of one parent, the sense of loss of the absent parent heats up their anger more and they are unable to control themselves and they are more likely to get into fights.
Fear
Parents are our support system. Being little children who are afraid of the vastness of the world, they are the ones who pamper us and prepare us for all the battles of the future.
This is why we no longer feel afraid to face the world because we believe that they are never going to leave us in the middle of the battle. However, an absent parent does the very same thing with a child.
This builds up his/her fear to an extent that he/she gets so nervous even in the most minute circumstances. Such children always remain afraid of even the slightest things because of the sense of loss.
Insecurity
It is a part of human nature that whenever we lose something precious that is very near and dear to us, we no longer remain brave anymore. We are more or less insecure afterward.
This happens with children with an absent parent. When one parent leaves their life, they become highly secure about the other one. This is because of their internal fear of loss.
They are unable to lose the other parents as well and they continuously claim that too alongside showing an extra-possessive attitude toward people whom they love.
Emotional Dependence
Such children who have lost half of their emotions on an absent parent become emotionally much dependent afterward. They need assurances and promises to be kept even in the most trivial matter.
They know that whenever they are going to cry out, they would be needing a shoulder to cry upon and this is why they keep on searching for the people who can provide them emotional relaxation. They know that they prefer nothing less than absolute and utmost love.
Fear Of Attachment
Once being deceived by the blood relation, such children are very slow to trust again and form a bond of love afterward. This is because they have this fear that even if they get close to anyone else in the future, he/she will yet again leave him/her.
This is why you will find that such children are always afraid of forming new relationships after they have lost the old ones.
Introversion
Children who have an absent parent are usually not too open about their opinions in front of the bigger crowds. They are lone wolves who love to hide in their own comfort shed.
Whenever they are in those comfort zones, they prefer everything in the way they want. Even if someone tries to distort them from their routine, they become easily angry because they don’t have the habit of meeting up with huge crowds.
Anxiety
Anxiety is another response noticed within them. It can be a result of trauma or might exist from the fear of being left alone. However, panic attacks are common in children who have an absent parent. They don’t know whatever they are doing and it is unable to control them as well. Their anxiety is episodic and returns in waves from time to time.
Mood Swings
The worst part of being abandoned is that their mood never stays the same. Sometimes, they are more than happy, and sometimes they remain sad for even so long that others forget about them.
They quickly get angry or start laughing hysterically even when they are having an episode of crying.
This is because of the weakness of their emotional power. They are unable to control themselves and continuously blame others for not being trustworthy enough. Even their friends and social relations are also affected by this attitude.
Insomnia
Such children are constant victims of insomnia and they develop nightmares with the passage of time. Their sleeping problems lead to many other problems for them in the field as they are totally unable to progress forward in the field because they have suffered a lot in their mind.
Along with insomnia, some of the children also portray suicidal behavior where they self-harm or get into drug addiction for the sake of escaping from the belief that they have an absent parent who doesn’t know about how they are doing and will never come to know this throughout their lives.
Conclusion
An absent parent is someone whose absence eats up the personality of the child completely. Where the negligence from an absent parent is responsible for the rough and aggressive behavior within a child. An absent parent is also the one who needs to be blamed for the trauma of a child which persists throughout his/her life.
