Personal Narrative: My Life As A Parent

Before starting this essay, I was wondering what to write, but I then realised a reoccurring event, that happens at least every 3 to 5 years. My parents would fight and it would result into them separating, staying in different homes until the fight is resolved. They never divorced, they just stayed apart, always swearing to get a divorce that never seems to happen.

According to my mother there were fights in the household when I was a baby and even before I was born. I started to realize and remember these things as I grew older. I can vaguely remember as a four or five year old, I would see my mother only in the morning before she left for work and I left for school, the moment I returned home I saw my father for the rest of the day until dawn, when my mother would arrive home. But sometimes that wasn’t the case, I would live with my father for a week then would be sent to my grandparents house because my father needed to stay away from my mother and my mother was too busy to take care of me. I saw my father most of the time, and according to Sigmund Freud, I should have been closer to my father. However, as a child I don’t remember being close to either parent, I instead, was close to my books. In some ways I believe that was my escape from reality.

Kalter gave three main developmental achievements, 1) The capacity to modulate aggressive impulses, 2) The ability to achieve emotional separation from primary caretakers, 3) the development of valued sense of gender