Winston Churchill and The Parenting Dilemma
Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud once wrote: “The good mother necessarily fails.”
What he meant by this was that in order for a parent to succeed in raising a self-reliant and resilient child, they must voluntarily expose them to the tragedies and hardships of the world. Indeed, it is the parent’s instinct to perfectly protect the child that will ultimately impair them from being able to stand on their own two feet.
Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson put it aptly when he said that mothers should voluntarily push out their children towards the dangerous and indifferent world.
“Away you go kid… away you go” — the mother said while pushing away the child.
“But why? It’s dangerous out there…” — said the child.
“Yeah…It’s dangerous out there…” — the mother replied.
“But it’s more dangerous if you stay here with me.”
It was mathematician Nassim Taleb who first coined the phrase antifragility. Antifragility is a property whereby a system benefits from stressors.
The immune system is an example of an antifragile system, as exposure to bacteria and viruses is required to increase the robustness of the system. The human body is also an antifragile system. Exercise is essentially voluntary stressors that we place upon the body in order to increases its robustness. The human psyche, it turns out, is also an antifragile system.
It is as if the creator of the universe (whatever you wish to call him/her/it) is playing a cruel joke to every parent by implying that — in order to help your child in the future, it is essential that you hurt them today.
Take this cruel paradox and combine it with the fact that time is irreversible — and you can begin to understand why parenting can be such an unforgiving endeavor. If you fail to provide your child with the necessary hardships today, you inevitably rob them of their self-reliance and autonomy for decades to come. There are essentially no second chances, no re-takes.
Are these hardships necessary to develop a child into a self-reliant and resilient adult? Yes, that seems to be the case.
Anecdotes are non-extrapolative, but they make good examples and good stories for the point you are trying to convey. So allow me to use an extreme anecdote for now.
Take the example of Winston Churchill. What shaped him to become the man that is now considered to be one of the greatest leaders in recorded history? That is a question historians and psychologists can argue over. But whatever their squabble may be — the consensus answer will certainly not be his privileged lifestyle.
If we wish to get a clue for what made him the revered leader and fighter that he was, look no further than his tumultuous relationship with the man he revered most: his father.
In 1893, 19-year-old Churchill had just been accepted to the Sandhurst Royal Military College. Churchill was sent to away to boarding school at the age of 8, and he regularly corresponded with his parents via letters while he was away from home.
Churchill struggled at school. Upon sharing his delight on being accepted to Sandhurst Military College (after the third time applying), his father wrote back the following:
“You should be ashamed of your slovenly, happy-go-lucky, harum, scarum style of work. . . .
Never have I received a really good report of your conduct from any headmaster or tutor. . . .
Always behind, incessant complaints of a total want of application to your work. . . .
You have failed to get into the 60th Rifles, the finest regiment in the army. . . .
You have imposed on me an extra charge of some 200 pounds a year. . . .
Do not think that I am going to take the trouble of writing you long letters after every failure you commit and undergo. . . .
I no longer attach the slightest weight to anything you may say. . . .
If you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle, useless, unprofitable life you have had during your school days . . .
You will become a mere social wastrel, one of the hundreds of public-school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby, unhappy and futile existence. . . .
You will have to bear all the blame for such misfortunes. . . .
Your mother sends her love.”
Ouch…
Maybe this had something to do with Churchill’s rebellious, fearless persona later on in his adulthood. Maybe this verbal and emotional bashing was what calloused him against the horrors of Hitler’s Germany that had every intention of invading Britain and the rest of Europe during World War II.
His father died just a few months after writing that letter. One wonders if Churchill’s father comes under that Freudian archetype of the parent that necessarily fails — necessarily bruises the child today — in order to transform them for the better in the future.
In the spirit of this Freudian concept, I think it would be fruitful for me to draft a similar kind of letter today, with the hopes that someday, my child will also have the mental fortitude to be a legendary leader and defeat a tyrannical psychopathic dictator in the future.
Perhaps it would read something like this:
“Dear Son,
Know that I am writing this for your own good. In the hopes that you will grow from this humiliation and hopefully become a better, stronger man someday.
You suck.
You really — really suck.
Like… really.
You just whole-heartedly suck.
I can’t put to words how much you suck.
Your very existence disgusts me.
I have never regretted any day in my life more than that one day where your mother informed me that she was conceived with you.
I should have aborted you then and there while I had the chance.
You will amount to nothing in life.
Nothing.
And the worst part in all of this is this is all your fault.
All of it.
Mommy says Hi and sends you hugs and kisses.”