The Effect of Absentee Parenting

[Erik Narramore]

I accept the premise that the family is in decline and this is a bad thing.  However, I challenge one common assumption.

People go on about the decline of the nuclear family, and there's something in it, but a larger point is missed: the ideal should be the extended family, consisting of immediate family plus grandparents, uncles, cousins, etc.  This extended family model was the basis of society prior to industrialisation and urbanisation, and still had hold until perhaps the 1960s.  Political and social conservatives go on about the importance of marriage and the nuclear family unit - rightly so - but it was, ironically, the nuclear family itself, a result of structural economic changes, that represented the first step towards the fall of the family.

Elderly grandparents and great-grandparents are shuffled off into social care.  Uncles and cousins sometimes connect with nephews, nieces and cousins, but it is often selective or instrumental, and based on personal preference about who is liked and who is disliked.  There used to be the old trope of the "embarrassing uncle", the black sheep of the family, who got drunk at weddings, said politically-incorrect things or was an eccentric. But the point is that this trope was once true and reflected the reality that extended kinship bonds were customarily mandatory, not just an optional extra.  You had to get to know and accept your black sheep uncle, whether you liked it or not, because the extended family was a major institution and part of a larger network of relationships in which people learned to tolerate each other and get-along.

If extended kinship is strong, then the loss or absence of a father or mother need not cause serious problems - though the necessary rider is that, in the case of boys, if the mother-son bond is weak, the opinion seems to be that this can end in disaster in adulthood.  Many (maybe most) convicted serious criminals, especially violent ones - and particularly serial killers - seem to have had deeper parental bonding issues.  Normally the issue is with the mother, and normally it takes the form of a lack of bonding, though in some cases the problem is the opposite way, in that the bond is too strong.

Mothers, I think, have greater significance for boys during infancy, while fathers take on great significance around the age of 7 or 8 as the boy becomes cognisant of his environment and especially as he enters his teens and nascent manhood; but, one difference is that a father can - if necessary - be substituted by another competent male authority figure, whereas the replacement of the mother with a stand-in is more risky.

Turning to Jeremy, he had a great advantage that he was within an active extended family that could support him socially and in business. Sheila too: her cousin once took her dancing. Yet Jeremy, and also, to an extent, Sheila, seem to have had an uneasy relationship with their extended family.  The Boutflours and the Eatons perhaps saw Jeremy in particular as a rival and seem to have left him feeling as an outsider.  However, that should not be seen as a criticism.  I accept that this may not have been intentional on their part, and they may not even have been conscious of it, it being merely the result of their own family cultures and unspoken attitudes, as well as their own natural individual needs, insecurities and desires.  The joint ownership, through shareholdings, of the Osea holiday park seems to have been an attempt to bring the family together through business, but this turned into a crucible for intra-family conflict.

Thus, it would appear that while there was socialisation for Jeremy through the extended family, it was a game of charades, a front, fake, fittingly - and very sadly - reflecting Jeremy's own artificial attachment to his adoptive parents.