Parenthood Void of Friendship.

This is an uncomfortable conversation that I want to discuss. I have discussed it before, but then I was younger, and it was out of rage. Now I’m older; I've learned more about myself and those around me. These learnings have better equipped me to understand those around me more effectively. But the conversation is still an uncomfortable one. I do ask you to forgive me if I seem elusive with my words during this conversation.

I am a typical black child who does not have a relationship with his parents. I do love them, as I do acknowledge their sacrifices over the years for me. I do respect them because they chose to step up when most parents chose not to.

Yes, I know that there’s a discussion about how a parent putting clothes on your day, taking you to school and so forth is their responsibility. It is not something that they should get a special award for doing. It’s like the municipality fixing potholes, and people congratulating them. The question always becomes why? Why clap hands for something you are supposed to do?

So I understand this argument, and I fully understand the logic behind it. However, I tend to look around my town and realise that I am greatly privileged because of their sacrifices. And so, in the spirit of gratitude, I remain grateful for those sacrifices cause they do allow me certain luxuries like being unemployed at age 32 as I try to build a business for myself. This luxury of time, many people my age, unfortunately, do not have. They have to work. They don’t have a choice. The luxury of that choice is due to the sacrifices of my parents; hence, I am grateful to them.

However, this is the part where the conversation starts to be serious. As I mentioned, I do not have a relationship with my parents. Because, like most middle-class parents of our time, they were never around. My father was always at work. He would try to pitch for a soccer game I had, but I can call to memory only one such game. The same with my mother.

There was no informal communication I had with my parents. Growing up, communication was very one-sided. It was them telling me what to do. Thando, take the trash out. Thando, go rake the leaves. Thando, go sweep the garage. These were the conversations I had with my parents.

When the conversations were two-sided, they were solely focused on school. Whether the teachers had anything to report, any parent meeting happening or when they helped me with homework. These are the conversations I had with my parents, nothing beyond that.

Cause anything beyond that, especially that which involved relationships, I would be severely shut down. If I drew a picture of a girl kissing a boy, I would get whipped. I remember buying GQ as a teenager, and my mom went on about “the nonsense I was reading” because on the cover, it wrote something to the effect of how to land the perfect kiss as a man or something like that.

And so, obviously, one grows to be secretive. Like the girl who endures pain and chooses to suck it up and deal with it, the lastborn, when faced with such, chooses to close himself off. The reason for this is that those older than him, siblings and parents, fail dismally in understanding that he might be the last in the family, but he is not the baby of the family.

However, I do not want to dwell so much on that aspect. The aspect I want to focus on is the one that child psychologists always warn new parents about. That if you fail to build a relationship with your children when they are young, you should not expect to build one when they are older.

The law might not be set in stone, as I know people who took upon themselves to create relationships with their parents when they were older, but not everyone will do that. Because here’s what happens.

Using myself as an example, the relationship between my parents and me was one-sided when they gave me a chore to do or it was surface-level two-sided when asking me about how school was going. I am no longer going to school, so that conversation is dead. I am too old to be told what to do. I can not be threatened with being whipped or my pocket money taken away. Those disciplinary techniques carry no power over me now. And so because of that, even the first form of conversation is in ICU as I no longer feel the need to do my chores. More accurately, I do my chores for myself now. Not to gain validation from my parents or to avoid punishment.

And also, another thing that happens when you grow up, you no longer see your parents as your parents; you see them as humans. Was your mom super strict? Super controlling about your movements? Would she only show love and affection when you acted in a way that pleased her? And says things like “when you are upset, I am upset. So please don’t be upset so that I won’t be upset”? As a child, this makes you believe that’s how parents are. Growing up makes you realise that your mom is a narcissist, and if she were born in this generation, she would have gone to therapy to work on her narcissism.

My dad is the type of person who can find money anywhere. He has that ability to make money appear from the air. In no better terms to put it, he is a hustler. But you grow up, and you realise that being a hustler means you use rather sly, manipulative techniques to get money. As much as he is my dad, like any hustler, I keep my finances to myself. I keep any sign of progress in my life to myself because, like any hustler, when in a fix, they’ll think of you to help them out.

Now combine these personality traits with the fact that I never had a relationship with them in the first place; it is impossible to create one now. And Lord knows I’ve tried. I have tried many times, but each time I have tried, I have been disappointed.

If these were friends, people from the outside, I would have cut them off a long time ago. I know people who take the extreme measure of even blocking their parents on all their socials. I know people who would choose to stay with their partners or in destitute places just to avoid being with their parents.

I know a guy whose family was extremely well-off. Lacked for nothing, every need and want catered for. But because of his parents being controlling but calling it “tough love”, he chose to live in a shack, in the not-so-safe areas of kasi. I remember visiting him once and a rat ran by. He laughed it off, saying he catches probably 2 a day. And when I tried to suggest he go back home, where it is safe and there are no rats, with great anger he would tell me to drop that conversation.

We are a generation that does not have great relationships with its elders, especially parents. Indeed, there are some who have great relationships with their parents. There are some from my generation who truly have fantastic relationships with their parents. And with the newer generation, it seems better. I would have students tell me that they went to the park with their mother or they went bowling with their dad. Growing up, personally, unless it was that one massive family and friends trip, or once in a blue moon (literally) game nights, I have never engaged in recreational activities with my parents.

Growing up, we thought it was normal. We believed that present parents were a white people thing. And for kids, Black kids, who had present parents, we made fun of them. There was a guy I grew up with who we would make great fun of because of how present the parents were. Every sports game, every debate, whatever the activities that the kids engaged in, their parents would be present in them. Every single time.

You become an adult and realise how powerful that was, because his parents always showed up for him and his sisters, every single time. And when I write every single time, I mean every single time. And his parents were like our parents. The difference is, his parents made a deliberate effort to be more present in their children’s lives.

It is quite the surreal experience when the acceptance of the fact hits you. That I do not have a relationship with my parents. And that I have tried so many times to build one that, at this point, I no longer have the will to try again. And you know what? It is okay.