AUTHORITY AS IMPOSED VALIDATION & THE CONSEQUENCES

WE are such a crippled generation, walking around, carrying the scars of this brokenness and ever so often justifying it and standing by it to feel in control of the present. A look around the office space or simply at church, you are met with many behaviours reflecting that many adults grew up in dysfunctional homes that inflicted years of continued cycles. This is because we get attached to these habits and make them ‘cultural norms’ to be validated. In one way, this is a thinking pattern that has been created by poverty.

Dysfuntional

What do I mean by dysfunctional homes? Have you ever been to a household where the father has a spoon, a chair, a dish or where certain foods are reserved for the adults or the father and so the children are not allowed to eat cheese on Tuesday or get a drumstick or have a cool drink because it is reserved for the ‘father’? This is a norm in many households, on the basis that this is to show respect to the father and that he is the most important person in the house. Sounds normal right? Until you put a magnifying glass and look through all the adults that grew up in such households now. Before we look at the aftermath of creating such homes, it is important to highlight how concerning it is to affirm authority through menial reservations in the home. Should a man enforce authority by being the only one allowed to get a drumstick? My analysis has brought me to a strange conclusion, that families in the upper class do not exercise these menial rules to manage the home and in fact, this is mostly done in lower and middle class households. I ascertain that this is due to inferiority complex from the ‘man of the house’, which is transferred to the rest of the family in order to validate himself.

Imposed

Authority exercised in insignificant areas is a form of imposed validation because the ‘man of the house’ in such areas has judged himself next to other men outside the house and does not match, when comparing himself to the patriarchal expectations of manhood. Falling short of these expectations, he spends all day calling another man ‘boss’ or ‘mphatsi’, with feelings that he is the lesser party at work, in church etc. To validate a sense of power and control, which they cannot get when sitting among other men, they enforce it at home. They enforce it by creating rules that make them ‘special’ from the rest of the family and anyone that does not adhere is disrespectful. This is true because in a sensical world, a man’s respect should not be measured by having a special spoon in the house to ‘show who he is’… can it not be seen?

This is problematic because years later, this has manifested into adults with low self-confidence and an inferiority complex. The home is the first place of socialisation and so the culture you create in the home influences the self-perception that your children are likely to have when they grow up, and while sometimes the intentions are not bad, many a time we fail to have adults understand consent and respect, because growing up in such households teaches them that respect and status are exclusive and do not have to be reciprocal. As a result, many adults are scared to speak up when needed because they associate that with being disrespectful to the ‘authoritarian’ and do not feel deserving of mutual respect. The lady who overly-performs when they see richer women, and will kneel for the boss at work, has grown in a household where they need to be small before the adult to affirm that the adult is in power and as a result cannot fathom themselves as an equal or a colleague, even in the workspace.

Respect

By virtue of teaching children to respect elders ‘no matter what’ as we sometimes excuse abusing authority to validate self, we create adults that cannot thrive in many spaces, even in their careers, because of an inferiority complex. It is also because of this that we have also inadvertently taught them that they do not deserve to be heard instead of teaching children that adults can be wrong and teaching them healthy and meaningful ways to communicate and hold adults accountable when it is necessary, so they feel heard and important. This will raise children with proper etiquette and enough confidence to stand in boardrooms and use their voices to hold conversations with people of better position and status and see themselves valuable and important. It raises children that are not always accepting of the small end of the stick because the finer and better things are reserved for those that are more important.

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