Married Cooperators by J. Don Bloom

Author:J. Don Bloom [Bloom, J. Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, General, Sociology
ISBN: 9780429829635
Google: Af-GDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-07-09T03:48:14+00:00

Mr 7.2

Q How do you find disciplining the children?

A Well I'm only here half the time so I leave it to C. [his wife i.e. 7.1] to make the rules. Sometimes the kids will say 'Mum let us do that last week.' so I let them do it. Then C. says 'What did you let them do that for?' and that causes a bit of a row. I let C. make the rules and try to support her. The kids get irritated. Sometimes if they ask if they can do something and I say 'Ask your Mum', the little one especially says 'Can't you make your own mind up?' It makes me feel inadequate sometimes but it is something you have to do. It is the same if C. has made arrangements. Perhaps I don't want to go but she must live her life her way. I'm only here half the time. A couple of years back I wanted to buy a house. We rent this one. But C. likes living here, she likes the village and where we live. I am only here half the time and it doesn't make all that much difference where I live to my job although I may pick up more work living round here.

Q Do the kids try to play you off against C?

A Yes most of the time. Don't get me wrong. They are good kids, well behaved when I am away and well behaved in school.

What we have here are three rather different constructs about behaviour. Firstly there is the mother's. She sees that she has the responsibility for the children's behaviour full time. In consequence she lays down the ground rules for the children to obey. The father, while accepting that the mother lays down the ground rules, tries to accept them and to support her. The difficulty for him in the formation of his constructs is that he is given false information from time to time. This information is supplied by the children for their own ends and enables them to exploit the situation of their father not being au fait with the current state of affairs. It is interesting that the father sees the younger daughter as the most persistent (and skilful) in this manoeuvre. As I showed in Chapter 3 this young lady feels she gets shouted at more by her father than by her mother and when her father is away she is at the bottom of the social scale in the family and has to do what her older sister says. Her construct of this situation is, I would suggest, that it is an opportunity to assert herself socially and emotionally and to obtain 'privileges' she is not really entitled to.

Inevitably if there were no communication between the parties their constructs would develop along different lines, and the longer they were separated the further apart their constructs would become. Communication thus becomes very important. The frequency of communication and the manner of communication vary considerably. The worst communicators were a naval CPO (Chief Petty Officer) and his wife.

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