Kayoko Murase, Ph.D.

I'd like to talk about how children's mental health is affected by his or her parent images and family images. This is a reflection from my clinical experiences as a Japanese clinical psychologist and also from our research project.

In Japan, it has been discussed a lot that people have changed their views and attitudes toward "family" as time changes. Some pointed out that our family life actually has been changed. There are people who are very proud of their new life style and say, "I'll spend my life as I like. I don't care what others think about me." People have different concepts about family.

Some people think that family life is just one option among many life styles. Some even say that "family" will no longer exist in near future. However, I am often impressed in my clinical activity, how strongly determined we are by our own families, not only in a biological sense, but also in a psychological sense.

In our ordinary daily life, we almost take it for granted to have a family. Rather than appreciating it, we sometimes feel it's bothersome to make effort, even if it's unconscious, to maintain the family relationship. But once you face with a loss of your family member or any kind of trouble in your family, then, you'll realize how indispensable they are for you. Especially for children, they need to feel supported by their parents and families in their actual life, and also by their parent images and family images in their mind.

Here, I'd like to define what I mean by "family." After considering various definitions about family, I would say "family is a fundamental group which is based on a marriage and a blood relation, and functions to facilitate the development of children, to ensure security for each other, and to provide mental stability to the members."

As a matter of fact, the functions expected of a family are quite contradictory as following;

1. to be disciplinary and regulating vs. to be accepting and soothing.

2. to respect for individuality vs. to socialize and to conventionalize.

3. to keep a close relationship to each other vs. to keep an adequate distance and not to disturb to become independent.

You need a good sense of balance to maintain both sides of these contradictory functions of a family. Well, most theories about "family" have been made from the standpoint of adults. And mental problems of children may be a reflection of our present
time and our society. In our research project, we made individual interviews with children in order to examine how they view their own family and how it affects their mental health and development. The result is in full accordance with our clinical insights. The method of our research is following.

Subjects of the research

Group 1; Nursery school children who live with their families, and ages from 3-6 years old. At the research in 1988, we interviewed 65 children and in 1999, 35 children.

Group 2; 464 students ranging from 3rd, 5th, 7th and 9th grade students to senior high school and university students.

Group 3; 43 children living in a children's home (shelter). Their ages were from 3-18.

Group 4; 20 students in an intermediate school. This place provides psychological, educational, and medical support for the children who have difficulties to adjust to the society. 80% of the students need some sort of mental medication.

Group 5; 20 students who were hospitalized for the treatment of kidney disease or leukemia.

Procedures

1) For the children before school age, we prepared the pictures in figure 1., and asked them to make a story for each scene.

2) For the rest of the subjects, we asked questions summarized in table 1. in a natural conversation, so that they could make free answers.

After the research, we had conferences with the teachers or the staffs of each school or facility to examine the individual results.

Results

Table 2. shows the list of people (whom) many of the infantile children chose for each picture in figure 1. and the ratio of choosing those people. It shows following.

1) At the time of 1988, children distinguished father image from mother image, even though it does not necessarily reflect the actual family life. Their typical father image was deciding basic principles of the family and protecting the family. On the other hand, their mother image was to take care of the family not only physically, but also mentally. Many of the children expressed that they hoped their mothers to read them fairy tales when they went to bed.

2) In 1999, we made interviews again in the same procedure in the same nursery school to the recent children. The result implied that they seemed to put more value on their mothers. This may be because of the increase of divorced families. But in the stories children made, the result was basically same with 10 years ago. They are hoping their parents to help each other, to respect each other, and to have an affectionate relationship.

3) The children have an ideal image of parents, that is cooperative and respectful to each other. And the children whose parents are quite like this ideal image, showed better adjustment in life.

Table 3. indicates the persons chosen by the children of group 2 as a deeply associated figure for each scene. These answers had a statistical significance.

Concerning the group 2 children, table 4. shows the correlation between their parents, including both ideal parent image and their actual parents, and the degree of their adjustment or expectation for the future.

Figure 2. shows the people (whom) group 3 children chose for each scene.

Figure 3. is the result of group 4 children.

In figure 4., we compared the results of the values in the future listed in table 1., among group 3, 4, and 5.

Figure 5 shows what kind of values the children of group 2 selected.

From all of these results, we got the following reflections.

1) The children of group 2 distinguished their expectations of their father from the ones of their mother, even though it does not necessarily reflect their actual father and mother. For example, one child said, "I've never been so sick. But in that case, I'd like my mom to be very gentle to me." And you can see this same tendency from elementary school children to university students.

2) The group 2 children answered it would be mother to take care of them when they are in ill condition. Also, their mother image was supportive and nurturing. Concerning their father image, they have an authoritative and protective image. In contrast, the children of group 3 and 4 answered to these questions that it would be their facility staffs to play these roles for them.

3) The children of group 2 expect their parents to be cooperative to each other, or their father to be a good leader and mother to follow and support him. And when their parents actually meet these ideals, then the children showed better adjustment and positive prospect to be adult.

4) The boys seem to become more and more independent as they grow up, although the importance of the family never becomes lessened to them. The girls maintain the bond with their mother as their psychological basis. And as they grow up, their interests are shifted to various values outside their family. These might have something to do with the development of gender identity and what is expected of them from the society.

5) The children of group 3 and 4 showed anxiety to become adult and they had a difficulty to find a person who can be their good model so that they can identify themselves with. The children of group 5 were quite aware of their diseases, and expressed they were not very sure if they could live until they become grown-up. They told me modestly about their hope in future in a subjunctive mood.

6) The children of group 3 had experiences of child abuse or mentally disordered parents who could hardly take care of their children. And the group 4 children also had some kind of serious troubles in their family. To some of my questions like "Who praises you?" "Who do you want to share your happiness with?" and "Who do you want to be with when you are in a bad mood?" these children answered, "Nobody." Especially this was so in the group 3 children. They had suffered so seriously that they might have had a great difficulty trusting people. They seemed to feel rejected and lonely.
Let me introduce you some of what they said to me. "I decided I would tell nobody what I'm really thinking. But now, even I myself, cannot realize what I'm really feeling.", "I'm trying my best not to think anything, not to feel anything.", "I wanna enjoy now. I don't want to think about future.", "Everybody is completely alone after all." Also, most of them told us that they were so afraid of being grown-up that they had no idea what they wanted to do at the present moment. They expressed they wanted to make a good
family, but many of them could not imagine what it was like. And others could only think of materialistic aspect, totally unaware of emotional family bond, saying "You need money to have a family. You need money to build a house.", "Money makes your family happy." From what they told me, I re-realized the importance of well-functioning family life to develop a good relationship with well-functioning internal images (objects).

7) Most children of group 5 told me that they would tell joyful things to their parents, but they would never tell sad or worrying things to them. That was because, in their expressions, "My parents have had enough worries about my illness." "My parents have as much sadness as I do." One 9-year-old girl told me in her most brave manner that it was not sad to be ill, it was just painful, but she found it was different from sadness.

8) By looking at figure 5., the group 2 children who lived with their families paid more attention to other values than "family." Compared to this, the group 3 children who had a hard time in a family put more values on "family." And in group 5 who spent most of their life in a hospital, 90% of the children answered that "family" would be of the greatest value.

9) The children of group 5 didn't have enough chance to get an education. But they seemed quite matured to me. For instance, one child said, "It can't be helped. It's no use crying over. I'm telling myself to give it up." Also, they were so courteous. Even though I told them to keep lying on the bed, they tried to straighten their bodies and sat in a polite manner. And during the interview, they kept looking me in the eyes.

10) Throughout the research, I felt that children desperately wanted someone to listen to them. They strongly wished to express and examine their situations about family. The children before school age called our research "making a story game," and many of them wanted to be our interviewees again and again. Some of the children of group 2 said, "Family is the basis of human being.", "After the interview, I have become to think about things.", "It was interesting.", "This is important." Some children of group 3, 4, and 5 said, "It's very good to listen to children.", "I've become aware of myself."

As we have seen so far, even though time changes, parents' trusting each other and well-functioning family play an important role on the maintenance and the development of children's mental health. Sometimes, we adults are too modernized to listen to children. They are sometimes voiceless and express their cries for help in a form of symptoms. I'd like to emphasize again the importance of listening to the children.

Of course, it is necessary to develop social systems to support family functions to raise children. But we must never forget that it depends on our awareness and attitude whether the system keeps working well. We have to be very much aware of our duty to protect our children and make every effort to keep well-balanced harmony in our family lives.