Cutting Family Ties

The parent-child conflict is not a rare occurrence, especially during the tempestuous teenage years. It is a stage marked by exploration and often rebelling against the rules which can lead to a clash in personalities with their parents.

In an African setting, a disagreement or misunderstanding in beliefs can lead to serious consequences, which can even include disownment.

This is actually a social practice which is fairly common on the continent as families are known to do this verbally or through their actions. And this action is not restricted to the relationship between parents and their children.

Disownment is all about completely terminating your association with a family member for a strong reason, leading to an end to all communication with them.

Almost every family has certain people who always seem to be constantly at war with each other – and no matter how many times an attempt is made to repair the damaged relationship, it just seems to go from bad to worse.

“I think disownment only happens when parents refuse to use the rod,” Onai Shonhiwa said.

However, Ibilola Odunlami felt the opposite. “That can happen especially when parents use the rod because it’s like ‘after all these beatings, you are still going the other way. No. Get out of my house’.”

Disowning someone could either be moving out of the house and not telling your family members about it or leaving the house (by informing the family of your intention).

In a more drastic measure, it could involve completely leaving someone out of your will. Families do this for a variety of reasons: They do not agree with a new family member (for example, if a daughter marries from another tribe which the parents oppose), religious beliefs, cultural differences, or social actions and even embarrassment.

“You can get disowned at any time,” Comfort Ajibola said. “I think it can happen especially when parents have certain expectations of you that you know you can’t meet. I personally think that parents dwell in the bracket of being a parent too much sometimes. Like, chill. You are human too. You and I are not perfect and you and I have different lives. We may be family but our stories are different. Not allowing children to discover their place but forcing your own ideas on them will only bring bad results.”

She further reiterated that parents can use extreme measures to force you to see their point. “No one is the God who wrote your destiny and everything that is in you. Everything you do is not necessarily from the genes that run through your veins, but from the master of your life. So it is absolutely useless. I do believe that a lot of what is wrong with family units in Africa is because ‘what will people say’ is affecting us.”

“Back in the day, it was the thing of Christianity versus whatever religion they had in their village.” Like in the novel ‘Things Fall Apart’, the relationship between Okonkwo and his son Nwoye was unstable. Nwoye was always the subject of criticism by his father, which drove him further and further away. “But did Nwoye die because he was disowned? No,” Ajibola concluded.

Occupational therapist Helena Louw told that the goal for all healthy individuals should be to “employ their gifts and conquer their challenges in order to function at their optimal potential.”

“We take into consideration factors present in their environment which either enable (environmental facilitators) or prohibit/limit (environmental barriers) them in achieving this potential.” She also said that people go through development stages that are “characterised by specific developmental tasks”, and these would often overlap with the people around them. So what a parent would think is different from what their child’s believes.

Resolving a serious case of disowning someone may require therapy and loads of other factors, but it is truly the people involved whose mindsets act as a driving force to whether the relationship should remain or should completely be cut off.

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