I was sitting her thinking about why it might be that I have not seen my cousins for decades, in fact if I did see them I probably would not even recognise them. A conclusion I have come to is in two parts. Firstly, down to the social and cultural upbringing of my mother and her family. Which similarly applied to my father. When I and my two sisters were very young we barely if ever saw our uncles and aunts visit us, the main meeting point would be my mother's mother, or should I say my grandmother. It would seem like most weekends, probably Sunday's we would go to their house, although I doubt now it was most weekends. At my grandmother's then we would see our cousins and uncles and aunts but no other times. It was our grandmother who in many ways bound us all together. The need for my own mother to see her and complain about the things she needed to complain about. More lately I thought my uncles and aunts grew up with my mother and they probably didn't get on with her so they probably didn't bother about seeing her. But this is not entirely true because my mother used to get on with her sisters. Her brothers were less so involved. Perhaps it was to do with the pecking order of birth more than anything else. As well they moved off and lived in other parts of London which were a couple of bus rides away, to say the least.
The second reason which I think is probably a large contributing factor is mental illness. My mother has in my opinion been mentally ill all her life. She has been unable to adapt and had difficulty raising three children. Her method of parenting was to shout at us, and to smack us when we were naughty. There was no reasoning with her. When we were young there were times when she would get into arguments with people on buses over seats. She used to fight with my father, the fights were loud and aggressive and she'd resort to hitting him. I know she used whatever was available to her and at one time she used a high heeled shoe and managed to hit him in the head. He bled from it and never went to hospital. We were poor and lived in poverty but perhaps this was because my father was buying the house we lived in. He had to pay for the mortgage. In those days 1960s, 1970s etc it was the thing to do. You bought your house. We had never lived in a socially rented property and I think for a short time may have lived with my father's mother. But I was so small at the time I am not sure if my memory is right. It's difficult trying to remember things that happened as a child. The interaction of poverty and mental illness is of no doubt in my mind. At one point my mother tried to throw a brick at the next door neighbour. After this she was sent for a period to a residential mental health place. As kids we were farmed out to Uncles and aunts, except my smallest sister she was so very young then she was fostered for this period. It felt like the first time I saw her was when she must of been barely walking and running about. I just don't remember her at all as a baby and I should. So perhaps my mother did her brick throwing not long after giving birth to our youngest sister.
When I was the first child, life seemed good because I got a lot of love, but as soon as the other babies came along then it was like I didn't matter so much, or that was the way it felt. I can understand the term sibling rivalry very much. My closest sister born about three years or possibly four after me I have never liked really. She has just been there. She has always had this depressivesness about her personality and now in her late forties it has not gone away. She lives with an alcoholic husband who in his turn has made their family life hell. He can never seem to wait to get another drink, they live of welfare benefits and they are in poverty. As she like my mother has decided consciously never to work.
It could be my mother never had lessons in parenting, or just was one of those depressive type of people who just doesn't have the mental capacity to make the best of her situation. She is an awful cook, she never engaged in helping us to read or write or to show an interest in our studies. When I was a teenager I recall her once saying to me, she didn't know why it was I was trying to get exams at school, she wanted money, money on the table and I had to get a job to bring it in. She said she would kick me out of the house if I did not give her enough keep money. The thing was, this was not an idol threat, it was a real one, one which she meant very much. I'd witnessed too much of her behaviour while growing up to know this was not just something she said, to know it was real. Such as the time when my father got back from work and she locked the door and would not let him back in the house. She said she needed more money to live off and he was not coming back into the house until she had it. I remember his pleading through the door to let him in. The impact of episodes like this doesn't every go away, it's always there, it's part of my memory of growing up.
I understand, your chances in life as a growing person are severely limited when your parents don't have good parenting skills. When they don't understand the value of education or the value of mental resilience and overcoming obstacles. Poverty becomes the life, it suckers them down and they in turn through their constant strife suck their children down into the same poverty. As much as this poverty is financial it is equally mental. These were parents who did not understand it was possible to lift yourself out of this cycle, to fight against it, to be proactive and not let all your troubles drown you.
It was when I then left school I understood even more how my poor exam results meant I would be put on the scrap heap of career choices. Then I saw how employers discriminated by exam results who they would take on. It is a shame they could not look beyond them and understand someone who only had a D grade just didn't have the opportunities in life their A grade peers had. Maybe if they knew a low grade kid probably had a different upbringing and had to go through a lot to get where they were just to achieve that grade. Maybe they wouldn't of been so discerning. This is something I detest employers for, their practice of not looking beyond what they think is the benchmark. There are other benchmarks in life which have some importance and could make a C grade employee the best they might have. This is one fact, rich people have opportunities poor people never get another is poverty and mental illness go hand in hand to the extend the disadvantage becomes one perpetual disadvantage which is very difficult to break.
This is why it is in the interests of the rich to stay rich, to ensure their belief of entitlement keeps them where they are and the poor never climb the ladder of social mobilisation. For rich people the world is best with injustice, and best to be kept that way.
