While it’s true that overt episodes of hostility between the parents may damage the child, so may repressed anger and unhappiness. As a rule, whatever we don’t deal with in our lives, we pass on to our children. Our unfinished emotional business becomes theirs. As a therapist said to me, “Children swim in their parents’ unconscious like fish swim in the sea.” This mother and father were fully committed to their family and still are, but under such circumstances all the parental love in the world could not provide the children with a well-attuned, nonstressed, nurturing environment.
