R.remember Kim Phúc, the Vietnamese girl protagonist of the photograph that symbolizes the war in Vietnam? We see her running naked, distraught, in tears after napalm burns her village. With her there are other children on the run, terrified. The only adults are in the background, soldiers cautiously advancing, weapons in hand. Let’s compare this photo with one of the many taken during the invasion of Ukraine which, as I am writing this, is still in progress. It is not the only war going on in the world but it touches Europe and therefore has a much greater media prominence than all the others.
Fulvio Scaparro
We note that the Ukrainian mother escapes from her invaded country carrying her little girl in her arms and on her shoulders a backpack with the few things she has managed to put inside. Both photos, taken in different war scenarios, have in common the horror of each war event but we can see a difference: Kim Phúc and the other Vietnamese children who run scared are alone, their parents may not have died in the bombing or in any case missing, the child is with her mother.
Children at war and shield mothers
I take a cue from these photos to reflect on why i children experience the tragedy of wars in a different way if they are close to loved ones and animals and objects that were part of their daily life in peacetime. It is an experience lived since the world began every time that those who preceded us in time found themselves in conditions of grave danger. “First women and children” is a knightly command rather than a seafaring one closely linked to the survival needs of the species.
The transitional object
Headline in a newspaper dated March 31, 2022: “One in ten Ukrainians flee abroad. He half of them with puppet: they are children “. The function of the puppet, the doll, the stuffed animal is clear to many readers who are fond of Schulz and the adventures of Linus with its cover. Perhaps fewer will be those who link the cover to thetransitional object described by Winnicott, pediatrician and psychoanalyst that I have mentioned several times. He loved the paradox, one of which, “the child does not exist”, could make the heart of anyone who does not want to read the explanation given by Winnicott himself: there is no “child” in the abstract but always in relation to other human beings and with an environment.
Recover Winnicott
Winnicott dealt with these issues for a good part of his professional life, even when he was called to CEO organize the lives of displaced children from large cities of the United Kingdom exposed to Nazi bombing during the Second World War. He was not the only one. He and other colleagues in the United Kingdom inevitably found themselves in possession of a privileged observatory for the study of family ties. Among them there were different opinions: protecting the safety of children by removing them from their parents and sheltering them outside the big cities targeted by the bombings or leaving them in the city under the protection of their family. The first solution prevailed and a good number of children were displaced in the Child Guidance Clinics in the London countryside where eminent scholars worked, including Winnicott. The reader will be able to find the details in his works of Winnicott among which I suggest The deprived child. The origins of the antisocial tendency (Milan, Cortina, 1986).
A personal experience
On the subject I have a personal experience to report of which I have very vivid memories. From the age of five I was a child first on the run and then displaced. I’m talking about the years from 1942 to 1945 when I didn’t have a Winnicott to take care of me but only my mother, an aunt, a brother, older than five, and a cousin of three. There were no longer any adult men in this family group because, in order not to involve us, they lived far away, committed to surviving the consequences of the fall of fascism which had eliminated their social position prior to the war.
Mothers shield
I can therefore give first-hand testimony of the decisive weight than the presence of a mother or a woman who takes her place it can have by filtering or cushioning the impact of the little ones with the terrible experiences of war. My brother and I fled Tripoli by plane before the British winners of the battle of El Alamein arrived. We arrived in Rome where we settled in some way until the allied bombing of the capital began. The sirens, piled down in the cellarsthe adults with their ears pricked to understand where the bombs would have fallen, me huddled next to my mother and brother fiddling with the dynamo torch that I found it difficult to operate with one hand. We were soon forced to evacuate with my aunt and cousin to the Marche where once the family of the two sisters, born in the Marche region, had landed properties and still some support from distant relatives and elderly farmers who had worked for their family in distant times. It was the period in which thousands of Italian families displaced from cities threatened by war events seeking refuge in their “small homelands”, the villages of origin in the plains or in the mountains scattered here and there in the Peninsula.
Getty Images
Fear and horror filtered by mothers
I can only imagine the mood of the women of my small family group, alone, with the responsibility of three children, looking for a home to live in those dark years. After some time I realized that one of the great merits of these two women was their ability not to convey their despair and fear to us children.
The war raged in the Marches even if in different ways from those we had experienced in Libya and Rome. After a few months of relative tranquility that I remember with nostalgia because they were days spent always outdoors playing with friends or living life in the fields under the guidance of some peasant, the war presented itself in its hardest guise.
Curfew, searches and roundups: the words of the war
The retreating Germans arrived, there were roundups in pursuit of partisans, two of whom were found, shot on the spot and their bodies hung in the public square. During the curfew the patrols went around the town firing at any lighted window and thus killing even a man I was fond of – I called him uncle – because he took me to the countryside on his Guzzi, an unforgettable experience.
L’antispocchia, Milan, Bompiani, 2015.
The war told by mothers
All time between the tragedy and us, the protective wall of mothers rose who tried not to show us this could have frightened us or, when it was impossible to hide the worst consequences of the war from us, they managed to distance us from the scene or minimized the situation by telling us versions of what happened that inevitably ended, if not with a happy ending, with words of hope.
Brave mothers and women
We also underwent one house search which severely tested the self-control of aunt and mother. A fully armed German soldier knocked violently on the door. He wanted to know if we had weapons in the house and where the men were. Here my mother and my aunt gave their best. They tried to appear calm and even hospitable, they offered a coffee and some bread, I don’t know how to explain to the soldier that the men had remained in Rome and that they not only had no weapons but that they would not even know what to do with them.
Danger escaped
They opened the rooms to the soldier who looked around and seemed satisfied with what he saw. He left greeted warmly by mother and aunt who, as soon as the door closed, hugged each other overwhelmed by emotion for the narrow escape. The soldier hadn’t asked to see the attic. There he would have found three shotguns and many cartridges, left there by the nice “uncle” who had introduced me to the motorcycle. If the German had found them, there would have been no escape for my brave women.
The power of the maternal shield
Then the Americans arrived and shortly after the news of the liberation of Rome, my aunt’s husband came to pick us up. He had obtained a small three-wheeled truck where he managed to cram all of us. I don’t know how. The journey was long and tiring through rough and still not very safe roads. On an uphill we all had to get off and find a farmer nearby who for little money hitched the vehicle to a pair of oxen and took us to the top. Along the way we saw on at least two occasions two corpses on the side of the road that mothers hastened to call “people asleep” so as not to scare us. Even this journey, although exhausting, we children experienced it as an adventure.
The reality of the search, the dramas experienced by the country and the very long return trip, we got to know years later. We children were left with the memory of a period that was on the whole rich in experiences, even if troubled by some rare emotional breakdown of mothers who did not always manage to feign confidence and even optimism.
Only much later would I understand and appreciate the power of the maternal shield.
What is Associazione GeA, Parenti Ancora
Fulvio Scaparropsychologist and psychotherapist, is the founder ofGeA Associationfor 30 years committed to supporting couples in crisis through family mediation.
“In 1987, by founding the GeA Genitori Ancora Association, we began to work on a project full of utopia: dealing with conflicts, especially family conflicts, not only as destructive events but also as opportunities for growth and transformation of relationships. Help the parents in separation to regain trust, hope, understanding and mutual recognition. Spread a culture of mediation from which results of great usefulness can derive not only for individuals but for the whole community in terms of pacification of social relations and trust in personal and community resources.
Over the years we have found many fellow travelers endowed with courage, optimism, profound awareness that, in school as in the family, in the company as in institutions, there is an increasing need for mediators who help the parties to negotiate, to to look farther than an eventual immediate victory, to seek alternative solutions to a head-on collision.
Above all, a long and fruitful journey of practice and reflection was made not only on how, when, in which areas to mediate, but also and above all why it is worth mediating “.
How to support the GeA Association, Parents Ancora
To contribute to Fulvio Scaparro’s commitment to pacifying family relationships, it is possible:
- join theGeA Parents Association Ancòra www.associazionegea.it (annual membership fee € 50.00)
- pay a donation of more than € 50.00
- sign in the box “support for voluntary work and other non-profit activities of social utility, associations of social promotion and recognized associations and foundations operating in the sectors referred to in Article 10 paragraph 1 letter a of the Legislative Decree no. 469 of 1997 “present in all models to declare the income of individuals (Unnico, 730, CUD, etc.) and enter the tax code 97059120150).
Read all the articles by Fulvio Scaparro here
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