Essay on Navigating Parent-Child Relationships: Understanding the Complexities of Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters

Introduction

“Family Matters” by Rohinton Mistry covers a comprehensive description of social, cultural, and economic aspects in Parsi family in the past years in Bombay India with the underpinning traits from different characters. Therefore, this research article presents three different reports, such as individual aspect, social and cultural perspectives based on the enduring question.

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Enduring Question

How do we Navigate the Intricacy of the Parent-Child Relationship and Understand Complications that Arise from Conflicts between Family Members?

Discussion of the Enduring Question

The parent-child relationship is an important aspect of a family that shapes the overall character traits and moral values among the family members. It is an aspect that may lead to a positive or negative individual attribute of children in a family and diverging perception of the overall application of moral values in society. Parental conflicts cause an effect on their children. Parents fight for many reasons, for example: financial problems, parenting style, who gets to decide the channel on the television. All of which should be handled with calm reasoning and good communication skills. The negative effects on their children can be both short and long term depending on the child and the intensity/frequency of the fights. Such family conflicts can be solved by the parents being calm and remembering that they are a team. In this approach, it will result in instilling positive effects of teaching their children good behaviour and communication skills. Through proper family issues resolutions approaches by the parents, there is a creation of a fruitful and integrated environment amongst all the family members and improved parent-children relationships.

“Family Matters” book by Rohinton Mistry expresses comprehensive family-related issues and aspects that revolve on all the spheres of life. The families focused on in the book are Nariman’s marriage, Jal, and widowed mother of Coomy which depicts a rich source of family conflicts and parent-child relationships that leads to different implications on the children and other vulnerable parties like the mentees. The book vividly demonstrates the plight of Nariman and how his life has turned bitter after his parents demanded that he marry a Parsis lady. Bowing down to such demand, he ended up in a marital tie with Lucy, and now he goes through a lot and reflects too much on his marriage life in hospital as his broken leg is being plastered. “And he, when he looked back on it all, across the wasteland of their lives, despaired at how he could have been so feeble-minded, so spineless, to have allowed it to happen” (Mistry 10). Through such an experience, it is clearly depicted that parental behaviours and their overall ways of living have substantial implications on their children. Nariman’s currents issues in his marriage were inflicted by his parents by forcing him to marry the lady he was never prepared to marry at the age of forty-two.

“Family Matters” further displays other children upbringing aspects through Coomy and Jal as they negatively treat their sick stepfather. They ensured the old man's return was adversely delayed through the act of destruction committed by the two characters. They invaded their stepfather’s house and demolished the ceiling bring the debris of the building down hence exposing the sick old chap to adverse environmental conditions they saw him gradually succumbing to his illness. The author depicts the two characters as “in strenuous life” through the early traits learned from their parents at their tender age and grown with such traits that culminated in negative moral expressions through the underpinning that they can harm their stepfather. Therefore, based on the author's assertions on the relationships between the parents and children that they are directly dictated by the parental relationship, it is therefore obvious that children learn and practice various behavioural through observations and more primarily by emulating their parents.

Social Issues in the Book

Family Conflicts

The author depicts the social problems within the smallest social unit in the society through Nariman's family, whereby the latter character has disputes within himself, with his wife Lucy and with his parents. He blames his parents for forcing him to marry Lucy and for the subsequent challenges that occurred as a result of that decision. Based on the author’s assertions, Nariman is hospitalized for a fracture obtained through an accident which happened due to anxiety and depression caused by an array of social issues revolving around his family.

Another scenario in the book is on the death of Coomy after being murder, his shop was taken over, and employees paid money, including one month ahead which they didn't work for. Such an act attests the existing social conflicts in the society where one person takes advantage of a situation that harms another party. It also indicates that the social responsibility of the family members in Coomy's society is rotten, and people leads individual lives and only focuses on factors that affect them directly without considering their colleagues.

Cultural Issue in the Book

Intermarriage Issue

The book “Family Matters” highlights some of the cultural complications that prevent society members from practising some of the community practices. An example in the book is on Nariman's father who refused his children to intermarry, which is contrary to Hindu cultural practices and norms. He ended up marrying Lucy, who is from the Parsi community and ended up with other multiple problems.

Work Cited

Rohinton Mistry. "Family Matters". Google Books, 2002, https://books.google.co.ke/books/about/Family_Matters.html?id=GicqAQAAIAAJ&redir_esc=y. Accessed 13 June 2020.