The dynamic nature of power in the father-son relationship

Open your heart

The anti-hero protagonist of God of War (GoW) is probably an anomaly in video game culture. With the 2018 installment, GoW attempted to weave a story of a father and son navigating their life after the death of the matriarch. Through the game, the protagonist (Kratos) repeatedly hides his past life from his son (Atreus) for fear of rejection and repeating his own mistakes with his son. Through the video game narrative, players are offered an extremely intimate representation of how seemingly complex the father-son relationship is. GoW manages to capture the nuance of how power operates in a parent-child relationship while highlighting that power is not a fixed construct. With Kratos and Atreus, we (as players) can recognize the shifting sands of how parents hold power during their child’s growing years, and how they react when they are losing that power once their child becomes an adolescent/adult. A common theme in therapy when we work with parent-child relationships, or adults wanting to improve their relationship with their parents holds true in the game as well.

When clients mention wanting to be “better parents for their children” or “making sure my kid doesn’t go through what I did”, there is an underlying sense of anxiety in repeating the cycle of trauma. In avoiding repeating their parents' mistakes, they sometimes run the risk of becoming their parents (a self-fulfilling prophecy), or they try to fix their childhood issues with their children (without addressing them previously in life). This fear/anxiety can dictate how children behave or are conditioned out of fear of “failing as parents”.

If we want children to open their hearts to us, we have to start by learning to do the same for them.