Child abuse in the ultraconservative family: a case in autofiction

On election day the father gives his daughters an envelope with the vote.

With the ballot of the party they have to vote for.

With the vote that he considers appropriate.

The mother systematically checks clothing, expressions, food, insults, screams, she laboriously undermines self-esteem.

It is a daily life crossed by judgment and control.

They supervise, through punishment and reproach, every aspect of the life of her offspring, as if it were an extension of themselves that must be molded in her image and likeness, immersed in a hostile world.

Hostile because it is different and because it is in rapid change.

The affection seems to be unnecessary: ​​emotional neglect.

“I'm about fifteen years old when Mom starts insisting that I'm going to kill Dad,” says the first sentence of

Dad Loves Us

(Trojan Horse).

This is the paternity and motherhood that are portrayed in the first novel by Leticia G. Domínguez (Madrid, 36 years old), where she vividly recreates the child's voice that suffers this emotional abuse, a voice that narrates with innocence, but also with that crudeness with which children perceive the world.

A family sclerotized by a suffocating religiosity, a strong classism, which rather than despising others leads them to despise themselves for not being enough, always tormented by what others will

say

.

Domínguez frames the story within autofiction: many of the wickers she uses spring from her own family experience, although other circumstances and characters in the novel are fictional.

Here and there an ancient and painful truth vibrates.

The writer Leticia G. Domínguez, photographed in Madrid on December 15, 2023. Santi Burgos

Although the action takes place between the 80s and 90s, these parents seem to have come from a grayer and more oppressive time in the history of Spain.

“They are parents who, more than values, have anti-values ​​and a completely anachronistic way of seeing life, which I believe is more common than we think,” says Domínguez.

The author cites as an example the recent series

La Mesías

(Movistar Plus+), by Los Javis, which also portrays a family dominated by strict ultra-conservative values.

“In my novel, these parents isolate their children so that they cannot find other vital perspectives, so that they cannot question the family system, nor the path they outline for them,” says Domínguez.

To give references, we could also talk about the film

Canino

, by Yorgos Lanthimos, in which some children grow up locked up in the family house without knowing that there is a bigger world on the other side of the garden walls.

The planes that cross the sky, they make you believe, are toys.

There is a liberation in the novel related to the experience of nocturnal hedonism, of bars, of courtship, of first romantic relationships.

“The protagonist comes from a conservative home where it is thought that the body is the prison of the soul.

"So it finds a vital meaning through pleasure, enjoyment and joy," says the writer, who in her speech cites extensive "involuntary" documentation: Marguerite Duras, Carmen Martín Gaite, Alice Miller, Mary Beard, Massimo Recalcati , Frédéric Gros, Elias Canetti and even

The Yes of the Girls

by Moratín.

Why a novel and not an essay?

“I believed that a child's voice would achieve greater empathy than a cold, analytical adult voice,” she explains.

The family taboo

The protagonist, and the author, found some light in therapy.

“More than finding the truth, I understand therapy as acceptance and silence, as healing,” says Domínguez.

With practice she also became aware of the strong influence of the child we were on the adult we are.

“We know that childhood trauma affects adults, but I think that influence is trivialized.

We think that childhood is a stage that ends and that's it, so I wanted to put that influence on the table.

The family has been a taboo subject,” says the writer.

A taboo that is breaking down, judging by some of the latest literary developments.

For example, the novels

La familia

(Anagrama), by Sara Mesa;

Construction Material

(Random House), by Eider Rodríguez, and

The Astronauts

(Alfaguara), by Laura Ferrero, or the essay

The Horrible Daughters

(KO Books), by Blanca Lacasa, which explores the relationship between women and their mothers.

Even transgressive visions, such as

Abolish the Family

(Dream Traffickers), by Sophie Lewis.

This growing interest in the family may have a connection with the rise of feminism: traditionally the family was considered a feminine sphere and, therefore, without much interest.

Many men are not grateful enough for the favor that feminism has done them

It is not the only connection: “I think that feminism has made us deconstruct couple relationships and demystify romantic love.

And, at the end of the day, the first loving relationship is established with the parents: in the family some clichés of romantic love are reproduced, such as that we have to be equal to love each other,” says the author.

Sometimes, paradoxically, we develop aggressive or violent attitudes towards those who are hypothetically our closest people, behaviors that would be unacceptable in a friendship or relationship.

And Papa loves us

talks about those behaviors

.

A hostile system

The socioeconomic system interacts strongly with the family.

“It is hostile to older people, children, people who cannot produce,” says Domínguez, who advocates an ecofeminist perspective that assumes the cycles of nature and takes into account motherhood and fatherhood in the production system.

And to the men.

“The father has also been robbed of his role in family life,” says the author, “many men are not sufficiently grateful for the favor that feminism has done them, because they were sentenced to another prison.”

A prison for those men who do not fit into the most rigid stereotypes of masculinity, or the expected sexual orientation, or who are robbed of family intimacy or sentimental expression.

Domínguez now cites Canetti from

Mass and Power

: in a hierarchical relationship each link receives the sting, but passes it on to the next, a little lower, as a way of mitigating the pain.

This is how the parents narrated by the author seem to function, although she insists on not taking away their responsibility for having chosen another path.

The family, in its worst version, can be a transmission belt for power relations and the worst facets of society.

“A family, as I understand it, can serve to protect society, but also to recreate its worst aspects: the family that should be love and refuge becomes rejection,” says Domínguez.

The drama of the character is being treated under sexist stereotypes: as a docile woman, without her own ideas, without access to her sexuality.

“I do not believe, even so, that the family should be abolished, it is a fundamental structure,” insists Domínguez, “but I do believe that we must be critical in order to improve it.”

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