SHARE
COPY LINK

BOSNIA

Growing up without a father: A Bosnian story

IN MY VOICE: SI scholarship student Nikola Hajdin examines the long-lasting effects that growing up without a father had on a generation of children raised during and after the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s.

Growing up without a father: A Bosnian story
A 1995 photo of a graveyard established at what was once part of the Olympic Sports Complex in Sarajevo. File photo: Wikipedia

During the war in Bosnia (1992–1995), both children and adolescents experienced: ‘wounding of one’s father’, ‘father loss because of killing or missing and loss of immediate or extended family member(s)’, ‘unwillingly leaving home’, ‘separation from family and friends’, ‘forced expulsion from home’, ‘living in collective refugee settlements’, ‘refugee problems and life in a small room in foreign countries’.

Moreover, children experienced: ‘severe fear’, ‘shelling and firing very close to children and firing their houses, devastation and ruins’, ‘killing of close relatives and other people’, ‘mother’s crying and severe sadness’ as described in a 2011 study entitled “Psychological consequences of war-traumatized children and adolescents in Bosnia and Herzegovina” by Hasanovíc.

There are many more similar instances, each of them certainly deserving sufficient attention. However, what strikes me the most is the fact that after more than 20 years there has not been even one serious discussion about the issues of the children who have lost their fathers during the war.

Apart from futile attempts for legal remedies by national legislation, this group has been constantly neglected by the society in which they live.

A life without a dad

Children who lost their father suffered different trauma than other children who were also affected by war. The majority of them did not fully recover even after almost 20 years had passed. Their problems range from the lack of self-esteem to the high unemployment rate within this group.

In 2002, Hasanovíc conducted a study on children traumatized during the war. The findings revealed the presence of war trauma, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. The study concluded that children who had lost father and lived with the surviving parent showed a higher prevalence of PTSD than other children who lived in the orphanages or with both parents during the war.

After being in exile, when war came to its end, some of the displaced people returned to their homes. Children who returned and had lost their father were sad and depressed considerably more often. Losing a parent increased their trauma to a higher degree. They had sleeping disturbances more often than the children without such loss. Even the children who lost both of their parents coped better with problems of sleeping disturbance and digestion problems.

A mother’s and father’s love

One of the reasons for having a very high degree of PTSD symptoms is the fact that those children lived in ‘vulnerable families’. Those are the families that were grieving the loss of family member on a daily basis for a long period of time.

An interesting part of study relates to depression. Symptoms of depression were similar with children who did not lose their fathers and those who did but lived with their mothers. A mother is capable to some extent to supplant the role of a male character and, as this study proves, can alleviate the sadness of a child caused by the war.
Notwithstanding the importance of the mother’s role in one’s childhood, growing up without a father can be not only traumatic, but it can also affect the social aspect of a child’s life. Overall, both mother’s and father’s love equally affects their children’s behavior and emotional stability.

However, in patriarchal societies — as in the case of Bosnia — ‘the withdrawal of a father's love seems to play a bigger role in kids' problems with personality and psychological adjustment, delinquency, and substance abuse,’ says study coauthor Ronald P. Rohner, Ph.D., director of the Center for the Study of Parental Acceptance and Rejection at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.

Growing up without a father in Bosnia can mark conspicuously one’s life and leave him or her with the lack of social skills and proper mental health.

This begs the question of where children who lost their father stand now in the society, 20 years after the armistice. The answer entails a rather comprehensive analysis including a mainly sociological and psychological approach. Nonetheless, a small contribution could be made in next few paragraphs.

Broken Bosnian dreams

The vast majority of them are unemployed; a lack of social skills remarkably influenced their unemployed status. Moreover, since every post-communist country is plagued by a high degree of corruption, and Bosnia, unfortunately, is not an exception, it is almost impossible to find a job if one doesn’t have relatives who are in a position to provide you with required connections. How can a person in a patriarchal society have such connections and maintain a job, if he or she does not have a father? Who is going to advocate for him or her in a system where everyone is preoccupied with their own problems?

In a way, and I do believe that most of the children whose fathers died would agree on this with me, one could argue that they are discriminated against as a group! No wonder why they still struggle with PTSD and feelings of depression because they cannot fit into the society. Many of them are drug addicts and alcoholics. There is a grant of approximately €100 from the government which they receive every month. But can money compensate their loss and the far-reaching consequences on their personalities?

The Bosnian dream for those children includes only an honest job where the salary could suffice for rent and a hot meal on the table. No more than that. Is it too much to ask? No miracle will happen and yet they stopped believing in such dreams a long time ago. There isn’t anyone willing to lead them out of the misery and bring to justice those who directly benefit from their despair. Depression is their comfort. There is nothing fancy about it. It’s as simple as it looks. It’s not an American story with a happy ending. It’s a Bosnian one…

Nikola Hajdin is a second year student in the International Human Rights Master Programme at Lund University. He is an SI scholarship holder from Serbia.

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.

IMMIGRATION

Balkan emigrants ‘lured’ into coming to Sweden

Many emigrants from the Balkans are being tricked into coming to Sweden for a permanent residence permit that they’ll never get, a problem the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) puts down to "misinformation" from travel organizers.

“People are being tempted by misinformation to invest the little capital they have,” said Caroline Henjered of Sweden’s Migration Board (Migrationsverket) to the TT news agency.

Of the ten most common countries of origin for immigrants to Sweden, Serbia comes in fourth, Bosnia sixth and Albania eighth. But the statistics showed that few of the immigrants hailing from these countries actually obtained asylum in the first instance.

According to the board, the Serbian asylum seekers often belong to minority groups that have had a tough life but who have no right to Swedish asylum according to Swedish laws.

Many Bosnians and Albanians are tricked thanks to false information from travel organizers to come to Sweden, promising them that they will be able to obtain asylum when here.

Swedish embassies in the Balkans are trying to get through to local media the correct information regarding the rules about Swedish permanent residence, to avoid this misapprehension.

Now, the migration board’s new director general Anders Danielsson will make moves to rectify the problem.

“Our director general will meet the ambassadors in the countries to look at how we can better get the right information out there, as there is a lot of misinformation,” Henjered said to TT.

TT/The Local/og

Follow The Local on Twitter

SHOW COMMENTS