Caught in the Middle. When the Child is not a Child

Abandoned by his wife, Mariano Groa cannot come to terms with the collapse of his marriage; not so much, it must be said, because of his feelings for her, but rather because of the care and attention she used to provide. There is much that could be said about the theme of women reduced to the role of caregivers, but there is another aspect of this story that has received less attention: the difficult position of Torellino, the child caught in the middle of a failed relationship.

A young man, barely past childhood and still in high school, he finds himself trapped in that no-man’s-land where so many young people are unwillingly thrust when their parents’ marriage falls apart: showing affection for one parent seems to imply distancing oneself from the other.

A couple’s separation does not necessarily mean the dissolution of the network of family relationships, but rather, more often, a change in their nature. When conflict between the adults persists, however, the child becomes — more or less consciously, more or less intentionally — the object around which a dispute unfolds, one that has nothing to do with him. Each parent seeks understanding, solidarity, and recognition from the child, or perhaps simply wants to be heard, to avoid feeling abandoned all over again. These expectations, however, end up weighing on the young person’s shoulders, when what he should be entitled to is the freedom to maintain a relationship with both parents without having to take sides.

That is precisely what happens to Torellino.

Abandoned by his wife, Mariano Groa is genuinely suffering. It is not out of selfishness that he unloads the weight of his loneliness onto his son. He wants to feel understood; time and again, he begs the boy to intercede with his mother, just as she, in turn, tries to win him over to her side. For a child, parental separation can end up feeling like a betrayal of his own, because neither parent is able to see him simply for who he is. He is always made to represent something else.

The boy does not possess the moral framework of an adult. His mother may have betrayed her husband and abandoned him, but she is still his mother. His father may be tiresome, intrusive, and inappropriate, but he is still his father. The child’s relationship with either parent cannot be entirely disentangled from the relationship between the two adults. The solidarity Mariano seeks from his son also entails an endorsement of his own interpretation of events. To side with his father would mean accepting his version of the story — and, by extension, acknowledging his mother’s guilt.

Conversely, refusing to offer his father that solidarity would imply siding with his mother, which is just as alienating for the boy. Paradoxically, he ends up being neither one’s child nor the other’s, but almost a parent to both. This is precisely the position in which Torellino finds himself, one that contemporary psychology describes as a loyalty conflict: the child is repeatedly, if not always explicitly, called upon to make it clear where his allegiance lies. The situation is made even more difficult by his financial dependence on both parents, a dependence that, during adolescence, leaves him with little room to escape.

Sometimes all it takes is a disappointed look, an apparently innocent question, or a remark about the other parent’s behavior. The young person learns to weigh every word, conceal part of his feelings, and avoid sharing anything that might hurt one parent or the other. The result is a particular form of loneliness: not the loneliness of someone with nobody around, but that of someone who cannot be entirely himself with anyone. The child ends up keeping one part of each parent’s life to himself, unable to share it with the other. He becomes the keeper of secrets, an unwilling mediator, sometimes even the emotional caretaker of whichever parent he perceives as more fragile. He is assigned a responsibility that is not his to bear, one that can rob him of part of his childhood — and of his own life. As an adult, he may eventually distance himself from both parents, effectively living the life of an orphan.

Mariano is not a monster, nor is he a father devoid of love. On the contrary, his suffering is so profound that he can no longer fully see his son’s pain. He looks to Torellino for a reason to go on living, but fails to understand what the boy really needs: not to be drawn into his father’s grief, but to remain free to preserve his own relationship with both parents. It is a contradiction made all the more painful by the fact that it springs from genuine affection. Mariano loves his son, but in his desperation he risks asking him to become something he should never have to be: his wife’s substitute, his confidant, the witness to his innocence, the companion in a battle against a woman the boy still loves.

Perhaps this is what makes Pirandello’s story so relevant to our own times. Today, we have a better understanding of the dynamics of family conflict and of how important it is to keep children out of disputes between adults. Yet even without malice, even without any deliberate intention to manipulate, parents can still end up asking a child to take sides, share their resentment, or validate their version of events.

A child, however, should have the right not to choose. The right to love his father without having to hate his mother, and vice versa. The right not to be used as a weapon of retaliation, a messenger, a judge, or an emotional caretaker. Above all, the right to remain a child. Pirandello writes a story about a man’s loneliness, yet within it emerges the condition of a boy at risk of losing his place in the world precisely as the adults around him struggle to reclaim their own.