Daniela Vidal writes about a common trend in today's society within families and how Maid accurately displays generational cycles.
Maid is a mini-series that displays the effects of a troubled household. The series follows Alex, a single mother who is emotionally abused by her boyfriend, fending for her and her daughter. The series has a scene where Alex hides in a cupboard and watches her father physically abuse her mother. It is revealed that her father, Hank, is an alcoholic and was under the influence of alcohol. Eventually, Alex’s mother The trauma Alex witnessed as a child is similar to the trauma she is now facing with her boyfriend Sean.
A family can either be considered a safe place or a nightmare. A portion of society grows in an unstable household causing distress to the children who live in those conditions. Maid gives a clear example of how a child duplicates what they witness during their upbringing, creating an ongoing cycle. The environment of a child is crucial to their development. The trauma endured as a child can affect and can be copied by later generations.
Substance Abuse
One way that Maid shows intergenerational trauma is through the toxic men in Alex’s life. To start, alcohol plays a big role in the abuse. A scene that stands out is when Sean, Maddy’s father, was with Maddy at the park. Sean gets upset with Maddy and starts yelling at her. That's when Sean realized he is not a good dad because all he could think about was when he was going to have an alcoholic beverage.
Substance abuse can be traced to previous generations. The mini-series analysis,” Nick Robinson on Challenging the Anger of an Abusive Partner,” by John Russell dissects Sean’s lifestyle. Sean had childhood difficulties due to poverty and his parents' absence. The trauma Sean had as a child forced him to pick up an unhealthy coping mechanism, alcohol abuse. Sean’s abuse stems from wanting control since he could not have control over his childhood situation.
Taking advantage of alcohol and a partner are closely related. Many times, people become attached to alcohol due to a lack of control over their life. Sean uses alcohol to escape his everyday life because he feels like he does not have control over his life. Domestic abuse occurs because one partner wants to dominate the other. Alex had to escape with Maddy during the night because Sean wanted to have power over Alex's life. Sean’s abusive patterns stemmed from his childhood trauma.
Monkey See Monkey Do
As mentioned before, Maid reveals that Alex’s mother, Paula, was abused by her husband, Hank. Paula and Alex escaped Hank soon after that night. Paula did not have a viable escape plan so they ended up in the same town again. Throughout Alex’s childhood, she had witnessed many of Paula’s boyfriends/husbands abuse her mother. Alex had endured trauma due to witnessing men abuse her mother.
Galambos, Barker, and Almeida have analyzed the effect parents have on adolescents. The writers suggest that parents play a big role in their child’s ‘deviant behaviors’. The article talks about extreme examples such as children who are addicted to drugs at a young age have to do more with their unstable household than their own decisions. Further, this relates to Maid because Alex puts up with Sean’s violent behaviors for so long. After all, that is what she saw growing up. It is definite that children observe their parents' decisions from a young age and develop habits later on in life due to the habits.
Sean falls into the category of genetic cycles along with many other characters in the mini-series. However, is it their fault or does genetics play a role in their decisions? As we analyzed before, the reason why Sean acts this way is because of his traumatic upbringing. Sean had to find an escape for his family and decided to fall in the wrong footsteps. Abusing Alex became his next escape from his problems. In the article, “The Already Great ‘Maid’ is even better with mother-daughter stars Andie MacDowell and Margaret Qualley,” the writer talks about how Alex learned from her parents' mistakes instead of keeping the cycle going. Alex did not want Maddy to have the same experience of being scared of her father. During the fifth episode of Maid, Alex sees Maddy hiding underneath the kitchen sink just as she did. Little did Alex know that the generational cycle continued.
Daniela Vidal is a freshman at Bloomfield College pursuing a degree in Business Administration.
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