Seven "I" - a lot or a little?
There is one more aspect of family relations that has a huge emotional impact on relatives. Brothers-sisters, they also give a lot to each other and take from a common habitat. Unfortunately, the modern family too often deprives children of the wonderful feelings of brotherly love. Restricting themselves to an only child, some mothers make a theoretical decision for this decision: they say that adults working at work can not raise a few children in accordance with the level of requirements imposed on a person by our difficult century. How true this is, let's look.
The opinion of teachers on this account is unequivocal: a large family performs its function better than preparing children for the difficulties of adulthood. In the children's garden, in school, you can always guess without any special effort: this kid or a teenager from a large family. Such children, as a rule, are not capricious, agile, deft and independent, there is more warmth in them and care for others, less conceit and egocentrism. Their academic performance differs little from that of the only ones.
Do I need to explain how beneficially these children act on any situation in which they appear? And for the parental consciousness and the feeling of having benevolent and industrious children before the eyes is the highest comfort. But the true torment is to see the only child pampered by universal attention and care, who by the conditions themselves are grown by a greenhouse plant. For him, any draft is a hurricane, any everyday mess is an earthquake.
Demographers believe that the most optimal three-four-family family. This number meets the needs of society in the expanded reproduction of the population and gives all households the opportunity to experience the full range of related feelings.
Psychologists who study the optimal composition of a modern family also come to the conviction: in the family with the elderly, grandparents or both, the children should be the same as the adults: three or four. Particularly child-loving parents may well dare to do more.
However, the natural question arises: why in the previous, much harsher and hungrier times in the peasant, working families and even in the aristocratic was the rule - to have many children, and the exception is the only child? Now it's the opposite.
Soviet demographers believe that our ancestors gave birth to children more often than not because of one mighty parental instinct, childishness and not because of one's lack of education and simplicity of morals or because of lack of means of protection from pregnancy, etc. The latter is stillone error. The documents prove that thousands of years ago, in Egypt and Greece, means of preventing and aborting pregnancy were known. They were also known to the Indian tribes. However, this was not reflected in the birth rate. In our country there are regions where traditionally numerous families are preserved, despite the known and there means of restricting procreation.
The reason for the large birth rate in the past, according to AG Kharchev, was based on the consciousness that it is necessary to create a certain "margin of safety".After all of all the born babies, even in well-to-do families, only a part of them lived to the adult state. Child deaths were just as common as birth."God gave, God took" - this is what our grandmothers said. Now the overwhelming majority of newborns survive. Therefore, the fear to remain childless with a small number of children, even with a single child, is weakened. In addition, if you look and compare the present and the century past, it is not known whether another grandmother would have "accumulated" so many children or would have stopped on the third, fourth. Before the children grew like grass on the road, no one thought that the "eggs" certainly more "chicken" knew and knew how. And now, after all, these requirements and considerations arise before every family man, when he decides whether to be or not to be another child? Therefore, experts came to the conclusion that the most desirable for the society would be the transition from the unlimited number of children to a family with three or four children.
Our ancestors gave birth to more and more due to selfish motives: the children were not only consumers-consumers, but also breadwinners, a support in old age. Half a century ago, the child began to "process" himself from nine to ten years, and in the peasantry, and even earlier. Now we all have working families, and all of them, regardless of their educational level, social and financial situation, keep, grow and teach the heirs almost twice as long - at least up to sixteen years. A lot of money is invested by the state in the education of every student and student.
But that's interesting: families with equal living conditions, education and the profession of parents are often neighbors, and the number of children in them is different. I managed to discover this in the Kulunda steppe. Farmers lived in neighboring collective farms. The inhabitants of one village have 8 to 12 children. The inhabitants of another village -2 - 3 children. They ask: what's the matter, why such a difference? They shrug their shoulders. One woman said: "The peasants are sober, thorough, and the wives do not work. Why not give birth to children?.
Consequently, the number of children in the family largely depends on how reliable the support of his wife. A significant role is played by the values of the woman and man, about which we have already pondered. There is also such a reason for the low number of modern families: for some young spouses in solving a dilemma - children or things, comfort, free time, the decision is made in favor of everyday amenities and pleasures. Children are usually enemies of things, their "competitors."The consumer boom of these parents makes you sacrifice living immortality for the triumph of material values.
In the editorial mail there are many letters from husbands complaining that the wife refuses to have two or three children, despite the fact that all conditions for this are created and the husband is ready to share all difficulties in education. The discontent of husbands in this case is quite legal. If a healthy woman refuses to give birth to a child, she essentially acts as a person who forcibly seized what does not belong to him alone. She assigns the right to decide one of her husband's immortality and the well-being of the older generation. Solves the most important for the whole society from a purely egoistic position.
But it happens that in such a decision, not one woman can be guilty, but a man if he professes the views of that young spouse whose statements were given in the chapter "Little Aliens".And who did not change the whole synclite of relatives and acquaintances. .. However, the husband is free to dispose of only until the wife shares his views. In the final analysis, the last word is hers.
- Men easily and simply get children - you can hear the reasonable objections of women - They do not wear, do not give birth, do not feed, do not babysit.
That's right, there's no arguing that the main hardships for raising children in the first year of their lives are women's shoulders. Although they urge men to alleviate the situation of mothers in every possible way, they do not always find their place in the complex process of nurturing toddlers. Schools of young fathers, opening in districts and cities, probably in the future will remove this problem.
There is such an argument in the dispute about the number of children in the family: the career of a woman. The mother of many children, they say, will have to give up ambitious aspirations - to reach the maximum height in the chosen case. With two or more children, she will certainly fall behind her childless or "one-child" peers.
Very many facts refute this opinion. If the children are born immediately, one by one, then the loss of time is almost the same. Even the strength! On the first and only child, the mother "lays out" much more than for two, especially three. First of all, the hardest of all is exhausted by inability, ignorance of the basics of caring for the child, and feeding him. With the second, many procedures are performed almost automatically. Secondly, the first-born attracts more attention to himself, requires a huge expenditure of nervous energy, because he has to deal with, there is no one to play with. So he sticks to my father. And when the children are two or three, they perfectly occupy each other. And material expenses with the second child are reduced: things from the first are worn by the next. And because of the illness of the child, the mother with two is not sitting much longer than with the one. The health of the baby largely depends on the spiritual balance of the parents. Can a mother who has a single child, when she is constantly afraid of losing him, dies because of every temperature jump?
Finally, about the purely professional interests of women. In what way are they dependent on the number of children? There is no need to apply to experts to notice: the promotion of the mother of two or three children is somewhat slowed down, but her career does not collapse at all. Compare women to commercials under fifty, closer to the final, in terms of service, age. They are most often on the same "heights", and having children and no. Why?
Lacking in the young years, my mother later has time to catch up( if, of course, her profession does not have strict age limits, such as a ballerina).But slows down over the years run that, for the sake of official success, denied herself the difficult happiness of motherhood.
French researchers "calculated" the decline of professional, especially the intellectual abilities of women in the most active age for childbearing - in 20-30 years. Means, the woman gives birth or not, the organism distracts her energy from the case. Reconsidering natural aspirations, a woman begins to feel disruptions to health, a decline in working capacity over the years - so nature avenges apostasy. You look, and the doctoral thesis is not finished, the decisive discovery is made by someone else. And once a prosperous woman looks with longing at the strange little ones and sadly reflects on the meaning and purpose of her in this life.
. .. Several parents are needed for parents, and not the only child and to meet their material needs in old age. Many are not fully aware of this because the state is responsible for the calculation with pensioners. But in fact all material and spiritual values of a society are created by yesterday's children and grandsons, present workers. Their strength largely depends on the country's economic strength, its ability to provide a non-able-bodied population. If the proportion of full-time employees and "eaters"( albeit well-deserved) is violated here, naturally, the nature of compensation for past work will be quite different, far below what is desired. The issue of material relations between parents and children is very serious and deserves special attention.
And now we'll reflect on the fact that the siblings and brothers are related to the children themselves. Well, first of all, what is brotherhood?
Let us remember: for all thinkers who dreamed of the future kingdom of good and justice, the highest expression of the unity of people was their brotherhood! In the old and recent years, there was such a romantic rule: friends, associates, like-minded people fastened the oath of fidelity with blood and became twin brothers. Brothers in spirit, brothers in class, brothers in the case, in the struggle. .. It turns out that the brotherhood in its high expression can be based not on one blood relationship, but also on the community of goals, ideas, deeds. It is no accident that humanity took this word for the standard of indissoluble human bonds.
Blood brothers remain brothers, even when each has his own life, his aspirations. Because in their minds a "reflex of complicity" was developed. This reflex lies at the heart of the relationship between blood brothers. Originating in the earliest years of joint games, trials, even prose, this reflex develops throughout the first stage of life, becoming an indestructible habit of substituting a shoulder for the life of a brother without asking for rewards and honors.
We are also led by other examples, both life and literature, when the brothers show their alienation, coldness, or even enmity to the world. By the way, brothers were the prototype of Judas Golovlev and. .. the writer, with a merciless pen, depicted his terrible face and made this name a household name, ME Saltykov-Shchedrin. The primary cause of brother antagonism, in all likelihood, is either deep indifference to the children by the parents, or when the mother and father divide them into "pets" and "hateful" ones.
Brothers and sisters learn from each other's love from their parents. Therefore, it is especially important that the attitude to children is equal, fair, which is, alas, not always met. School teachers know: often in a large family the younger child is more spoiled, selfish than even a single child. Inequality before people closest and dearest often engenders rivalry, jealousy, and even envy, which turns into enmity.
. .. When we turn to the history of the amazing Ulyanov family, we begin to realize that the first principle, the foundation of friendship, the brotherhood of brothers and sisters, was the kind attitude of parents towards all children. Both parents and children turned their thoughts to help those of their relatives who at that moment needed more support than others. That is why we perceive the Ulyanovs as a whole even when several independent families were already formed, everyone lived apart and communicated with each other mainly through letters.
This kind of community we call a sense of blood relationship, a holy brotherhood. By the way, did you not think:
why is not there a similar term defining the inseparable relationship of brothers and sisters and between the latter? Unclear. After all, there are convincing examples of deep and persistent affection, business cooperation and between sisters. There are also rivalry and alienation between them, just like the male half of the human race.
Especially impressive are the relations between the daughters of Karl Marx: loyalty, care, readiness for reckless self-sacrifice and at the same time a comrades-in-arms struggle. Maybe humanity has not yet appreciated these relations and did not fix them in a special word because, nevertheless, most women's affection for their own children, cares for the house More thoughts and heart occupy more fully than men's? We can only speculate on the reasons for this "discrimination" with regard to nursing properties.
However, we must also evaluate the reverse side of the reckless attachment of brothers and sisters. If we speak with admiration for a brotherhood based on lofty noble feelings and goals, then it is not uncommon for us to meet with a brotherhood based on a common evil deed."Brothers-robbers" are not only heroes of romantic poems of the same name, but also "heroes" of completely prosaic investigative protocols. How many misfortunes it was possible to experience relatives only because the elder brother got into a fight, got used to a bad company and took the younger one with him.
An important role in the relations of brothers and sisters is played by age. The relationship is most strongly manifested in weathering and in children with a difference of two to three years. Common funny worries. In this case, even the sex does not divorce the guys for different companies. They jumped, ran, hid, girls and boys all the same. It is a large and useful school in which children learn the skills of comradeship, hostel, selflessness.
Special difficulties arise in the relations of brothers and sisters, when the difference in years between them is considerable. Well, for example, ten to twelve years. I must say that many of the current spouses, in their youth, were afraid to burden themselves with the second child, somewhere around the age of forty they reclaim and acquire a baby. It was good for him to raise a "nanny."
And the very first occurrence of the "competitor" often provokes a real panic. Although, being himself a child, he often begged his parents: "Buy me a little sister( or brother!)."But over the years, this desire to have a constant companion, a native creature, with one another, is cooling off from someone who has experienced the advantages of uniqueness in full, especially after observing the large families where peers have to share their delicacies and parental love. But if the mother and father have enough tact and understanding to "fall in love" with the first child in the smaller, then the older sisters become caring "little mothers", and the brothers - guardians of the uninformed.
Indeed, the responsibilities of the eldest daughter in a large family are similar to the mother's. After all, hardly a newborn will appear in the house, she already has worries above her head. Mother to the baby is as if sewn, and the elder - and run to the consultation, and wash the dishes in the store, and wash the diapers. Then often she is instructed to take the kid to the nursery, take it back when the parents are late at work. Time passes, growing small. You see, he drags himself to his "nanny", pestering, hinders the lessons, calls to play, to walk. Like a ponytail, the eldest sister wanders everywhere. Even when he grows up, he bawls after his hurried date: "And I'm with you."
Then the smaller one goes to school. And the new worries of the eldest.
- Work with it, - parents ask, - we do not know the program( or everyone has already reloaded).
And how many shots and grazes the older one takes on, defending his wards in the yard battles! How many bitter tears shed, when she flies from her parents for what she missed, overlooked and a lump will appear in the younger.
In the future, her current worries promise considerable advantages. First-borns in a large family tend to become more independent and quicker, better tolerate all life challenges. And the future motherhood is not a burden for them: after all, they have acquired considerable experience in farming and have learned to handle the baby.
If you try to graphically depict the dynamics of the relationship of the next of kin, then many, probably, the lines will closely touch in early childhood, gradually diverge at the time of growing up, and then in advanced years again converge, intertwine, to coalesce dissolve, disappear into nothingness.
Life allows us to notice this characteristic feature: the most unquenchable thirst for communication with those who grew up with you, appears just at the end of days, when the memories of childhood, adolescence are brighter and emotionally tense than the impressions of yesterday. Then a person suddenly starts looking for friends of childhood, and with his relatives goes "to the world" even after years of deaf or open dislike.