Possible reasons for creating families in our time: Reason No. 1. For sex. The answer is incorrect, because these days there is as much sex around as you like and it is absolutely impossible for a normal person to solve his intimate problems now. Reason No. 2. To solve the housing problem. Of course, for some part of men and women, this is still relevant: they are tired of their parents’ alcoholism, they want to move from the village to the city, they are evicted from the hostel, etc. However, this concerns no more than 20% of all men and women, and their number is gradually decreasing. Reason No. 3. To solve your financial problems and strengthen yourself financially. This option can also be significant, but again for no more than about 30% of men and women, and these percentages almost entirely include the 20% of those getting married who do not have a roof over their heads. Reason No. 4. To get into a higher social class. This kind of marriage of convenience is not at all uncommon, however, their percentage in ours is, again, no more than 20-30%, and, as a rule, these are the same men and women that we just talked about in options No. 2 and No. 3. Reason No. 5. So that someone would provide household services for this individual: feed and drink, wash and iron, soap and vacuum, etc. It is clear that we are mainly talking about men and for about half of them, this point is still more than significant. But for women, option No. 6 is much more significant. Reason No. 6. To always be close to your loved one and eliminate reasons for jealousy. Without a doubt, this is a very significant argument and, according to my observations, approximately 30%-40% of men and women start a family precisely for this twofold reason. However, after a certain number of years, passions, emotions and feelings subside somewhat, and for once madly loving and jealous people, the variants of reasons from No. 1 to No. 5 become more significant. Reason No. 7. Skipping such common, but in our time still unimportant reasons as “evading the army”, “to spite parents and friends”, “out of a feeling of deep respect”, “because he (s) is of the same religion-nationality as I" etc. Let's name the main reason No. 7. Because men and women want to prolong their family line, they want to have their own children and pass on their genes to new generations of people. It is the desire to have their own children that is the very, very reason why modern men and women still stubbornly create families! But this is despite the fact that there is enough sex around, many people now no longer have material claims against the opposite sex, they are generally satisfied with their social status, and a bunch of household appliances and frozen semi-finished foods have been invented to solve everyday problems. But now you ask yourself: Do you agree with family psychologist Andrei Zberovsky on this point? I am sure that you agree! It is the desire to have children of one’s own that is now the main reason due to which proposals are made and families are created every day in the world. I emphasize: Unlike previous decades and centuries, when almost all of the above reasons were approximately equally important, in our time the main burden in making the decision to start a family falls precisely on the motive of the desire to have children! That is why there are now much more problems and quarrels associated with this particular motive than there were before. Of course, men and women have their own nuances. With all my sincere respect for women, as a psychologist I note that when deciding to start a family, women first think less about future children: at first they are more pleased with the presence of a permanent man nearby, the end of loneliness, the very status of a married woman, increased financial opportunities etc. The thought of children comes to them a little later, but quickly becomes very significant. But for men the situation is somewhat different: When a man makes an offer to start a family, this means that he is already preparing for the appearance of children. That is, educated and well-mannereda modern man, when deciding to start a family, first of all, is aware of two things at once: - that he wants children from this particular girl-woman; - that he wants these children in a relatively short time. And there is also a nuance in this: Wanting to start a family, most girls think about how this man will support his family, but the man thinks that he wants a child from this girl and the question of her abilities as a mother does not bother him much That is, for many girls, in principle, it doesn’t matter who exactly they give birth to or who they marry, as long as this man treats her well and demonstrates his ability to earn good money. But for a man who has decided to start a family, the main thing is that he needs this particular girl, and the main thing is that the birth of children is not somewhere in the distant future, but during a very specific time. I’ll say it even more clearly: When a man makes an offer to start a family, he expects the birth of children in the first year or two of marriage. Otherwise, the man invites his chosen one to “periodically spend the night at his house,” “live together,” or the civil marriage that is now so familiar to many. It is precisely this nuance that dear ladies do not really understand, which, in fact, is precisely the reason for a large number of family coldnesses, conflicts and even divorces. A nuance that sounds like this: A man can overcome any family conflicts and decide to save the family only if he either already has children in it, or they are about to appear. You can be indignant and say that everything is completely the same for women, but I don’t agree with you. Years of my professional observations clearly show: The percentage of those women who, in the event of severe family conflicts, are able to save the family, at least for the sake of preserving living space, husband’s salary, career opportunities and guaranteed sex, is almost three times higher than the percentage of men. By the way, it is precisely for this reason reason, the number of homeless male homeless people is many times greater than homeless female ones. In the case of difficult family troubles, men are much more likely to “slam the door”, end up on the street and then quickly drink themselves to death than women in a similar situation. And if a man in this situation either does not have children yet, or they have already grown up and do not cause any special fears for themselves and the paternal instinct has almost fallen asleep, then the breakdown of the family and the appearance of another wandering alcoholic becomes almost guaranteed. However, enough about the homeless. This is the topic of a separate family-social phenomenon that I will write someday. We return to completely normal men and women, one of whose problems in family life is the lack of knowledge about the specifics of gender relations regarding the issue of having their own children. So this is what I want to say: If respected women do not understand how significant for a married man the issue of the rapid appearance of children, or the birth of a second child after some reasonable time, the likelihood of their divorce will steadily increase from year to year. That’s all. because a woman, until a certain point in time (her own moral maturation), is quite ready to live in a marriage with a man, if only because her issues with an apartment, money, communication, social status and sex have been resolved, but a man cannot live in this format Maybe. He cannot, at least simply because the very fact of his creating a family means that his hidden (or conscious) motive is the appearance of his own children between one and three years of age. Otherwise (that is, when they are either not born during this period, or the woman delays the birth of her second child), the man simply does not understand why he got married then? After all, your own mother could feed, water and wash you, you can get sex without an official stamp in your passport, and men rarely like to talk, exchange impressions and communicate with their own wives, for them it is not a motive to be with someone there be in the same apartment. Now out of everythingThis is the final conclusion: Due to the fact that currently the main motive for men creating official families is the strong desire to have children, any delay in resolving this issue is fraught with divorce. Now you can argue with me, give your arguments, talk about modern proud women who, in the event of a serious quarrel with their husband, can also slam the door and leave him, despite all his apartments, cars, garages, dachas, etc. But I still won’t listen to this, since this behavior of many modern women not only does not prove anything new, but only worsens the family situation as a whole. It worsens simply because if modern women no longer care about the moral, material and intimate dividends from family life, then the absence in young families of the most important bonding factor - the factor of having children together - finally undermines the foundations of the modern family. Which, in fact, is what I have been trying to prove to you throughout this entire chapter. I tried to prove and show that: It is advisable not only to give birth to the first, second, and third child in the family, but to give birth in a timely manner, in strict accordance with the expectations of either both spouses, or the one of them who has a greater desire to have a child faster, or tendency to divorce. But any specific details, such as the phrase “... in strict accordance with the expectations of either both spouses, or the one who has a greater desire to have a child faster, or a tendency to divorce,” I will decipher in practical recommendations. Practical recommendations. First. If the length of love friendship is very long, you should give birth to a child in the first years of marriage. There are things with which it is better not to joke and not take risks. The question of having children is just one of a series of such things. One of the specifics of modern love relationships is that educated men and women are friends before marriage for a very long time, on average three to five years, or even seven (less educated, less than 1-2 years), and they almost always create civil marriages first . As a result of this, such loving couples finally approach marriage with five problematic points: Five problems of married couples that arose after a very long period of loving friendship: Partners who have been friends for many years before starting a family usually complain that they: - have already accumulated a certain psychological fatigue from each other, simply put, have become so accustomed to the partner that he/she no longer evokes vivid emotions, becomes emotionally “discolored”; - more or less accustomed to living together and no longer perceive it as something new and interesting, positively colored; - partially lost interest in marital intimate relationships, which by this time had become almost routine; - accumulated a fairly large number of mutual quarrels and resentments, which objectively reduces the rosy relationship that in past centuries characterized the relationship of newlyweds and sounded especially beautiful in the concept “honeymoon”; - they already have a certain number of claims against each other related to the factor of jealousy, that is, they have a reduced level of mutual trust in matters related to infidelity. Simply put, from the point of view of a practicing family psychologist: Most of the couples who have created a family after 3-5 years of previous love friendship, he enters marriage with a very high risk of finding himself in a state of family crisis. And this, as already said, is not surprising! After all, according to my surveys: The most important expectation from the beginning of family life is that everything in it will be completely different from before, it will be qualitatively different from the previous life! But, as we have already seen, when transitioning to family life after 3-5 years of friendship and a couple of years of civil marriage, the newly-made spouses practically do not feel this “newness”! This is where the disappointment with their marriage so often heard from newlyweds comes from. And that is why it is so necessary for them to diversify their life as much as possible, to bring into their lives such novelty that their whole life would not change.simply qualitative, but, in fact, radical! Therefore, I authoritatively declare: The birth of a child in a family of a loving friendship that has arisen after many years is the most correct way to preserve it! This is the very “expectation of a miracle” from a marriage that has finally happened in the life of a man and a woman - unlike the means with which we usually protect ourselves from an unplanned pregnancy - not rubber! It cannot last forever and, according to my surveys, it withers and disappears within about the first three years of marriage. Hence a simple conclusion and recommendation for smart men and women: If the length of love friendship is very long, you should give birth to a child in the first years of marriage. To do this, you have a period of one to three years. And the most correct thing would be the birth of a child within a year after the solemn wedding. In this case, marriage will not only bring something new into your life - a new life for your lovely child, but will also justify our subconscious expectation of this very new thing. And met expectations are always great! Second. The break in having children should not be more than three to five years. There are things that psychology has not yet understood enough. In this case, family psychologists use not so much theory as very specific life practice. My professional observations of young spouses (whose family experience is up to ten years) show: Married couples whose interval between the births of children is no more than three to five years turn out to be much stronger than couples with one child or those where the second child appeared after five - ten years after the birth of the first child. It is clear that before taking this fact into account, young spouses should first prepare themselves for the birth of a second or third child in principle. However, I am writing this book not just for smart spouses, but, above all, for those who plan to live their whole lives with their “other half.” So, for such men and women, I want to tell some worldly wisdom. Imagine that you have a box of matches, and it is vital for you to go through such a long, very long dark dungeon, whose length is unknown to you. The question is: what strategy for lighting matches would be justified in this case? Let's think together: - If you light them one after another, without a break, you risk illuminating only the beginning of the path, then being left without light and, ultimately, breaking your forehead on something in the dark. - If you light them at very long intervals, then it simply loses its meaning: after all, moving for a long time in the dark, you can still trip over something. - It turns out that the most correct survival strategy is when you light matches at short intervals, but after While the fire is burning, you have time to see your path a dozen or two meters ahead and quite successfully pass part of the dungeon by inertia, generally maintaining your speed of movement and orientation in space. Believe me: this notorious dark dungeon is a kind of analogue of marriage, when A young man and woman still don’t know so much, they risk getting into trouble, and at the same time they don’t know at all how long their common path, a joint marriage, will be. So, lit matches are the very periodic birth of children, which at the same time illuminates the path of the family and... allows it to move by inertia for some time. Let me explain once again: “move by inertia” in this case does not mean preparing for the birth of a child and his first months of life every time like the first time, “from scratch,” remembering half-forgotten skills with horror, but going through all this with the second a child when the experience of a similar path with the first has not yet been lost, that is, in a timely manner. Then everything is not so scary. And a happy long marriage for this family is guaranteed. Ideally, a 27-year-old man and a 22-year-old girl created a family, the girl worked for two or three years, became an expert in her field, acquired the necessary skills and business reputation, then at the age of 24-25 she went to work. maternity leave. Then, at intervals of durationin a year or two she gave birth to two or three children, and at the age of 30, having placed all the children in kindergarten, she went back to work. She has twenty to thirty years of work experience ahead of her, when she can calmly pursue a career, reach professional heights and not be afraid that she will have to go on maternity leave again. Or (which is especially scary) that one day the husband will leave the family simply because one child in the family does not suit him... This is a very correct “children’s conveyor belt”, when a young family first in a row, so to speak “serially” acquires two or three magnificent children, and then calmly realizes himself in his career, business, and in life in general - in fact, the standard of a happy marriage. And as you can see, in most of the statements of those spouses that were given at the beginning of the chapter, two patterns were violated: the birth of the first child should occur in the first year or two of family life, and the second and third children should be born within three to five years after the birth of the first. Otherwise, the woman may no longer dare to do this, and as a result, she will be left alone... Alas, no matter how hard it is for me to say, respected men and women should know the truth on this important issue: A married woman who has not given birth to a second child is almost guaranteed will lose her family and as a result will remain a single mother. And if a young woman is reading me now, she should take this into account and not repeat the mistakes of others. And if she gives birth to not only a second, but also a third child, the guarantees of preserving her family will become much higher. Third. Eliminate thoughts of only one child in your family. It is quite possible that some part of my respected readers, having heard that I was advocating the birth of two or three children at short intervals, immediately said to themselves: “No, no, dear Andrei Viktorovich! We only need one...” Therefore, I should say the following to such families: “Dear husbands and wives, who consciously want to have just one child and believe that this is quite enough to achieve their family happiness. It is clear that the emergence in the 20th century of the completely incorrect practice of giving birth to just one child in families had two reasons: - firstly, the introduction of pensions led to the fact that husbands and wives no longer needed those numerous grown-up children who provided if their old age was the same as it has been throughout human history: for old age they had saved up money for nurses, medicines and boarding houses for the elderly. - secondly, men and women were afraid that the birth of two or three children would make them uncompetitive capable in the labor market compared to those who have only one child, or no children at all, will prevent them from making a career. However, almost a whole century has passed since then and being already in the 21st century, as a professional in the field of family psychology, I can to state: Not a single bank account can replace aging men and women with the warmth and care of their own children and grandchildren. Therefore, I am always very sorry for the men and women over fifty who come to me for conversations, who complain that their child has already grown up, communicates very little with his parents, is in no hurry to have children, has no grandchildren yet, and now the parents are very they are sad... Draw your right conclusions, do not doom yourself to boring adulthood and lonely old age! Further: The birth of two or three children at short intervals provides the opportunity for spouses in the future not only to catch up with their work colleagues, but also to surpass them. And I’m not even talking about the fact that you will surpass them in the number of children and grandchildren! In general, it’s time to abandon the stupid myths spread by those without children or those with only one child, that, they say, having many children is a sign of social failure. Look around, look around, remember television programs, interviews with successful and rich people! See for yourself: Most successful people have two or three children! Moreover, the pattern is not always such that a person first “became someone”, earneda lot of money, but then he actively began to increase the size of his family. Not at all! According to my observations and calculations, this occurs in only one out of four successful families. In two quarters (that is, half) of successful families, the birth of two, three or four children occurs simultaneously with career and financial growth. And this is a peculiar and very correct effect of the family “push-pull”, when the birth of children stimulates mom and dad to develop, and their very energetic development creates the material basis for the birth of subsequent children. In another quarter of successful families, the situation is generally such that The numerical increase in family members encourages their mother and father to take such steps towards success as obtaining additional education, changing jobs, agreeing to move to that other city, where the chances of resolving their housing, career and financial issues are much higher. Thus, we see: In three out of four successful families, one of the most important incentives to achieve success was the birth of a second, third, or even fourth or fifth child. Hence, I strongly advise: You should not believe in outdated myths that having many children is a sign of social failure Having many children is a great incentive for success! As for those families where first the spouses earned money and solved their financial problems, and only then gave birth to only one child and considered that they should stop there under the motto: “One will get more!” Let our child not have to go through the hardships that we ourselves once went through!”, then here I will point out to you some points: Problems associated with having only one child in a family: Problem No. 1. One child does not guarantee the strength of a family. A father or mother can leave the family at any moment, firmly believing that the other parent is able to feed and raise the child alone. But the presence of two or three children in a family increases the level of responsibility of parents for their future and very seriously strengthens it. Problem #2. Having only one child in a family significantly reduces parents’ desire for personal and family success. Mom and dad begin to think: “We have an apartment and two cars, the child will get the apartment of one of his grandparents... There is enough for everyone, both for us and for the child... So there is no need to strain yourself anymore, you can now live for yourself!” And this most notorious “living for ourselves”, from the point of view of family psychology, is one of the most terrible problems in family life. Because, in the format of “living for yourself and not denying yourself anything - neither in restaurants, nor in nightclubs, nor in alcohol, nor while traveling around the world,” married men and married women almost inevitably meet those people with with whom they create “left connections” and, as a result, leave the family with a scandal, dividing their acquired family property without any regard for the interests of the child. As a result: Children who once seemed so wealthy to their parents, due to parental stupidity, one day suddenly become abandoned, lonely, with a undermined child's psyche, and even without property. All because in those families where there is only one child, one very important biological law is violated: Normally developed men and women are supposed to experience an acute desire to have another child once every few years. It is from here that husbands and wives who have only one child in the family, after some time (especially when the child is over ten years old), periodically develop a desire to communicate with someone else, often accompanied by a conscious or unconscious desire to leave the family and give birth one more child to the person who directly declares this, who asks for it. Having only one child in a family does not allow the procreation instinct of a man and a woman to feel fully realized, so it pushes them towards new love affairs. By the way, it is from here, from this biological basis of ours, from our instinct for procreation, that very heavy femaleresentment when their husbands force them to have abortions. Women have an abortion, and then their unrealized desire to give birth to a new life first alienates them from their husbands, then pushes them into a new relationship, ultimately completely destroying the family and dooming the existing child to misfortune... It must also be said that one child in a family often grows up selfish, carries certain psychological problems, growing up, sometimes conflicts so strongly with one of the parents that this is often what destroys the family and leads to divorce. But in families with two or three children, this problem no longer exists. Firstly, because, communicating with each other, and being forced to acquire the skills to negotiate with each other, children no longer grow up to be selfish, they know how to adapt in a social environment and no longer hang such an unbearable burden on their parents’ necks. Secondly, in families with at least two children, they almost always sympathize with the parents differentially: the son - the father, the daughter - the mother, or vice versa. In this case, that unpleasant alienation in the family does not arise when there is only one child and he, for example, communicates more only with his mother, taking only her side in case of family disagreements. As a result, when the intrafamily alliance between mother and growing daughter (son) is finally formed, the father begins to feel uncomfortable in his own family, almost an “outsider” and, in this scenario, his departure from the family (especially if he is called to yourself a young woman) becomes almost guaranteed. The presence of two or three children in a family does not allow a dangerous situation to arise when one of the parents (usually the father) becomes a “third wheel” and the family breaks up. In this case, each of the parents is provided with the necessary share of children's attention and his interest in preserving the family is much higher than where there is only one child and his attention is concentrated only on one of the parents. As a family psychologist, I ask all spouses to remember: There is no need to naively think that only children need attention! It is also very important for parents to receive children’s attention! In the end, these are also former children... Since both parents can receive maximum children’s attention only in the family where there are two or three children, create just such a family for yourself, and you will happily avoid a whole host of different family problems. At the end of listing the problems associated with having only one child in a family, we will also have to say something that is usually not customary to talk about. Due to the difficulties and dangers of modern life, a third of children who were only one child in their families do not live to see the birth of their own children. Which, as you already understand, leads to the cessation of an entire family: if one child in the family dies or is killed without the birth of their own children, his parents are doomed to a tragic old age without grandchildren... Of course, it’s not easy to talk about this, but in fact, it is necessary. Look around: when we hear that some child tragically fell under a car, drowned, crashed, fell from a balcony, roof or some peak, died from an acute or chronic disease, died in the army or in the service, became a victim car accidents, industrial emergencies or street criminals, we almost always don’t even think about two things: - that this child could have been only one child for his parents! - that if there is only one child in your own family , at any moment you yourself may find yourself in this position! As a family psychologist, knowing too much about parents’ divorces after the death of their only child (when each blames the other for his death), as well as what psychological and mental disorders they experience after the incident, I again and again strongly advise you: The most accurate sign that a husband and wife are intelligent people interested in a successful marriage is the presence in their family of two or three children born at short intervals. So, be just such smart spouses! AND!