In our large family, marital relations have always been more important than parent-child relationships. And children in such a family arrangement had to grow up … in different ways. Depending on the time and the society that surrounded them.
He adored her, and she devotedly loved him, but never, however, indulged. P. G. Wodehouse came up with this beautiful relationship formula. That’s how my grandfather loved my grandmother. He lived with her all his life, she was very demanding. Her grandfather indulged her in everything. So my dad loved my mom. Mom was not as creatively capricious in marriage as her grandmother, but she could also point with her finger.
In our large family, marital relations have always been more important than parent-child relationships. And children in such a family arrangement had to grow up … in different ways. Depending on the time and the society that surrounded them.
Mom is a friend. She was born in 1923. In her childhood stories, there are no stories about how she did something with her parents there – only about how she accompanied them to the evacuation. Since my grandparents were “come in large numbers” from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, none of them spoke Russian normally and their habits were completely different. There is a popular story in the family about how my mother finished school. Having passed the last exam, three friends went to one parents – they were congratulated, went to others – they were congratulated, then to their mother’s house. Everyone sits at the table and eats. The girls were imprisoned, and no one did anything – the general conversation continues. Mom was offended. Grandfather asks: “What?” Mom says: today we passed the last exam, we finished school. Everyone laughed, and the grandfather said: “What did you want, to study for ten years and not finish?” My mother always had very close and emotional relationships with friends, but with my grandmother, for example, they were distant and, in my professional opinion, without great offense. Today in my office I hear a lot of bitter stories about how they didn’t want a child (in fact, this child, who has already grown up, is my client), they didn’t want a child of this gender, how they loved a brother or sister more. As parents did not give something, although they promised. How criticized. How not supported. People of our time, it seems to me, suffer from such situations more than people of my mother’s generation. It was known that my grandmother loved my mother’s older brother more than my mother. “I myself adored him” – this is my mother’s attitude to such a situation in the family …
Test: What degree of intimacy is optimal for you in a couple?
Now there are no uniform ideas about how to properly raise children in society. Labor-intensive models are especially popular: breastfeed up to three years, teach everything from the age of two. Do not injure in any way. But were our parents wrong if they raised us differently?
A child is a resource creature with great vitality. It’s not his own tears that impress him at all, but the alarming reaction of mom and dad to them. If we remember this, we can be less offended by our parents and suffer less from their mistakes … if they were.