Why Is An Incomplete Family "scary" For A Child? - Society

What are the causes of child aggression, asocial behavior of adolescents, the development of addiction to psychoactive substances, self-harm, suicidal attempts? In each list of factors influencing the occurrence of problem behavior in children, we can easily find that one of them is an incomplete family

I propose to separate the grain from the chaff and figure out whether and why an incomplete family is terrible for a child

And who are the judges?

As a rule, I hear dismissive judgments like "there is a child being raised by a single mother, a father who knows where" I hear from people who are married. Not that they think about this phrase for a long time, rather it is pronounced automatically - by parents, teachers, heads of preschool organizations, school directors. This destructive attitude contributes to the stigmatization of the family as “not good enough”. And this despite the periods in the history of Russia when an incomplete family meant the death of one of the parents while defending their country, making this family heroic.

As if in the event of a divorce or a decision on independent motherhood or parenthood, you are given a postcard: "Congratulations, you have become a family at risk." By the way, you fall into the same "risk group" if you decide to enter into a second marriage (you can't please anything!) Or to adopt / adopt a child.

Despite the fact that every year there are more such families, the myth about the harm of an incomplete family is very tenacious. Objectively, if we want to write off incomplete families as insufficiently suitable for raising children, as in Sparta, too many people will have to be thrown off the cliff. It means that it is time to revise the term "normal family". If the norm is an acceptable range, we will have to admit that a single parent family can be considered a variant of the norm.

What do you call the boat …

Let's talk about the term. An “incomplete” family sounds like deprivation, inferiority, as a kind of supposed emptiness, a vacant place in the family. Due to circumstances, the child is brought up by one parent.

Imagine if in a pair of parents there is a more or less equal division of responsibilities in the areas of child care, housekeeping, income provision, then the parent raising the child alone actually takes full responsibility for all these areas, and in many cases copes quite successfully with her. If possible, pulling up the resources of relatives, friends, ex-spouses, and sometimes without any help. But instead of acknowledgment of efforts or moral support, he often hears only cliché reproaches in his address “what do you want, single-parent family”.

In the book by Yu. Guseva "Gentle Boys, Strong Girls", a more adequate and humane term is given. It is proposed to determine the family based on the parent who takes responsibility for the child - respectively, the mother's family (mother + child or children) and the father's family (father + child or children). Agree, it is much more pleasant to live in a mother's family than in an "incomplete" family.

Mom is the main word in every destiny

Often the mothers themselves, who find themselves in conditions when they are alone with the child, experience difficulties and doubts about their pedagogical parental powers. The reason can be both social pressure ("urgently look for someone", "who will need you with your child"), the negative influence of myths about single-parent families, and financial difficulties.

Studying the issue of the influence of an incomplete family on a child, I remembered the report of A. A. Rean, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Russian Academy of Education on Family and Childhood Issues, which was presented in 2018 at the All-Russian conference “Actual problems of prevention of deviant behavior, the formation of a healthy and safe lifestyle of students”Organized by the Federal State Budgetary Scientific Institution“Center for the Protection of the Rights and Interests of Children”.

The report presented the results of research on factors affecting child crime. Based on the text of the report, here are the main thoughts that are especially important for mothers:

• The child needs to feel a good level of control and attention from the mother (yes, the mother); children who commit crimes describe the level of maternal control as insufficient, absent, themselves as "undisciplined" - external control is very important for the child's psyche, since everything that we have controlled from the outside is gradually transferred to the child's internal control. Curiously, adolescents perceive a decrease in parental control, “respect for the freedom of the child,” as a lack of care, attention and emotional contact.
• It is very important for the child to form a positive attitude towards the mother; a negative attitude towards the mother develops into a negative attitude towards other people and into a negative attitude towards the norms of law (!) - so if you hear a person speak negatively about his mother, this is an alarming symptom at any age.
• It is the mother who is the emotionally close, confidant for the child, and the grandmother is chosen as confidant twice as often as the grandfather; the degree of influence of family members looks like this: mother - 57.5%, father - 23.7%, grandmother - 8.2%, grandfather - 4.3%, older brothers / sisters - 6.2%. Therefore, it is the mother who has the greatest influence on the personality of the child, ideally the mother with whom the child is in a relationship of intimacy and trust.
• Preservation of the tradition of family dinners has a positive effect on the formation of law-abiding behavior; it turns out that a joint evening meal (5-7 times a week) makes children more resistant to the formation of addictions to smoking, alcohol and drugs.

Consequently, the key figure influencing the child is the mother: she is well controlled, has a trusting relationship with the child, preserves the tradition of family dining and brings up the child / children in respect

Sounds like a great guideline for a mother's parenting strategy. Mothers, don't let those around you nightmare. You can handle everything. You made your choice, so there were reasons for it. And one of them was taking care of the child.

Happiness is when everyone is at home?

And the last thing. Unfortunately, a complete family does not give you any guarantees about how your child's life (including family) will turn out. You can keep two parents in a destructive family, a conflict family, a family with psychological or physical violence as much as you like. But to think that this parental relationship will not affect the child is at least naive. At the same time, there are successful people who have created strong families, despite the fact that they themselves were raised in maternal or paternal families, or in an orphanage.

We will have to shift the focus from the number of family members to the quality of the relationship between them. If a child's family members are happy with each other at home, he is sure that he has a reliable rear, support, understanding from adults - this family is happy, and it does not matter if it is paternal, maternal, or there are two parents in it

It is not the number of family members that is important, but how adequate and psychologically comfortable family relationships are.