Only a small proportion of women who give birth alone are completely self-sufficient. These women, who are in their early thirties, either did not want or were unable to connect their fate with men. Having an education and a regular income, they were able to financially take care of the future, that is, the first years of the child’s life. And then work again, plus a part-time job on the side, if the child goes to kindergarten.
Problems of single mothers do not cease to be relevant also because the so-called state program to help single mothers brings them crumbs. What do such women have now? In our region, as in all others except Moscow, they receive 140 rubles (up to 1.5 years another 150). If you try really hard, find time to run around the authorities, collect everything necessary documents, then the woman can receive another 300 rubles. With this money you can buy 8 liters of milk and 8 loaves of bread. In a good situation, my mother works, receiving 5-7 thousand rubles, and even that is in an envelope, since in the provinces it is oh so difficult to find a job with official employment. Most often, she does not have an apartment, which is minus 3-4 thousand from her income for rented housing. Considering that the state gives her a handout in the form of 440 rubles, which will in no way solve the economic problem problem, you can survive until your next paycheck, but with great difficulty. After all, a single mother still needs to dress and put on shoes for her baby.
So the average single mother is doomed to a very difficult life if she has no relatives who can help. The state gave her the right to work without cuts or layoffs until the child turned 14 years old, but it did not bother to find her this job. She is unlikely to take advantage of her unpaid leave. Even preferential admission to kindergarten is not always possible. And the right granted to her for free meals and free textbooks at school backfires. For a child, even a first-grader, there is nothing more humiliating than feeling like a poor outcast: not only do teachers constantly focus on this, but even more affluent classmates mock him. That's all the help from the state, whose leadership annoyingly and mockingly claims from the TV screen that gas is a national treasure.
But single mothers work conscientiously. The fear of being left without a livelihood makes them take their work more seriously, so the employer can safely hire them. If I had the opportunity, I would open a private kindergarten, and hire single mothers as teachers and nannies.
Tatiana YurepinaThe article “difficulties of a single mother” was written by a copywriter Yulishna.
When I was 19 years old, I suddenly, as it is now fashionable to say among teenagers, “got knocked up.” We didn’t have a very good relationship with the child’s father, and so I was faced with a dilemma: to give birth or not. All my friends were divided into two camps: for abortion and against it. Each of them gave arguments in favor of one solution or another, and all of them were individually correct. I didn’t know who to listen to. My mother didn’t know about the outrage that was happening under her nose, and when she found out, I had already firmly decided to leave the child.
Now my son is already 4 years old, and I got married and already have a daughter together with my husband. I don’t regret leaving the child, but... Probably, many women aged 17 to 40 are faced with a situation where they have to make a choice; become a single mother or remain free and not ruin your life. And it is impossible to give clear advice on what to do here. After all, everyone's circumstances are different. For example, if a girl knows that her parents and relatives will definitely not let her and her unborn child go to waste, then this, of course, is a big plus. Well, what if not?
This may sound blasphemous, but why bring a child into the world, KNOWING THAT HE WILL SPEND HIS DAYS IN AN ORphanage OR IN A TRASH TRASH? I also don’t understand mothers who decide to give birth in order to be held back - forcibly! - the child's father. My dears, believe me, if a man doesn’t love you, no child will save you, but only a couple of unhappy people will appear: you and your baby! In addition, it is unknown how lucky you will be in the future and what kind of spouse you will get. I know many cases where stepfathers simply poisoned the lives of their stepsons and stepdaughters. Why do you need this? For the sake of an imaginary danger of not getting pregnant? Just remember, how many cases do you actually know when, after an abortion, a woman was unable to give birth? Do you remember? That's it! In general, I am against rash sentimental decisions, unlike the state, which needs
A single mother has many more problems than a woman with a husband. The decision to give birth to a child without a father is a conscious choice of a woman. She is ready for this from the very beginning, and forewarned is forearmed. This mobilizes a woman to systematically prepare for life in a single-parent family, primarily in material terms. However, difficulties may lie in the moral and ethical perception of one’s status, especially in cases where the child’s father abandoned him in the early stages of pregnancy.
Benefits, rights, and subsidies for single moms have a place in our society, and that's a great thing. It’s also good that single-parent families are often registered with the guardianship and trusteeship authorities. But the woman still carries her everyday life and holidays, joys and sorrows alone with a double burden: for herself and for her dad, who is not nearby.
Where do these pitfalls and difficulties lie? And how to learn to bypass them?
1. How to survive financially?
Clearly define your budget, including benefits, maternity and other stable sources. One-time income does not need to be taken into account. This will help you get away from illusions once and for all, learn to allocate your funds only to what is necessary, relying only on yourself. Plan your child’s diet, and then your own. You can buy things at a good second-hand store or, at first, take them as gifts from friends whose children have grown up.
2. How to make money? Where can I get money?
At first you will have to live on benefits, and then look for a good kindergarten for your baby and a job for yourself. While sitting at home, you can earn extra money online even without qualifications. Do not refuse the help of relatives if they offer money sincerely and do not impose any conditions on you.
3. How to do everything alone?
Don't be lazy and keep a notebook for notes. Organize your day, guided by the principle of prioritizing the “most important” against the backdrop of “important” and “not so important” things. Do only the “most important” and some of the “important” ones; the rest will “fall away” by themselves. If possible, involve your relatives: grandmother, mother, sister, if you feel that this is not a burden for them.
4. How to explain to a baby that he doesn’t have a dad?
Of course, it is necessary to explain according to the age at which the child asks this question. At first, learn to distract him from this topic; later this “trick” will no longer work. Reassurance that dad will return from a business trip next month is a stupid and cruel method. Try to explain to your child that not everyone has dads, and if the child is unlucky with the presence of a dad in the family, he will definitely be lucky in something else. You will start making up stories about your astronaut father, then you will “disentangle” these ridiculous fantasies, wondering why the child is lying to you.
5. How to stop self-flagellation and get rid of feelings of guilt towards your baby?
The sages say that the most useless feeling on earth is the feeling of guilt. Instead of fueling pity for yourself and your child, do everything possible to make your child feel good with you. There are many families in the world in which children are born, but their fathers leave and do not return. Of course, this doesn’t make things any easier for you. But your option is more stable, you were ready for your mission, and loneliness did not take you by surprise, throwing you off track.
There will be difficulties, no doubt about it. Learn to treat them correctly, without psychosis, resentment towards the whole world and prolonged depression. Bear with dignity your honorable, best duty in the world, “to be a mother.” It costs a lot! Time flies quickly, all fears and doubts will be left behind. And this difficult time will seem to you the happiest years of your life, when you could always be close to your warm, dear baby!
Single mother: problems she didn't know about
When deciding to become a single mother, a woman sometimes does not realize that as the child grows and matures, serious and unexpected problems await her. They will not open immediately, but gradually, and almost no one can solve them completely. But whatever they are, women all over the world take this difficult step - to give birth to a child “for themselves.”
When deciding to become a single mother, a woman sometimes does not realize that as the child grows and matures, serious and unexpected problems await her. They will not open immediately, but gradually, and almost no one can solve them completely. But, whatever they are, women all over the world take this difficult step - to give birth to a child “for themselves.”
Single status
We will not talk about those cases when a woman had a husband (legal or civil), but she divorced him, so she is raising a child alone. Also, we will not discuss situations where communication with the father of the child was short-lived and did not entail further relations. We are talking about a different category.
According to Russian law, a single mother is considered a woman who writes down a born child in her last name. At the same time, in the birth certificate, the name and patronymic of the father are recorded from the words of the mother, and the father's surname is written the same as hers. That is, all three - child, father and mother - have the same surname. The mother is given a certificate stating that the father of the child is recorded from her words. In this case, the man does not have any rights and obligations, including the payment of alimony. A single mother receives financial assistance and social support from the state.
Divorced women and widows, who are often called single mothers in everyday life, are not single mothers from the point of view of the law.
Women's resentment
One of the problems of single mothers is resentment towards the man, reproaches that he is to blame for her current situation. Of course, there are women who decide to have a child even before conception, and they treat a man more pragmatically, so to speak. But most of the fairer sex become single mothers not by conscious choice, but because “it just happened that way.” In this case, it is difficult for them to get rid of the resentment. They expect a man to “come to his senses and understand everything.” But this doesn't happen. What should they continue to be offended by - their illusions?..
“There are women who decided to take this step consciously, it was their choice, and they experience it in one way,” says psychologist Varvara Sidorova. - And there are those who were deceived or were deceived themselves, hoping that pregnancy would help them improve their relationship with the child’s father - they experience this situation differently. In the first case, the woman is proud of her decision and is focused on having a child. She quickly develops a system of defensive responses and knows how to suppress unceremonious curiosity. In the second case, questions about the husband always fall on a sore spot and again and again the woman is traumatized.”
The biggest mistake is to instill your resentment in your child. To do this means to cripple his psyche. In the eyes of a child, both parents must be good and worthy; this is necessary for his mental health. You cannot burden a little person with the bitterness of the fact that something did not work out in the mother’s life. He should not be held responsible for the fact that her fate did not turn out the way she would have liked.
A single mother has to do everything herself. Grandparents cannot always help; sometimes they are still working. In this case, there remains a nursery, kindergarten, nanny.
In addition, a single mother is forced to work and earn money. She faces not only everyday, but also financial difficulties. It is difficult for her to get out somewhere to relax, so it is difficult for her to establish a personal life and get to know someone. She simply doesn't have enough time for this.
But the main difficulty is that the woman has no one with whom to share responsibility for herself and the child. She has no one to rely on. All responsibility falls on her, and this is a heavy burden. Remember Katya Tikhomirova, the heroine of the film “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears”? How many tears she shed into her pillow while raising her daughter. This film truthfully shows the fate of a single mother.
What to tell your child when he asks...
Sooner or later the child will ask who his dad is and why he doesn’t live with them. When answering this question, the mother should spare the child as much as possible. Under no circumstances should the burden of her relationships with men and specifically with the child’s father be placed on the child’s weak shoulders. A little person should feel protected and loved, regardless of the conditions in which he grows up. The main thing for a child is to know that there is a dad, but he doesn’t live with them, that’s just the way life is. The baby needs to be told that dad loves him and maybe someday they will see each other.
“I am a supporter of the fact that there should be as few secrets as possible in the family,” says psychologist Varvara Sidorova. - Another thing is that when you tell the truth, you need to understand that you are telling it to a child, and you need to say it in such words and in such concepts that it is clear to him what you are talking about. Questions about where dad is, who is dad, arise for the first time at 3–4 years. The child already has some skill in interacting with other children, with other people. He already knows that relationships are different, and you can tell him that there are situations where, say, two children were playing, and then went home and no longer want to be together. “Your dad and I don’t want to be together, we broke up, but I’m very glad that I have you.” And the child must be emphasized that the mother is glad that he was born, that she wanted him, she was waiting for him. And with my father - well, well, communication didn’t work out, they broke up.”
“You need to tell the truth, only the truth, but at every stage of life, understandable to the child,” psychologist Konstantin Surnov repeats the same thought. - And it is very important not to “trample down” dad when constructing these explanations, to always leave some way that perhaps he will come. He's distant now, but that could change. Life is big."
However, many women prefer to invent a legend about their deceased father-pilot, submariner, etc. As we remember, the heroine of the film “Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears” did just that...
Where can I get a sample of a man?
When a child is raised only by his mother, he may grow up to be selfish. There is no father, no one to say a stern word to, to prohibit, to influence with male authority. To raise a child, both energies are needed: feminine and masculine. Mom is soft, warm-hearted, she often forgives. And the father is stricter, he is not used to being overbearing, he has masculine strength, authority, and the child feels and respects this. A son or daughter needs to see the relationship between a man and a woman: how they communicate, negotiate, give in, and find a compromise. And if he sees only his mother, grandmother and teachers in kindergarten, then he grows up one-sided, there is not enough harmony in his soul.
It is also important that the child needs a man whom he can look up to. And not only for boys, but also for girls. The son needs a role model, and the daughter needs to see how female-male relationships work.
But there is a way out! The father can be replaced by other representatives of the stronger sex. “There are things that a boy can learn from men that he should not learn from his mother,” says Varvara Sidorova. - The mother’s task is to provide the child with a man from whom he can learn the necessary things. This could be a grandfather or some family friend. A mother can find a good section or circle led by a man. The mother must understand very clearly that there are things that a woman cannot give, that only a man can give. It is also true for a girl that she needs a father, because a girl learns her first skills of communicating with men in childhood, when she communicates with a man, preferably with her father. But if there is no father, then the child must be given male models. In addition, the mother should be very careful about what she says about men to the child. And the child’s mother should not say under any circumstances that “all men are bastards.”
Stepfather
Naturally, most single mothers strive to arrange their personal lives. Sometimes they succeed, and then a husband appears in the house, and for the child a stepfather. But this can cause problems. For example, a child begins to be jealous. After all, before all the mother’s attention belonged entirely to him, but now a stranger appeared in the house, and the mother switched to him. The son or daughter sees that the mother and this man communicate, are affectionate with each other, they feel good together. This causes dissatisfaction and resentment in the child.
But if the mother, seeing this, begins to pay too much attention to her child, then the husband will become jealous. He will feel slighted, relegated to the background, and will believe that this small man prevents him and his wife from belonging to each other.
The hardest thing in this case is for the woman. She is forced to constantly be torn between both, to divide her attention between them. This requires a lot of tact, patience, endurance... It happens that the child wins and the stepfather survives from the family. But if the mother remains unhappy as a woman, then this is also not good for the child.
“A lot of things are passed on to the child from the mother,” says Varvara Sidorova. - If the mother feels unhappy, if she believes that her loneliness is a sign of her inferiority, then the child will think the same. Therefore, a mother, first of all, should think about her outlook on life, her mental health, and take care of herself. Ultimately, she does it for the child too.”
Mother's happiness
A child raised by a single mother may hold a grudge against his father all his life. No matter what his mother tells about him, in his soul he feels some kind of inferiority. Having matured, he can reproach his mother for not providing him with complete family. Even mature, accomplished people remember growing up without a father; this trauma lives in their souls all their lives. The lack of paternal influence affects even in adulthood.
Yes, single mothers have many difficulties. But maternal instinct is one of the strongest. He tells the woman to become a mother at all costs. And each makes her way to fulfilling her natural task, no matter how her life turns out in the future.
Inna Kriksunova, for Fontanka.ru
“The destiny of the human psyche is to always have two objects and never one.”
Andre Green
The term “Single Mother,” although well-known and understandable to most, does not actually reveal the essence of what is happening.
A mother, left to raise a child without a husband, in most cases is not lonely and does not raise the child alone. In the process of upbringing, one way or another, relatives from one or both sides take part. In connection with the above, I personally do not consider this designation to be correct and reflect the whole essence of what is happening.
These days, a young mother raising a small child without a husband is a very common occurrence. There are various reasons for this, but the most pressing is divorce.
Today there is a lot civil marriages, which, just like the official ones, often fall apart. As for official statistics, over the past 15 years, the percentage of divorces among young families in Russian Federation ranges from 52 to 80 percent depending on the region.
This suggests that a huge number of children and adolescents live in single-parent families. Despite the fact that both parents by law have equal rights to the child, in practice, most often, after the parents divorce, the child remains with the mother.
Understanding that a family can break up at any age of a child, specifically for this article I choose, as I see it, the most interesting situation to consider, when a mother is left without a husband with a “pre-Oedipal” (under 3 years old) child in her arms.
This state of affairs is often the most stressful for the mother. In the case where the offspring, by the time the family breaks up, has reached, say, adolescence We are dealing with a relatively adult and independent person who has gone through the main stages of his psychosexual development in a complete family with whatever participation his father may have.
When it comes to a single young mother with a small child in her arms, few people in such a situation feel calm and confident enough. Most mothers after a divorce ask themselves: “How to continue raising a child?”
Should a mother who is left alone should panic, and how should she behave?
Let's try to figure it out. As practice shows, most mothers are able, as they say, to “feed and raise” a child even without the participation of the father. That is, make sure that the child grows up educated, intelligent and healthy.
Often, such mothers have a fairly rich idea of how to develop a child physically and intellectually, but when it comes to mental and psychological development/upbringing, it most often turns out that there is much less knowledge in this area.
It is worth paying tribute to those few mothers who, feeling insecure in this matter, bring their children to specialists - psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychotherapists.
I note that the divorce itself affects the emotional state of all family members, which, in turn, is felt by the child.
Why can raising a child without a father be called a problem for the child and is it a problem?
To answer these questions, we should talk about the main characteristics of each parent and what value these characteristics bring to the child’s development.
For mental development Both parents are very important to a child and each of them has their own important role at different stages of the child’s development. Traditionally, I will start with the maternal figure.
The role of the mother in raising a child
It is generally accepted that women are most often superior to men in terms of speech and communication skills, conceptual manipulation, creative and intuitive thinking. The mother, consciously and unconsciously, will share the secrets of these important skills with her child.If we talk about the role or function of the mother, then it can be designated by the well-established term “protective and affectionate function.”
It can be said that the mother is the one who gives affection and indulges the child.
Due to her mental characteristics, a woman lags far behind a man in what the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan calls “symbolic limitation,” thanks to which she is able to raise a child in the style of “excessive pleasure.” This is what she usually does as a mother.
That is, according to the observation of the same Lacan, the mother often allows the child excessive pleasure - that is, something “that should not be” (I borrowed this formulation from a colleague).
In the midst of such permissiveness, the father appears on the “educational stage” with his authoritarian “demanding - prohibitive - educational” function.
« Allowing a child everything means treating him like an adult; and this is the surest way to ensure that he never becomes an adult"(c) Thomas Szasz.
The role of the father in raising a child
Men, as a rule, are pragmatists and have pronounced topological, ordinal and technical types thinking. Also, men have better developed spatial thinking than women - all this, of course, is important for the development of a child, but rather from a pedagogical point of view.The main function of the father is different: the father brings law, order and social norms to the family - what is called the “symbolic father.”
This law applies to both the child and the wife’s behavior towards the child, provided that her own father was not a weak “castrated” father, but was the law in her family.
Otherwise, the mother does not have a symbolic father figure in her head, personifying the law, and, therefore, there is no law that would protect a child of any gender from the maternal arbitrariness that absorbs the child.
The basic law that the father brings to the family is the ban on “excessive pleasure” given to the child by the mother. Limitation on “what should not be done.” That is, the father imposes a “ban on certain types of pleasure,” as Freud wrote, referring to the incestuous relationship between mother and child.
As an illustration, I will cite the famous metaphor of Jacques Lacan. He metaphorically described the mother’s unconscious desires directed at the child as follows:
« A mother is like a hungry crocodile, eager to swallow a child, return him to her womb, and only the father’s phallus inserted into this insatiable mouth can save the child from being swallowed up by her!»
As has already become clear, the father figure is important for the mental development of the child.
The negative impact of a predominantly “female” upbringing
Now that a little has been said about the functions of parents, I propose to reflect on the possible negative consequences of predominantly female parenting of a child.After which we’ll talk a little about how we can minimize these very consequences.
We already know that father and mother have different types thinking, which means they can look at the same situation differently. Accordingly, when both parents are present in the family, they pass on their talents to the child through communication with him and communication with each other in the presence of the child.
Also, in a complete family, the mother [normally] pays attention not only to the child, but also to her husband. From a certain age and at a certain period of the child’s psychosexual development, the fact of the mother’s shifting attention from the child to the father and back becomes a fundamentally important moment for the child.
This importance is confirmed by the accumulated experience of psychoanalysts dealing with object relations. We are talking about a period called the “Oedipal phase,” which falls on the age interval from 3 to 5 years (this age interval is average, but in reality the boundaries of this phase are blurred).
Why this is important: In a two-parent family, it is implied that the mother loves her husband and is loved by him. The husband is a third party, and this gives the mother the opportunity to be a mother to her child, and not a mistress. That is, the mother shares her maternal aspirations and sexual desires - she realizes the first with the child, and the second with her beloved husband in the bedroom.
The mother periodically leaves her child, alternating between her presence and absence. When she is not with the child, she is with the father. Having put the child to bed, the mother goes to the father's bedroom and becomes a sexy woman for a sexy man.
It is precisely this absence of the mother that contributes to the formation and development of the child’s fantasy life. The child gets the opportunity to begin to fantasize about what happens between parents behind the scenes. closed door parent's bedroom.
“Feeling excluded from the special intimacy between parents, envying them, children receive a powerful push into the outside world, where only they will find such joy.” Burress Frederick Skinner
This situation gradually helps the child to separate his desires from the desires of the mother, infantile sexuality from adult, genital sexuality. The child gradually understands that there is a difference between his childhood relationship with his mother and the adult mother-father relationship.
All this gives the child the opportunity to draw the most important conclusions and accept the “word and law of the father,” which says: the father is more important to the mother than the child, the child is not EVERYTHING for the mother and is not the first and only reason for maternal happiness and satisfaction.
“Being an adult means having exclusive [not available to a child] rights over another adult. For the child, this creates a model of behavior in which he is a student in the family: he is raised by this couple, but should in no way pretend to be an adult, even one who is absent from the family.”. Francoise Dolto
In the case when the mother does not have a sexual and desired image of a man or father in her head, then she directs all her desires to her child, making him her continuation in every sense of the word.
In this case, instead of the husband, the child spends the night in the mother’s bed, becoming for her an unconscious replacement for the man - the father, as an object sexual desire. The child is involuntarily forced to “plug” with himself and his love the “holes” in maternal narcissism and thereby alleviate the burden of maternal loneliness (depression).
Incest leads to degeneration, psychosis and death. Incestuousness too. Psychoanalysts studying cancer patients have found that the anamnesis of these patients often includes the fact that a mother and her son or daughter live in the same room and, often, in the same bed.
The pattern that I call “mother and child are friendship, but we don’t need a man, dad,” also takes place in two-parent families, where the father’s figure is belittled and “castrated.” But most often, the above-mentioned scheme is relevant precisely for the situation when a mother is raising a child without the participation of a man, a father.
Stages of a child growing up and developing important life skills
Starting from the “Oedipal phase” [and until the end of the latent phase], the child actively develops important skills - the foundations of communicative and gender-role behavior.When a child grows up and becomes an adult, the foundation laid during this period will influence his behavior and quality of life.
Of course, for the child to fully develop these skills, the participation of both parents is necessary.
When a man does not take part in raising a child, the child faces another significant psychological problem - a violation of gender identity, and, as a consequence, difficulties in the formation of gender-role behavior.
These problems negatively affect the formation of a person’s personality and lead to the so-called “loss of self” and impaired communication skills.
A prominent American psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, wrote: “People who did not have the conditions for self-awareness and self-expression in childhood strive for this throughout their lives. And the first manifestation of their true nature is always accompanied by strong fear.".
This applies to all spheres of human life. Including gender relations.
The above applies to both boys and girls. But I want to write a little about how the absence of a man in the family can affect a boy and a girl separately.
Raising a boy without a father
What problems might a boy raised without the participation of his father face? Obviously, such a boy does not have a living example of masculine behavior and social role men.In such a situation, the boy is overly identified with his mother and unconsciously takes on feminine traits, which leads to a distortion of personality traits. Such a distortion of self-perception, according to numerous psychologists and psychoanalysts, often leads to the formation of pronounced homosexual tendencies.
The latter applies not only to boys, but also to girls. Also, a boy who does not see his father in front of him and has no experience of communicating with him is deprived of the opportunity to assimilate the characteristics of male thinking, perception, in particular, and a full opportunity to form an identification with a man, his father, in general.
In addition, boys often become the object of venting maternal aggression, which is caused by the behavior of a “bad father.” After all, they, son and father, are of the same sex.
Raising girls without a father
As for girls, the absence of a father in the family can also cause certain problems.Having before her eyes an example of a normal relationship between mother and father, a feminine mother and a masculine father, the girl forms her own image of a woman, identifying with a happy and feminine mother, and not with a depressed phallic woman.
The absence of a father in the family makes it difficult for a girl to identify her gender role. The lack of experience of communicating with a man or father since childhood can subsequently cause difficulties, for example, in the form of severe anxiety, when communicating with the opposite sex and, as a result, difficulties in forming a married couple.
Also, the absence of a father can cause girls to need to overcompensate for male attention. That is, an excessive need for male attention.
Often there is a situation that served as a reason for the formation of a separate niche in folklore. We are talking about the relationship between wife - husband - mother-in-law. That is, a situation when a wife and her mother unite against a man, and he, in turn, is forced to be smart so as not to fall victim to this coalition.
Often this union, driven by unconscious desires, actively campaigns against the father. More often they agitate daughters in order to expand the women's association against men. Quite often this happens and works in two-parent families. What can we say when there is no man in the family.
One can imagine how a girl who grew up in such a family will treat men when she becomes an adult.
Female manipulations directed against the “bad father”
After a divorce, children regularly become a mother’s means of revenge against the “bad father” and all kinds of manipulation of him.The mother, under various pretexts, does not provide the father with the opportunity to see the child, and the child is informed that the father himself does not want to see him, which instills in the child hatred towards the father. This is a good example of maternal tyranny in the absence of the father, symbolizing the law.
That is, maternal arbitrariness becomes law. The child has no choice but to internalize the “mother’s law”: “lawlessness is law,” which is good soil for the formation of narcissistic perversion and other personality disorders.
Being a psychoanalyst and knowing the role of unconscious mental processes in the life of any person, starting from birth and even before it, I would like to note the importance of family history for a child.
Everything that happened to the parents separately before they met and after they met affects the mental life of the parents and is passed on to the child. This means that the child is initially doomed to consciously and unconsciously absorb and process the products of the mental apparatus of his parents, and even the parents of his parents, grandparents.
And if it so happened that the family broke up and the child was left to be raised by the mother, then she has a huge responsibility. Responsibility for the mental state of the child.
The mother will have to make a lot of efforts in order not to raise or minimize the “fatherless” complex in the child, giving her a chance to build her own full-fledged family in the future and the opportunity to raise her own mentally healthy children.
What should a mother do if she does not want to significantly complicate her child’s life by making him a victim of maternal narcissism, but wants a good future for her son or daughter?Most often, the separation of parents is a protracted process. Both parents and children suffer. The mother can both exacerbate these sufferings and minimize them. It must be clearly understood that the child is not to blame for the fact that the parents diverge. That's why You should not deprive a child of the opportunity to see his father, if such an opportunity exists..
Of course, a woman faces additional everyday and psychological difficulties, but it’s worth finding the strength in herself do not tell the child that the father is to blame. That such-and-such a father abandoned his mother and child. Such statements form in the child complexes and a negative attitude not only towards the father, but also towards the family as such.
Freud, and after him numerous psychologists and psychoanalysts, repeatedly emphasized that “ everyone tends to treat others the way they were treated in childhood" This statement can be rephrased and applied to the family by saying: “Everyone tends to feel about starting a family the way his parents felt about it.”
Regular meetings between the father and the child will help the child form a positive image of the family and the father.
I understand that the reasons for divorce may be different and the father may not want to see the child or may not be able to for one reason or another. Sooner or later the child will ask: “Why doesn’t dad come to us and live with us?” Children are much smarter than many people think. How to act in such a situation?
You shouldn’t make up stories about space or answer something like “because your father is bad and doesn’t love us.”
It would be more correct to explain to the child something like this: “In adults, sometimes it happens that they diverge. And your dad and I decided to live separately. I'm sorry we didn't consult you when we made the decision. This is not, neither mine nor my father's, and even more so your fault. It happens."
You can add: "Despite the fact that your father and I are not together, he loves you." Etc. Of course, such an answer is unlikely to completely satisfy the child, but there is no aggression or agitation in such words.
It happens that the father died and then, too, you should not deceive a small child by talking about space. You can honestly tell the child that the father is dead.
Let me explain with a quote from Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams:
A child is unfamiliar with the horrors of decay, grave cold, endless “nothingness” and everything that is associated with the word “death” in the minds of an adult and that is present in all myths about the other world. The fear of death is alien to him, which is why he plays with this terrible word and threatens another child: “If you do this again, you will die, like Franz died.”. <...> “I understand that dad died, but why he doesn’t come home for dinner, I just can’t understand.”, said a ten-year-old boy.
When it comes to death, the formulation “he left us, left us” is widely used - which confirms the childish and unconscious interpretation of death as absence.
In such cases, you should regularly tell the child about how courageous, strong, loving the father was, about what good, courageous, heroic deeds he performed, etc. and so on. All this will allow the child to form a positive image of his father, and the boy to successfully identify with him.
Don't forget that Not only the child’s father, but also the mother’s or father’s father, or grandfather can serve as an example of courage.
A teacher, neighbor, brother, mother's friend or coach in the sports section can partially compensate for the absent father in the family and become a positive object for identification.
It has been widely studied and proven that the appearance of a new husband by a mother has a beneficial effect on the child. However, the arrival of a new man in the family goes most smoothly if at the time of his appearance the child has not reached adolescence, and the newly-made husband does not bring his children into the family. I emphasize: this is not a rule, but average data!
If a mother fails to remarry, then she should refrain from manipulating her children and deliberately demonstrating her sadness associated with this, reinforcing all this with spells like “men are all bad and unreliable, but only your mother will never leave you and will love you.” you forever."
And there is no need to blame the child for the “sins” that the father committed.
Raising a child in the style of “a child is a substitute for a husband” is a big mistake. For example, a child should not help his mother because her husband “abandoned” her. The child should be raised in such a way that he helps not because “the father abandoned” - this is not the child’s fault, but because the mother objectively needs help in everyday life.
At the same time, the child must understand that he is free to live his personal life and develop as a person, and that he is not the property of his mother until death.
Why shouldn’t you “love” your children by constantly surrounding them with double super care?
Firstly, a mother can never replace a father for a child. The mother should recognize this and direct her efforts to avoid becoming a “phallic mother” for the child, and try to preserve her femininity while remaining a fairly loving mother.
Secondly, a child needs freedom to develop. To do this, he must have time free from his mother’s love. A child who understands that he is loved can calmly play alone without the participation of his mother or anyone else, and this is an important point.
A “beloved child” is anxious and has problems with self-development, since the mother seems to develop for him.
To summarize, I want to say: when a family breaks up and the mother is left to raise a child without his father, it is important to know that the child, following the mother’s reaction, tries to understand whether an irreparable tragedy has occurred or something that can be dealt with.
The mother should clearly understand that in the absence of the father, she must preserve or create a symbolic image of the father in the child’s psyche. The father is phallic. At the same time, the mother must realize that she cannot become a man and/or replace him, and, therefore, must try to be a “good enough mother” for the child, feminine, but not a “phallic mother.”
Find the strength not to “love” the child and give him the opportunity to develop, including on his own. Do not “plug” with your child the hole formed when the man left and do not make the child a “husband” with all his male functions.
If a mother feels like she can't cope and is tempted to do something she shouldn't, I recommend seeking help from an experienced professional to work through what's going on.
Families break up - no one is immune from this. Whether the family is complete or not, there are always traumatic moments that can be dealt with if desired. The presence of a father does not guarantee the ideal mental development of a child, just as the absence of a father does not guarantee the appearance of mental disorders. In any case, a child is always the product of two people and never of one.
A child can process and transform the madness of one or two parents into creative roots, and in the future use it for the benefit of themselves and those around them. Therefore, if a divorce has already occurred, you should not panic and give up on yourself and the child. It’s worth gathering your strength, thinking, armed with certain knowledge, and moving on with your life.
