The most difficult, problematic questions (and answers) are concentrated in the "Psychological Counseling" section. Counseling psychologists will analyze your parental positions together with you, help a woman realize what kind of mother she is, give the main directions for purposeful monitoring of the development of the baby and draw up an approximate program of basic actions to form a deep psychological contact between the child and his parents.

Changes in family relationships

The appearance of a new person in the family is a joyful and anxious event. How will the relationship in the family change now? Who is this baby, what and how should you do with him? What will be the circle of the first parental concerns?

Knowledge of some psychological patterns that govern family relations associated with the birth of a child will help parents find answers to these and many other questions. So, let's start in order.

The birth of a child, especially the first child, is one of the most significant events in the life of a family, but along with joy come hundreds of new small and big problems come to young parents. This event inevitably leads to a sharp change in the lifestyle of the family, the interests and habits formed in both spouses, to the need to master difficult and mysterious social roles - the roles of father and mother.

No matter how natural the parental role is, no matter how much space is given to it in world literature, in rituals, songs and fairy tales, it is perhaps the most complex and ambiguously given. Its complexity is determined by a number of circumstances. First of all, it is due to the fact that young parents are under constant, and quite strong, pressure. There are many very contradictory opinions about how to take care of a child, what and how to say to him, when to feed him and when to play with him. Moreover, all these opinions are most often expressed by fairly authoritative sources - the husband's parents, the wife's parents, special books and brochures. And as a result, choosing their own style of behavior in relation to the child, spouses often find themselves in a situation of uncertainty, which provides ample opportunities for experiencing feelings of guilt, fear, self-doubt, etc. These feelings are also strengthened by the fact that everyone around is only talking about the need to be good parents, that you should not spoil the child in any way, etc.

The birth of a child does not always happen when and in the way the spouses want it, which can also serve as a basis for serious problems in mastering the parental role. The performance of parental duties in such a situation is associated with various negative feelings and experiences, which are not so easy to hide and overcome, especially at first. Such experiences are aggravated by the fact that the acceptance of this role occurs once and for all. If it is possible to divorce a husband and wife, then the refusal of parental duties is a grave crime of a person, both before himself and before society.

Becoming parents, young spouses face another serious problem, characteristic primarily of modern society, where men and women have almost equal rights. In the situation of carrying, giving birth and caring for a baby, the husband and wife have to do what is prescribed by their biological role, regardless of whether it corresponds to their aspirations and needs or not. During this period, a woman is practically excluded from most social ties, does not work and is literally attached to the baby, and the man continues his professional career, plays the role of a kind of intermediary between his family and the rest of the world. Such a distribution of roles, which does not correspond to the previous life experience of the spouses, can serve as the basis for various negative experiences, problems and conflicts caused by the difficulty of getting used to such a situation.

These difficulties are aggravated by the fact that certain features of the parental role are unique and inimitable in each family. Special books, consultations and advice only outline the general picture of what and how to do. Figuratively speaking, there is no tailor who would fit the average "pattern" for each specific parent and each specific child. What is good and easy for one person is impossible and harmful for another, but it is far from easy to understand and feel it. The problem of preparing for the parental role is especially acute today, since traditions and norms change so quickly that each next generation of parents has to create a largely new model of the parental role. The experience of one's own fathers and mothers cannot always act as such a model, since the requirements imposed on the child in "their" time were often completely different from what they are now. In addition, no matter how much the spouses prepare to become parents, this time always comes suddenly; Yesterday there was no one in their house, but a few days later, someone else appeared.

As a rule, for a modern young mother, her child is the first baby in her life. Previously, people were more prepared for parenthood, as they grew up in large families and helped take care of younger brothers and sisters. For them, their own baby was one of the children they had already dealt with, not a "secret behind seven seals." Now, especially in large cities, families with one child are the norm. And the first pancake is usually lumpy. And now generation after generation of "first pancakes" is growing. Our mothers and fathers themselves were the only ones with their parents - trial ones. Their own childhood was in the hands of inexperienced parents, they had to observe not the most perfect model of parental attitude. And they have to reproduce it already in their family, and often in the worst case.

All these difficulties do not always pass without a trace, and, as the results of scientific research show, young parents quite often experience certain difficulties, which in special literature are designated as a crisis associated with mastering the parental role. This crisis is expressed in the fact that both parents – both father and mother – experience feelings of confusion, self-doubt, complain of sudden mood swings, and mutual misunderstanding. Often, especially in young mothers, these feelings are accompanied by complaints that the husband pays little attention to them, does not show enough tenderness and affection. Psychological experiences are accompanied by feelings of fatigue, since there is practically no free time. All this causes irritation and a feeling of inferiority.

Such negative experiences can begin even before the birth of a child, in the last months of pregnancy, and continue during the first 6-8 months of his life. This entire period – the period of getting used to and adapting to a new social role – leads both to a change in some of a person's ideas about himself, and to serious restructuring in marital relations. Naturally, the problems faced by spouses are similar for most families. These are, as already mentioned, a sharp decrease in free time, the problem of the distribution of responsibilities in the family related to the care of a child, financial difficulties that often arise, possible difficulties in the field of sexual relations, as well as communication problems. How exactly are these difficulties expressed, how are they experienced, can young parents help themselves and make this period less painful and anxious?

Fatigue, a lot of things that must be done, push the expression of love and affection towards each other into the background, although the needs for mutual care and attention remain. Dissatisfaction with it sometimes leads to feelings of abandonment, unloved, uselessness in women and the emergence of a feeling of jealousy in men. Of course, you can always find excuses for not smiling at someone in time, not asking him how he is doing, not hugging him, not kissing him. But if such experiences accumulate, they can serve as the basis for serious resentment, mutual accusations and even conflicts. It is quite easy to overcome them if, firstly, you remember that such moments are in some sense natural, and secondly, you are ready for an open discussion of the negative experiences that arise. Surveys of young parents show that the easiest way to solve their problems is those who do not blame the other person for lack of attention and lack of love and demand their compensation, but try to describe their feelings and experiences to the other, calmly talk about how and why negative feelings arose. In those families where the situation of "crisis" is insignificant, various negative experiences are usually explained by the spouses not by the negative qualities of the other, but by the difficulty of adapting and getting used to a new parental role for both.

The greatest problems caused by the appearance of a baby in the family are associated, as a rule, with the complexity of the distribution of responsibilities between the spouses in relation to the new family member. A natural change in the distribution of marital roles in this situation is a shift towards more traditional ones, where the wife is mainly occupied with the house and children, and the husband carries out all the family's contacts with the outside world. By virtue of their biological role, women are very quickly included in the situation of fulfilling their duties to the child, while the role of the husband, the duties that should be assigned to him, is not so obvious at all, because in fact, everything that is required from him in a modern family in connection with caring for a baby - washing, ironing diapers, etc. - are traditionally women's affairs. Therefore, it is not easy for a man to accept their necessity and start fulfilling them. Moreover, there are many arguments that at first glance may seem quite serious and logical: "Previously, no one helped women and there were more children, but they coped no worse", "I also worked all day, I was tired", etc.