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.

Of course, the contribution that the husband makes to the care of a small child is purely individual for each family, and there is no clear range of functions, the division of which would be mandatory. But nevertheless, for the successful functioning of the family, this problem must be unequivocally solved. As scientific research shows, families in which the manifestations of the crisis were least pronounced were characterized in terms of role by at least two features: 1) in these families, even before the birth of the child or in the first days of his appearance in the house, the spheres of responsibilities that each of them performed were clearly agreed between the spouses, so that later there could be no mutual accusations and resentments in this regard; 2) fathers in these families occupied one of two fairly well-defined positions: either, which was much rarer, the husband played an absolutely traditional role in the family, i.e., he did not actually take any part in caring for the baby, but fully and at the highest possible level ensured the material well-being of the family, or he took an almost equal part in the care of the baby, based on the principles of equality of male and female responsibilities in relation to the child. This means that all conflicts and problems related to the distribution of family roles can be resolved if both spouses have clear ideas in advance about how and what the other will do, and in the future they will be implemented.

Another problem that young parents face is a sharp decrease in free time, especially spent together. If earlier they went to the cinema, theaters, and visits together, now if one of them manages to escape somewhere in their free time, then they often have to do it alone, since one of the spouses must stay with the child, especially if there are no parents or relatives who can replace them for a while. It happens that it is difficult for a young couple to come to terms with the forced division of responsibilities, and even more so entertainment. But, as surveys of parents of young children show, if "fairness" is observed from the point of view of both spouses, such a distribution of entertainment contributes to the fact that spouses do not feel isolated from other people and from life in general. Of course, such shift duty is possible only if both spouses trust each other.

Of course, the problems and conflicts of the family can be overcome only if one important condition is met – the husband and wife must constantly communicate openly and confidentially with each other, discuss all their problems and doubts. After all, how easily the family will solve these natural difficulties depends on how successfully they will be able to do this. Thus, in the first months of a baby's life, conversations about the child sharply prevail over all others. This period is not particularly long, after 3-4 months the husband and wife "get tired" of talking only about the child. Now it is necessary to "remember" everything that worried them before, to establish a mutual exchange of views on any issue not directly related to the baby.

In order for interpersonal communication between parents to be successful, do not forget that the right time and place where it takes place are of great importance for a good mutual conversation. This means that serious and important issues should not be resolved on the run and in a hurry. In order for the interpersonal contacts of the spouses not to lose their importance for them, they should try to talk to each other every day, talk about how the day went, share their own thoughts and impressions. It is good if this can be done in a calm and rather intimate atmosphere, when the most important things planned for the day are redone, and the child is asleep.

A. Y. Varga

Psychological contact between the child and the mother

Independence from birth is the main psychological law of proper upbringing, experts say. Probably, many readers will be surprised by this, because the newborn is completely helpless. If you deprive him of special care, if you do not comply with the requirements of proper feeding, his health and even existence can be irreparably damaged. All this is true. But no less important is the fact that even with ideal care, children deprived of psychologically correct relationships with loved ones received irreparable mental traumas, the echoes of which were then traced throughout their lives, and their physical health turned out to be not so strong.