During Lent, we more often turn to the spiritual side of our earthly existence. Several years ago, a small church brochure, “The Prayer Book of an Orthodox Mother,” came into my hands. I wrote out several prayers from it. I offer them to you, my good friends. When, if not during Lent, should we pray for the souls of our dear children, and for our own sinful souls. Address your most secret requests to our Lord. Let's pray, Orthodox Christians!
A mother's prayer to Jesus Christ for the well-being of her children
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, prayers for the sake of Your Most Pure Mother, hear me, unworthy of a servant (name).
Lord, in Your merciful power are my children, Your servants (names). Have mercy and save them, for Thy name's sake.
Lord, forgive them all the sins, voluntary and involuntary, that they committed before You.
Lord, guide them on the true path of Your commandments and enlighten their minds with the light of Christ for the salvation of the soul and the healing of the body.
Lord, bless them at home and at school, on the road and in every place of Your dominion.
Lord, protect them under Your holy shelter from a flying bullet, poison, fire, from a deadly ulcer and vain death.
Lord, protect them from all visible and invisible enemies, from all illness, cleanse them from all filth and ease their mental suffering.
Lord, grant them the grace of Your Holy Spirit for many years of life, health, chastity.
Lord, increase and strengthen their mental abilities and physical strength, which You have given them, Your blessing for a pious and, if You wish, family life and shameless childbearing.
Lord, grant to me, Thy unworthy and sinful servant (name), a parental blessing on my children and Thy servant at this time of morning, day, night for the sake of Thy name, for Thy Kingdom is eternal, omnipotent and omnipotent. Amen.
Prayer to protect children from evil spirits
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, protect my child (name) with your holy angels and prayers, our all-pure Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary; by the power of the honorable cross; Saint Michael the Archangel of God and other disembodied heavenly powers; Holy Prophet and Forerunner of the Baptist of the Lord John the Theologian; Hieromartyr Cyprian and Martyr Justina; St. Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, wonderworker; Saint Leo, Bishop of Catania; Saint Joseph of Belgorod; Saint Mitrophan of Voronezh; St. Sergius, Hegumen of Radonezh; St. Seraphim of Sarov, wonderworker; holy martyrs Faith, Nadezhda, Lyubov and their mother Sophia; Saints and righteous Godfather Joachim and Anna and all your saints, help me, deliver my child (name) from all the slander of the enemy, from all evil, witchcraft, sorcery, sorcery and from crafty people, so that they may not be able to cause him any harm.
Lord, with the light of your radiance, save my child (name) in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, in the coming sleep, and by the power of your grace, turn away and remove all evil wickedness, acting at the instigation of the devil. Whoever thought and did - return their evil back to the underworld, for yours is the kingdom and power and glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Prayer for children's birthdays
Lord God, Master of everything visible and invisible! All the days and years of the life of my child (name) depend on Your holy will. I thank You, Most Merciful Father, for allowing him to live another year. Extend Your mercies to my child (name), prolong his life in good deeds and in peace with all his relatives and in harmony with all his neighbors. Give him plenty of the fruits of the earth and everything that is necessary to satisfy his needs. Especially cleanse his conscience, strengthen him on the path of salvation, so that by walking along it, after a long life in this world, passing into eternal life, he may be worthy to be the heir of Your Heavenly Kingdom. Lord Himself, bless the year that begins and all the days of its life. Amen.
About the welfare of children in society, about a good position
Prayer to Saint Mitrofan of Voronezh
Oh, all-praiseworthy saint of Christ and miracle worker Mitrofan. Accept this small prayer from us sinners to you, and with your warm intercession, beg our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, that having looked upon us mercifully, He will grant us forgiveness of our sins, voluntary and involuntary, and, by His great Mercy, will deliver us from troubles and sorrows , sorrows and illnesses, mental and physical, that support us: may the earth give fruitfulness, and all that is needed for the benefit of our life; May He grant us to end this temporary life in repentance, and may He grant us, sinners and unworthy, His Heavenly Kingdom, to glorify His endless mercy with all the saints, with His beginningless Father and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.
Prayers of a believing mother to a merciful God
about the lost souls in the womb
(I - IV)
I
Prayer to the Lord God
Remember, O Lord who loves mankind, the souls of Your departed servants, the infants who in the womb of Orthodox mothers died accidentally from accidental actions or from a difficult birth, or from some carelessness, or who were deliberately ruined and therefore did not receive Holy Baptism.
Baptize them, O Lord, in the sea of Thy bounties and save with Thy ineffable grace, and forgive me, a sinner (name), who committed the murder of a baby in my womb and do not deprive Thy mercy.
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Lord, have mercy on my children who died in my womb, for my faith and my tears, for the sake of Your mercy, Lord, do not deprive them of Your Divine Light. Amen.
Prayer 1 to the Lord Jesus Christ
O Master, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God! Much of Your goodness, for our sake and for our salvation, man was clothed in flesh and crucified and buried, and with Your blood renewing our corrupted nature, accept my repentance for sins and hear my words: I have sinned, Lord, in heaven and before You, in word, in deed , soul and body, and the thoughts of my mind, I transgressed Your commandments, did not listen to Your command, I angered Your goodness, my God, but as Your creation exists, I do not despair of salvation, but I boldly come to Your immeasurable Compassion and pray to You:
God! In peace, give me a contrite heart and accept me as I pray and give me the thought of confessing my sins, give me tears of compunction, Lord, let me, by Thy grace, make a good beginning. Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, the fallen one, and remember me, Thy sinful servant, in Thy Kingdom, ever and ever. Amen.
Prayer 2 to the Lord Jesus Christ
O God, Most Merciful Christ Jesus, Redeemer of sinners, for the sake of the salvation of the human race, You left us, O All-Merciful, glorious Heaven, and You moved into this deplorable and sinful vale. You took Your Divine shoulder to bear our infirmities, and You bore our illnesses; You, O Holy Sufferer, were wounded for our sins and tormented for our iniquities, and therefore we, O Lover of Mankind, offer our humble prayers to You: accept them, O Most Gracious Lord, and condescend to our weaknesses and do not remember our sins , and turn away the angry intention to avenge our sins from us.
By Thy All-Honorable Blood, having renewed our fallen nature, renew, O Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, us, in the ashes of our sins, and comfort our hearts with the joy of Thy forgiveness. With a cry and immeasurable tears of repentance, we fall at the feet of Your Divine mercy: cleanse us all. Our God, by Your Divine grace from all the untruths and iniquities of our life. May we, in the holiness of Your love for mankind, praise Your all-holy name, with the Father, and the Most Good, and the Life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary
Open the doors of mercy for us, Blessed Mother of God, who hope in You, so that we may not perish, but may we be delivered from troubles by You. You are the salvation of the Christian race.
Rejoice, One Most Pure Mother of the One Creator, Lord, God and Savior of ours, Jesus Christ!
Be my Intercessor on the day of the terrible trial, when I appear before the Throne of the Unfeigned Judge, so that I may be delivered from fiery baptism through Your prayers, O Blessed One. Most Holy Theotokos, save us! Amen.
Parents' prayer for children
God and Father, Creator and Preserver of all creatures! Grace my poor children) with Your Holy Spirit, may He kindle in them the true fear of God, which is the beginning (names) of wisdom and direct prudence, according to which whoever acts, his praise abides forever. Bless them with true knowledge of You, keep them from all idolatry and false teaching, make them grow in true and saving faith and all piety, and may they abide in them constantly to the end.
Grant them a believing, obedient, humble heart and mind, so that they may grow in years and grace before God and before people. Plant in their hearts love for Your Divine Word, so that they may be reverent in prayer and in worship, respectful to the ministers of the Word and sincere in their actions, modest in their movements, chaste in their morals, true in their words, faithful in their deeds, diligent in their studies. , happy in the performance of their duties, reasonable and righteous towards all people.
Keep them from all the temptations of the evil world, and let not evil society corrupt them. Do not allow them to fall into uncleanness and unchastity, so that they do not shorten their own lives and do not offend others.
Be their protector in any danger, so that they do not suffer sudden destruction.
Make it so that we do not see in them dishonor and shame for ourselves, but honor and joy, so that Your Kingdom may be multiplied by them and the number of believers will increase, and may they be in heaven around Your Table, like heavenly olive branches, and may they reward You with all the elect honor, praise and glorification through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Prayer to the Mother of God
O Most Holy Lady Virgin Theotokos, save and preserve under Your shelter my children (names), all youths and young women and infants, baptized and nameless and carried in their mother’s womb. Cover them with the robe of Your motherhood, keep them in the fear of God and in obedience to their parents, pray to my Lord and Your Son to grant them what is useful for their salvation. I entrust them to Your maternal supervision, for You are the Divine Protection of Your servants.
Mother of God, lead me into the image of Your heavenly motherhood. Heal the mental and physical wounds of my children (names) caused by my sins. I entrust my child entirely to my Lord Jesus Christ and Your, Most Pure, heavenly protection. Amen.
– Elena, the topics you are currently dealing with are very sensitive and loud. Every week there is news about the removal of children. Are there really more cases like this or are we starting to see them more in the media?
– The media started talking about it more. If you look at the statistics, then, on the contrary, in recent years there has been a decline in the number of cases of both seizures and deprivation of parental rights. The peak was in the early 2000s, when these numbers were huge. Even now, from my point of view, they are excessive, shamefully large for our country, despite the decline.
We have more than 30 thousand cases of deprivation of parental rights a year, officially about 3 thousand seizures, but these statistics do not include children who, in real life, are taken from their families by law enforcement agencies due to an act of neglect. We have practically no exact statistics on police seizures, but it may correlate with the number of children in institutions– there are fewer of them too. However, we are still talking about tens of thousands of children who are removed from their families. With such numbers, one or two stories could be written every day.
It is precisely because the media began to raise these topics that not only the public, not only parents, who are sometimes overly frightened, but also the state began to pay attention to them. This is the correct story: now they have begun to say that this is impossible, that the legislation and practice that we have are truly flawed. That there are big problems with the way we work with families, how decisions are made that a family cannot raise their child for various reasons.
Why are children actually selected?
– Are we taking any action at all to work with the family? You write and speak a lot, and your foundation works a lot in the area of family support. You try to help your family for as long as possible - as much as possible. But in the public consciousness there is such a stereotype: if there is a problem, then they will immediately come and take the child away if there are not enough tangerines in the refrigerator.
– We do not know of a real situation where someone would be taken away due to a lack of oranges or tangerines. But there are situations when a family lives in difficult conditions, for example, in winter they have no heating - it is clear that, on the one hand, this is an obvious threat, you can really freeze and get sick.
On the other hand, instead of these people with children being at least temporarily accommodated in a hostel, because it is cold not only for the children, but also for the parents, the children may be taken away. Unfortunately, there are cases when the living conditions of a child become the reason for selection.
My personal opinion -There is one and only reason why it is really possible and necessary to save a child from a family: when he is threatened with real violence there, when he is being cruelly treated.
I would like, of course, that no parent could offend their child, unfortunately, this is not the case. Alas, sometimes it is parents who kill and rape their own children. It is precisely because such cases occur that in all countries of the world there is a state policy regarding the protection of children's rights. For some unknown reason, we use the term “juvenile justice”, which is about something completely different – about juvenile courts.
Politics related to the right of the state to interfere in the family exist everywhere, and our country is no exception. Soviet legislation of the 20-30s was very similar to today's, even more stringent. There were even more reasons why the state could find parents poorly fulfilling their parental responsibilities.
Soviet Russia was not anything special; at that time, legislation related to the protection of children’s rights was being formed in absolutely all countries. Before this, in previous centuries, the concept of protecting children's rights as a legislative norm practically did not exist. However, shortly before this, it was generally possible to own people, buy, sell, and forcibly separate families. So the idea that there was some kind of golden age, and then Soviet legislation came and ruined everything, is a complete illusion.
Photo by Anna Danilova
Many social relations are changing - women gain the rights to education and to vote. Then children have at least the right to life, which the state protects in a situation where a parent becomes a threat. It is impossible to live in a state where there is no such law, where a child cannot be protected, where a parent can rape him, can kill him, and no one has the right to intervene in this situation.
It is clear that in any country there will be certain laws that determine what to do if a child is in danger in his own family, if something bad is being done to him there. Then certain mechanisms and tools arise that help identify this danger. "How do you know? “The neighbor told me.” But we understand that this seems to be not enough.
Why do they beat the little ones?
– In this regard, I immediately remember what they often say about America: I spanked a child because he screamed for a long time, made a scandal, and the neighbors called the social service. In this case, you can imagine how much a two-year-old child can scream because he was not allowed to bite off the pie on the side he wanted, or they cut a cucumber, but he wanted to eat it whole, and he immediately feels uneasy.
“I doubt that’s the case in America.” I understand that this is not very representative - all sorts of TV series and movies, but, nevertheless, quite a lot of educational violence in families is shown there. You need to look at what legislation is there, it varies greatly from state to state. Indeed, there are countries where any physical punishment is prohibited by law. You either accept the rules of the game, or you leave there and live in a country where the rules of the game are different.
It seems to me that any normal parent should understand that hitting your child is unacceptable. Beating a small person who is still completely dependent on you, who trusts you, who loves you... We teach our children not to hit younger ones - this is a normal idea. The youngest for us is our child, he is still completely dependent on us. This is a situation in which an adult should not use his capabilities to the detriment of this child.
It is clear that there are situations when a parent will yell at a child, spank him, or scold him. It is clear that parents should not be afraid that in this situation someone evil will come and take their child away from them because they did not cope differently. When a child runs out onto the roadway, at that moment you will not explain to him: “You know, my friend, there may be different consequences of your actions.” The state cannot and should not take away a child for spanking. Only for violence that truly threatens the life or health of a child. And on the one hand, this should be clear and understandable to both parents and the state, but on the other hand, this should in no way provoke parents to use violence as a measure of education.
– It is clear that, perhaps, it is impossible to beat children and really flog a child with a belt until they bleed, but situations really are different.
– There is no need to flog a child with a belt, whether it bleeds or not. In general, spanking is also a very strange element of education. You won't spank your child when he turns 15, will you? No, you won't. Why? Because he can fight back.
It turns out that you really hit him while he is small, while he cannot answer you. Do you beat a helpless junior because you are older and stronger? Until he learns to fight back? This is truly some kind of horror!
It’s completely abnormal to do this to your children. At the same time, it is clear that there are difficulties, a person can break down, spank, slap in the face. This is not a crime, but one should not assume that beating a child is a normal, ordinary way of parenting.
Because you know, it happens that he lost his temper in such a way that he threw the child onto the concrete floor, and he broke the base of his skull and died. We should not get used to such educational measures that cause pain to the child and do not teach us to restrain ourselves in moments of aggression and anger. This is not a way of parenting - this is a parent who has not yet learned to cope with his own emotions and irritation. It's difficult, but you have to learn.
Who works in guardianship and how
– As I already said, in any country there are laws that determine how the state intervenes in the family. They can be very detailed, describe certain situations, procedures, there can be a million different services. They can be very wide, as we have here.
When the legislation is extremely broad, it means that the decision is left to the discretion of the person who comes to the family on behalf of the state. In our country, all decisions regarding the child’s residence in the family are made by the guardianship authorities. At your own discretion.
– Don't we have any clear algorithm?
“We don’t have an algorithm, we don’t have order, we don’t have criteria, we don’t have special services that would receive specialized education and work with families if a signal is received by the guardianship.”
– Do the guardianship services have any clear understanding of in which case a child can continue to live in this family, and in which case it is dangerous? I return to the notorious oranges in the refrigerator.
– The guardianship authorities have legislation that states that if there is an immediate threat to life and health, they have the right to take away the child. So you come to work in the guardianship authorities. There is no such university specialty, you were not prepared for this anywhere...
– Are these not psychologists?
– There is no requirement that they be psychologists. In general, who is a guardianship officer? This is an official, an administrative worker who makes a huge number of decisions related to housing, parental divorces, various property issues of incapacitated adults, foster families and adoptive parents.
He has the right to make decisions regarding incapacitated adults and any children - not only those whose parents have been deprived of parental rights or who are left without care. For example, children who have a share in an apartment in a situation where their parents divide it among themselves during a divorce. These officials work mainly with the letter of the law. Their task is to protect the rights of children within the framework of all those regulations that contain them. In particular, they have one point where it is written that in the event of an immediate threat to life and health, they will take the child away.
– What is a threat?
“They have to define it.” We don’t even have a legal requirement to have some time for an investigation! How do you determine how you know it is a threat to life and limb? You are not a doctor, you are not a psychologist, you see a family once.
Perhaps at one time it was originally intended that some other work should be carried out before this. The legislator meant that this is the extreme point, and it is set when we have some kind of process before this. There are some other services that respond to some other signals, which is still not terrible, but help is needed.
But all this does not exist as a single process, so a school or just some neighbor can call the police or the guardianship authorities and convey information that, from his point of view, something wrong is happening. The guardian must come and make a decision based on her idea of what is good and what is bad, based on what she sees with her own eyes. And we all have completely different ideas.
Now they are very actively discussing on Facebook the life of a member of the former group “War” who left our homeland, a mother of many children who lives in Europe and leads a rather specific lifestyle there. In the comments there are many of our fellow citizens who are so worried about the fact that our children are being taken away from their families, and there they are actively shouting: “Take it away! Social services urgently, guardianship, call the police, save, help!”
This is the main commentary on her stories about how she and her children live. Why? Because in our minds, her lifestyle with children is wrong. We have a certain philistine idea of what is right.
It turns out that any person can judge whether any other person can be a parent. But it can’t really be like that! It is clear that, basically, completely ordinary people work in wards, not monsters, not villains, with our usual idea of what is right and what is wrong. Therefore, they usually look at things that probably wouldn’t seem right to you: for example, if it’s a brothel, if there are citizens around who are heavily intoxicated with alcohol or drugs.
The bulk of the situations that the guardianship authorities and the police are faced with are still not oranges, these are really situations where people already live in deep dependence, and it is difficult, when you see this, not to think that it is bad for the child there.
It `s naturally.
Can children live with cockroaches?
– Of course, there are situations where there is no alcoholism, but people live quite marginally. We have a foster family with four children. They live in an apartment together with a drinking grandmother, who was once deprived of rights to the mother of these children, with her brother and sister, who also drink. They have one room where the six of them live.
And when we first met this family, we came to them– In the apartment, cockroaches walked in two layers, because there are so many of them that one crawls along the wall, and another overlaps on top of it. We lived with this family, I don’t remember exactly, but there were more than twenty cats, more than ten dogs, there were also some hamsters and chinchillas. They love animals very much and quite consciously surround themselves with these animals in these conditions.
You are part of such a family. There is a smell of alcohol from relatives, there is generally a very specific smell there. A small child is walking, there are cat bowls with food, he takes something from there and eats it. What is the impression most people get? They see that they urgently need to remove the children from there, right?
– The cockroaches should probably be removed first. Yes, the picture is scary.
- This is the picture. What do we usually not pay attention to in this picture? How the children are doing there and what kind of relationship they have with their parents. It is clear that we look with our eyes, but we do not know how to look with our hearts and minds. We know with our eyes - we are designed that way, and we sense the corresponding smell with our nose.
When we came to this family, it turned out that the guardianship twice applied for deprivation of rights, and the court refused twice. This is nonsense - people live in very poor conditions, and the court refuses twice. We began to look into the documents, and it turned out that every time people who knew this situation, teachers from school, someone else came to the court and brought a testimonial where they wrote that the parents love their children very much, the children are very attached to their parents, they have good relationship with each other. There were no beatings and the parents were not accused of abuse. The guardianship came, saw all this, said: “Ah-ah! We’ll deprive you urgently,” but the court refused.
This generally rarely happens: usually the court completely agrees with the competent opinion of the guardianship and does not make any decisions itself. In this story, people saw this human element, the quality of the relationship between parent and child, they were hooked by it, and they made their decision based on this. This rarely happens in our country, unfortunately.
In fact, the key point is in family relationships. Conditions are something that can be changed. Cleanliness can be purchased. Cockroaches can be poisoned.
My family and I eventually agreed that they would give away most of their animals. It was very difficult for them, because they knew each of their cats and dogs by name, they knew the history of each of them - but they do not have a private house, this is a problem for all the neighbors. In the end, they did it for the sake of the children.
Such things can be changed to some extent. There is never such magic that a family that has lived for many years in similar conditions, like in the movies, will suddenly become neat in an ideal Moscow apartment. There will still be some non-ideal conditions there, but they will be better, they will be more tolerant in terms of some sanitary ideas, norms and rules, and at the same time the children will remain with their parents.
What happens to a child who is taken away?
– Tell me, do guardians make a lot of mistakes in terms of confiscation? From time to time, news comes across that children were first taken away and then returned. How can you imagine the hell that happens to a child when he is taken away from his mother in hysterics and then placed in an unknown place? He’s already used to it, he lives like this, he knows: this is his mom, dad and his entire environment.
“Unfortunately, we look with our eyes; we do not take into account the most key story associated with relationships, with the child’s feelings, with his understanding of how the world works. When he lives in a family, this world is always primarily focused on the main adults who take care of him - mom, dad, grandmother or aunt with whom he lives. This is called attachment. This word is gradually entering our everyday language; twenty years ago it was not much used in this context - about the significant relationships that develop between parents and children.
Within the framework of the law, there is no concept of error - they simply either take it or don’t take it. There are no halftones. If they take it away, they will sort it out later. They can return it. It's not that mistakes happen, but that there is no normal procedure. Which would be based primarily on the interests of the child, on the idea of what is happening to the child, what he feels, what could harm him.
– Nobody cares.
– It’s not that I don’t care. You immediately start to imagine cruel people who don't care, and people just don't understand it or they don't have the tools, they don't have the opportunity. It is not included in the norms. For example, there are a number of countries where it is written: if you suddenly need to pick up a child, you need to find any of his relatives, call them and deliver the child there.
Or, if you need to take him to a government agency, then you need him to take his favorite toy, his personal belongings, so that they explain to him what is happening. It is clear that no one should be grabbed by the hand or dragged into the car without explaining anything. But we have nothing that would regulate all these situations. The guardianship just has to make a decision, that’s all. And take the child to a government institution.
– In some countries, the child remains in the same school, in the same class, in almost the same environment, as far as I know.
“We are the country where it should be like this by law.” Our legislation has changed. If a child is now removed and placed in an orphanage, then it is written in black and white that the child must be placed as close as possible to his place of residence, the same school, the same leisure facilities must be maintained.
Unfortunately, we have a problem with the fact that what is written is one thing, and what is done is another matter.In practice, children are still distributed like logs into the first available space. For some reason they take me to the hospital before that.
No one thinks about how a child feels when his whole world, his entire habitual way of life, breaks down.
He loses not only his mother and father, who, perhaps, could not cope with something or were actually rapists towards the child. He loses everything: he no longer has anything, no familiar people, no familiar things.
- It turns out that a child is placed in prison...
– Essentially, yes, our child has been a victim several times. Let’s say there was some kind of violence that a child suffered in the family, then we immediately break everything for him and push him into an isolated environment. And if there was no violence, there were some poor living conditions, insufficient parental competence, which the child did not particularly understand...
This big guy already understands that if he walks around with lice all the time, it’s not very healthy, because everyone at school endlessly looks askance at him. When a child is small, he does not understand such things. He understands whether there is a mother who takes care of him or not. There is that mother who smiles at him and takes him in her arms, or she doesn’t.
Again, it may turn out that the mother does not smile and does not take her in her arms. We had a story when guardianship found a newborn baby in a box under the sofa where his mother had stuffed him. She didn’t take him out of there, didn’t feed him for several days, he almost died there.
There are all sorts of situations, but basically for a child these are close people to whom he is accustomed, whom he loves - and now he is torn from everything. They don’t explain to him why, what happened, why he was grabbed and taken somewhere. They usually tell him: “You are now going to the hospital, to a sanatorium, to one place.” It's still good if they tell him something. It happens that they stuff you into a car and drive away in silence. The only thing they tell him is: “Don’t yell!” - something like that. We have no understanding of how the child feels, that this is traumatic for him.
Photo: Charitable Foundation “Volunteers to help orphans”
What do healthy children do in hospitals?
– We also have a completely stupid procedure that forces a child in this situation, which is as scary, stressful and incomprehensible as possible, to be taken alone to an empty place. If they bring him to a shelter, they put him in an isolation ward or in a quarantine block, if they don’t have an isolation ward, that is, in a lonely space where there are no other children, because you never know what he’s sick with.
Not only are there no other children there, there is often no permanent teacher there either. At best, there will be a nurse's post outside; she is not in this room with him. She will come to him to bring food, take his temperature - and that’s all.
Or the child goes directly from the family to the hospital, where there are no conditions for caring for children. There is absolutely no one in the hospital room who will sit with him. There he wants to cry, scream, ask: “What will happen next? What's happened? Where are my parents, why am I here?
“I remember when, at the age of seven, I found myself in a hospital box alone, they came to see me once every two hours. I knew what, where and why. My mother brought me there. But I still cried constantly for the first two days there.
- Imagine that you don’t understand what happened, you were just torn out - and now you’re here. Why here? Nobody here. Very scary, very worrying. A child is such an object, he needs to be examined, you never know what he is sick with. In some other countries, when a child is found on the highway at night, for example, he is taken to a foster family or a small group home. Nobody is afraid there.
We have such a fear of infections, diseases, epidemics that sometimes there is a feeling that we are completely sick with obsessive-compulsive syndrome. Germs, germs all around – it’s such a horror! This is so much worse than the real trauma we inflict on the child...
This can be organized humanly. There is no worse potential infection than what we have been doing to these children for years, causing them incredible trauma. We then grow up as adults who are afraid of doctors, afraid of hospitals, afraid of being alone, but don’t know why they are afraid.
Dad killed mom: who is to blame
“It’s clear that this is a severe trauma for the child.” At the same time, there are many situations when we read in the news that a father hacked a mother to death with an ax in front of his children. It turns out that at some points they went too far and for some reason they took it away without understanding it. And in some moments they overlooked it, maybe, on the contrary, they should have “removed” dad a long time ago.
– The moment of “overlookedness” needs to be taken very carefully. In orphanages, unfortunately, we saw children who witnessed terrible tragedies in the family. It hasn't always been a story that can be seen because the family lives behind closed doors. If they live in a more or less good high-rise building, where the walls are not gutta-percha, and even more so in a private house, then you can’t really hear what’s going on there.
Sometimes it’s really a story where dad beat mom, mom called the police - everyone knew, but no one did anything to help. And sometimes it is one-time, especially if we are talking about people with a borderline mental state.
I believe that we should not blame guardianship for something happening in the family. If they are to blame for this situation, it means that in every family we should have a special web camera from the guardianship authorities, so that they can remotely monitor what is happening with you, and, if anything happens, they will go out - there are no other options to find out what is happening with you inside.
But society and our valiant police agencies are often very much to blame for this.
Stories where dad killed mom are most often stories about long-term violence, everyone knew about it, but the violence was not against the child, but against the mother. And my mother, perhaps, even wrote statements to the police, which were not allowed to proceed because of “family squabbles.”
And loved ones who saw everything, but believed that people would figure it out themselves. Or, according to the new law, they imposed a fine, which dad paid from his salary, became even more angry, and the matter ended badly.
In this situation, the question is rather why we still do not have a normal law on domestic violence. There should be a protection order when, as a rule, it is not the victim who is isolated, but the one who commits violence. There must be real courses of help, because most family conflicts are due to the fact that people do not know how to engage in dialogue. Any problem leads to aggression, irritation, anger, which a person does not know how to restrain, or he holds it in for a long time, and then it comes out in a very aggressive form.
If you look at our prisons, a huge number of women are imprisoned for killing their husbands. As teenagers, we went with an Orthodox group to women’s colonies - this is the main article. Most often there was long-term domestic violence, and then at some point the woman could not stand it, and it ended in murder. We have not studied this topic at all.
What to do about domestic violence
– We say that there is no need to hit children, also so that the child does not grow up with the feeling that this is some way of solving a problem: when you don’t like a person’s behavior, you can model it by hitting the person.
It would seem, what's wrong with that? My dad beat me, but I grew up to be a man. I grew up as a man and I beat my wife. Why? Because she behaves incorrectly. I learned from childhood: if a person behaves incorrectly, then his behavior is regulated by violence.
– It turns out that in our country a woman in such a situation is essentially not protected.
- Yes.
“Recently there was a big story about a woman who had killed her husband being imprisoned. He had beaten her for many years before this. It turns out that this is not self-defense?
- This is a very difficult story. We have many wards who ran away from home because it was simply unsafe to stay there. Sometimes the husband started beating the child too.
In these situations, firstly, we have no obvious legal protection. Secondly, she runs away, and the man lives well in the apartment, he has no problems. She's on the street, she has nowhere to go. State crisis centers work as follows: a person can live there for two months. Where will she and the child go in two months? How will this situation change? She doesn't change at all.
We had a ward for whom we raised funds for a room. Her husband beat her for many years and drove her blind. He beat her and then locked her at home so that she could not go out and write a statement. When he calmed down, he began to release her, but by this point she no longer had such open injuries that could be shown. She went to the police several times, but could not prove anything. She filed a complaint against him twice.
In this situation, it turns out that, unfortunately, there seem to be laws, police, and some kind of protection. In reality, it works very poorly. In addition, police officers have a belief, based on their experience, that such women are more likely to withdraw their reports. Therefore, they themselves very often, we hear this from every second woman, say from the doorway: “Well, why am I going to take it from you? You will come and pick it up later. Figure it out yourself."
In a situation where a person is in danger, he comes to the only place where he can be protected, and there he hears this or some kind of giggles and giggles about something that you and your husband did not share. When a person is in danger, nothing but the desire to help him and protect him should arise in any public servant, be he a police officer, social services worker, or a doctor.
This should be a reaction at the level of automaticity. You'll figure it out later. She could have cheated, they will make up later - it’s just none of your business. Now a person has come to you who is in danger, you must help him, and everything else, all your thoughts that maybe she is lying, that they have such a strange love-carrot with elements of sadomasochism - this is generally everything doesn't matter. The investigation will begin later, when everyone has calmed down and is safe.
In our country, this has not been worked out at all, not only from the point of view of legislation, but also from the point of view of practice and understanding of those people who work on the ground. Nothing will change until every police officer in our country believes that violence, including domestic violence, is important, and people need to be protected from it, and not some kind of nonsense that can be brushed aside.
What happens to refuseniks
– Elena, I know that you came to charity to take care of orphans after you and your little daughter spent time in the hospital and looked at refuseniks. You recently wrote on your Facebook blog that you ask for information about where there are still such children in hospitals. It seemed that this problem had been resolved; this was no longer the case. Isn't that the case again?
– I try to be very rational about what I write and do, but this post turned out to be emotional, the cup was simply overflowing. Of course, the situation is very different from what it was in the early 2000s when we started. There are fewer children, and they do not spend such long periods in medical institutions. In many regions, children now have nannies, and most of these nannies are paid by NGOs that work in these regions. But the problem has still not been fundamentally solved, even though we have succeeded in changing the legislation regarding children who are in hospitals.
What does our situation look like? The child may be removed from the family; the family itself can refuse to raise a child either in the maternity hospital or later; a child can be found on the street alone, and he has no family - but all these situations always ended in a hospital.
This child needs to be placed somewhere. It was assumed that he might be sick with something, and he was sent to the hospital for examination. In the list of documents with which the child was sent to an organization for orphans, “medical examination” was written, which means that somewhere he had to undergo it in advance. The children were sent for this examination for a completely indefinite period. At some point, somewhere these deadlines began to be limited to a month, but in reality this was not observed.
The point is that most of these children were not sick. The fact that a child lives in a family where the mother drinks does not mean that he is sick. The fact that a child walks alone on the street and is not very closely watched by his parents does not mean that he is sick. If the mother abandoned the child in the maternity hospital, most often he is actually healthy or has those pathologies that will be with him all his life and do not require him to be in the hospital at all.
– In general, even just from a blood test you can already understand almost everything.
- Fluorography plus a blood test - and you already understand that your child, at least, will not infect anyone with anything terrible. And all sorts of very, very rare diseases are also very, very rare, and all of us sitting in this room can have them, the risk is about the same. As a result, a completely healthy child was in the hospital. Firstly, he caught every possible hospital infection there, and because of this, he then lay there longer and longer.
Let's say a child is 11 years old, he was taken away from his family, he wanders around the ward, he is bored, he feels bad, everything that we talked about is happening to him, he is stressed, he is crying there - but he can cope with it. What if he is a newborn? Besides the fact that he feels bad and is stressed, he doesn’t know how to eat, he can’t change his own diaper, he can’t do anything at all. He can only lie down.
When I first went to the hospital with my child, I saw exactly this.
I found myself next to the chambers of children who lay alone and did not even cry continuously, but howled like animals. It was the sound of dull despair when you realize that no one will ever come to you.
In fact, of course, nurses approached them, but not as much as a small child needed.
– When there is one nurse on the floor with boxes... I remember the situation when she comes, starts feeding the floor, and by lunchtime she feeds the rest of the floor with an ice-cold breakfast.
– It’s good if it’s for lunch and not for dinner, because at that moment there were a lot of children. Now they have begun to write about this, then little was written about it, but in reality the situation has changed greatly in the opposite direction: then there were from 20 to 30 children in the hospital, now there are no more than 6-10. Their number has decreased by 3-4 times.
Why is silence worse than a child's cry?
– At that moment, when I was there, no nurse could have coped. The nurses were, of course, also busy with those children who were really sick and needed some procedures - this is their functionality, they have scheduled responsibilities. And besides, there are babies there who need to be fed, diapers changed and sat with. This is a baby, you can’t just leave him and not approach him for 3-4 hours between changing diapers.
Can you imagine what a small child is like, just lying in bed alone, without an adult, without care, without hands?
One of the scariest things I have seen in my life is how these children stop calling for an adult.
We started visiting hospitals in the Moscow region and Moscow; I personally visited more than 20 hospitals where there were such children. One of the worst was the hospital, where there was complete silence. In ours they were crying, because here they were still approached. They knew they could come, and they were desperate, but they kept calling.
I came to the hospital, where there were about thirty children and that same one nurse on the floor, during feeding. The children were there for quite a long time. Nowadays they really most often do not last more than a month, but then it was months.
The children knew that feeding was around this time. How does the baby behave before feeding? He begins to actively show his dissatisfaction with the fact that he has a need to eat, but it is not being satisfied right now. He starts yelling. We walked through the wards where healthy six to eight month old babies lay absolutely silent. Their faces were so tense!
The nurse took a bottle and placed it on the pillow next to each baby, because she could not feed everyone - she was alone, and there were thirty of them. He grabbed her with his teeth and began to suck in such silent tension, because over these six months he had already had the experience that if now he did anything - a sound, a movement - she would fall and spill past. And all he needs is to be able to suck out the milk without moving at all. It really is such a nightmare! You understand that what they did to these children will stay with them for the rest of their lives.
What is needed to minimize trauma to children?
– Why did they do this to these little children? Because no one thought about it. We just didn’t think that we needed separate personnel for this examination, if for some reason we decided that they needed to be examined in hospitals. That this staff is not about feeding them and changing diapers, but about caring for this child individually. Maximum one adult for two babies, no more. And that’s it, he should always be with them.
As a result, these individual posts still do not exist in many hospitals. Only a few regions, the Moscow region, for example, have added such personnel to their staff, while most of the nannies that exist in the regions are paid for by funds.
And most importantly, the legislation has already changed, and today children who are removed from their families or abandoned by their parents must be placed immediately in an organization for orphans, where it cannot be said that everything is in chocolate, but at least there are educators there . And he needs to be examined on an outpatient basis - like any child, taken by the hand to the clinic.
The situation there is a little different: there are no hospital-acquired infections that can be contracted by a completely healthy child. The teacher should take him by the hand for examination or, if he is a baby, carry him to the clinic - as usual, we examine our children who are not sick. Hospitals are not a place for examination at all, they are a place for treatment.
It turned out that we ourselves also missed one point - those children who are brought by the police. Maybe their mother will come and pick them up in the evening. Maybe they will be sent to a shelter. They were not included in this order of the Ministry of Health that I am talking about, that is, legislative changes are required so that these children are not taken to hospitals. Or, if there is at least one such child in the hospital, there would be an individual post right there.
They write to me about this regularly. In some places we are trying to connect, in some places we do not have enough resources, because, despite the image that the “Refuseniks” will come and the problems will be solved, we are a relatively small organization. We have our own specific projects. We have a limited number of employees. We don't have enough hands.
After another letter about children who are lying alone in the hospital without care, I simply ran out of patience, because this is impossible! Fourteen years have passed since we raised this problem and made it public. It would seem that it was necessary to solve it immediately, but everyone simply stubbornly forgets about these small children in hospitals.
Photo: Charitable Foundation “Volunteers to help orphans” (www.otkazniki.ru)
It seems to me that today - no matter how much money it costs - the Ministry of Health or the Ministry of Social Affairs needs to take responsibility for ensuring that in the situation of at least one child without parents in the medical system there are always individual posts. And then gradually decide by law so that children do not end up there at all. We have a clinic for examination.
How children from orphanages are treated
– There is also a separate category of orphans in hospitals. These are those who are not newly identified, but already living in orphanages. Who actually ended up in the hospital for treatment. We are talking about young children, we are talking about children with severe developmental disabilities.
They, too, most often go to bed alone, because it is not possible for the orphanage to snatch a staff unit, when there is one teacher for six children, and put them with one child. There is simply no such possibility physically. And a small child either lies alone or does not go to the hospital. This is also a disaster.
We encountered children who were not operated on in time. For example, a cleft lip is the simplest thing. If this defect is eliminated at an early age, then no one even knows that the person had it. If this is not done on time, the operation will leave marks at an older age. We saw these children who were not operated on on time, because the hospital did not accept them for surgery without an accompanying person, and the orphanage could not provide one.
Imagine this - a person does not have surgery on time because there is no one to take care of him!
When the state takes away a child or the parent himself abandons the child, the state seems to say: “I undertake the obligation to provide the child with care and attention. And I, as a state, as a regulator, will definitely do this better than that unlucky parent who caused some harm to the child or simply failed to cope with something. I’m big and smart, I decided that I would take him for myself and continue to take care of him.” How? So he ends up alone in a hospital bed. So that he does not receive the necessary medical interventions on time.
Of course, we understand that there are a lot of problems there, and they are often associated with optimization and savings on financing, but it seems to me that there are things that are shameful to save on. Save money on something else. Don’t hold an extra festival, clear away the clouds at the parade, let us stand in the rain, but you simply can’t skimp on children.
How to make sure no one suffers
– What are the most expected and necessary changes in your area right now? if you had unlimited possibilities?
– Of course, the most important thing is a general support system for all families who live in this territory. Not only those for whom everything is already so bad that their children are taken away from them or they themselves abandon them, but in a situation where a child simply appears in a family, he should have a completely obvious opportunity to remain calmly in it.
To do this, in every territory of our country, which is large and very difficult in terms of relief, scale and characteristics, in every place where a child could theoretically be born, where people live, there must be an accessible school, kindergarten, leisure and medical institution, work for parents and housing. These basic things should be there.
The state must guarantee that if there is a village called Rodnik, there is work in Rodnik; if there is no work in Rodnik, then it will organize transport to the nearest place where there is work. To give children the opportunity not to travel 70 kilometers to school, let it be a junior or even a secondary school for 5 people, then they can start traveling somewhere. People should have the opportunity to independently provide for their lives economically and generally humanly.
– Live, work and get treatment.
– Live, work, get treatment, study, teach children. And there should be some kind of leisure, this is also important. To prevent people from using alcohol as their only way of leisure, they must have a place and opportunity to relax in some other way.
You can invest in people themselves doing this, for example, organizing some municipal competitions for organizing leisure time, let people take this municipal money themselves, show their initiative and think from below what they need - a sports ground, a fitness club, library with gatherings, folk choir. Of course, if people themselves have not organized themselves, then the state must be the initiator of this whole story. And if they show initiative, do not hinder, but support.
The second story is when everything is bad. There must be a built-in social system associated with the individualization of the response to a specific case. There is a family, it turns to social protection, or neighbors apply in its interests, a person arrives whose task is not to discover whether you are a criminal or not, but to understand what is happening to you and make a decision together with you. “Nothing about us without us” - this applies not only to people with disabilities, but in general to any groups of people in relation to whom any social work is carried out.
It is clear that there will also be situations when we actually need to protect children from their parents. Not when we take them away because the parents couldn’t cope with something, and we don’t want to help them, or their life is bad, but when there is real violence, real neglect of the child’s needs, not from a lack of resources. In this situation, we must have the fastest possible response, and the child must first go to the family.
Again, there is not a single country where there are enough temporary guardianship families. Orphanages and group stay institutions in one form or another are everywhere; no matter what they tell you about countries where “they don’t exist”, they exist. It may be some kind of private small group home for six children, but it will be there. We need to do the same.
Let there be small family-type group homes, no more than 12 children per home. Anything more than 12 means barracks, where it will actually be very difficult to do anything. Well, OK, 20, we are big, we love everything big. 20– This is already a big house, that's the maximum. The whole story there will be based on social and psychological assistance, on the rehabilitation of children and their speedy return or placement with a family.
If it is possible to somehow restore the parents - they, for example, are in a heavy drinking binge, but theoretically they can be taken out of there, and then they want to be with their children - then we work with the parents. If they almost killed this child and kept him tied up in an iron box, it is clear that we will not return him.
You need to quickly find a family that will take this child so that he doesn’t stay in this nice house for 12 or 20 children until he is 18 years old, because it still isolates him from society and excludes him from normal social life.
The main story of supporting any family is individual response to crises. It is necessary to clearly distinguish between situations when the family needs support, treats the child well and wants to be with him - and when the family is a danger to the child, treats him badly, and the child suffers from real violence. Now they are not separated in our law: either people are poor, or they are beating a child - approximately the same order of reaction to this, but it should not be that way.
– We practically painted a picture of a bright future.
– We, however, have forgotten children with disabilities, and this is now one of the key categories in orphanages. This means there must be a huge number of services to support those families who are raising children with special needs, and not just some kind of proper medical rehabilitation or timely assistance.
First of all, it is necessary to ensure that the world around such children begins to accept them. They grow, they won’t always be small. This is a school, then some jobs, this is accompanied accommodation. An opportunity for such children to go out into the world and become part of it. Some people may need very little support, but it will make a huge difference in the lives of these children and families. Families also find themselves isolated today.
And there are children with very severe disabilities, they need support until old age, and, therefore, there must be a full cycle of support. We must become a society that knows how to accept people.
When I bought this book (with the same cover as in the photo) in a church shop, I was quietly happy. But of course! It’s always interesting and useful to learn something you don’t know yet or to deepen your existing knowledge. I was expecting a beautiful, unobtrusive spiritual narrative. And the title suggested it:
"Orthodox mom. A manual for the family, with instructions from a priest and advice from a pediatrician."
And I was just waiting for my daughter!
True, as a physician and an Orthodox Christian, I was somewhat perplexed by the announcement on the last page of the cover.
Traditional Russian medicine has never contradicted the teachings of the Orthodox Church. And first of all, this unity lies in love for the sick, in the indispensable adherence to the rule: “Do no harm.”<...>Moms and dads who don’t consider themselves believers can find advice in it.”
Traditional Russian? There is no such thing, but oh well, let it be, since the author wants it that way. “Do no harm” was actually coined by the pagan Hippocrates, what does Orthodoxy have to do with it? But then I just shrugged my shoulders and, joyful, went home to read and educate myself.
From the very first lines of the book I was amazed. And then disgust. Why? Because all medical concepts turned out to be inside out. Such nonsense, supported, moreover, by the words of priests, is very difficult and unpleasant to read. Besides this, the book is also full of stupid statements. I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh when I read these lines:
“the feat of marriage is a feat of martyrdom in the name of the child that the Lord gives,” “every single contraceptive is harmful,” “the mother will agree to die herself or even with the child, but not become his killer
(have an abortion for medical reasons)."
These are just flowers. My eyes almost fell out of their sockets as I continued reading this “spiritual and educational” book. I’m not even talking about the jaw - it just “fell” on the ground, and until the end of reading it “lyed” there... It turns out that
"according to natural laws"
A pregnant woman must immediately end her marital relationship with her husband immediately after conception. And do not start them until the end of the breastfeeding period, otherwise
“voluptuousness will poison the mother’s nature and penetrate into the milk”, “married life is extremely harmful for the baby”,
and in general the milk will disappear, as it turns out...
The book is not only full of such terrible maxims - it is teeming with them! I repeat, I read the book intermittently, it was very difficult for me to perceive the text (although it was written in fairly good literary language), and at times I was ready to bang my head against the wall in connection with the inverted concepts. My medical mind could not come to terms with the statements of “traditional Russian medicine,” and my church-going Orthodox soul could not come to terms with the terrible paraspiritual “rules.”
Maybe the only thing. What is more or less useful for the soul in this book are quotes from the diary of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. True, these quotes are tied to very controversial points in the author’s thoughts. And for some reason he does not remember that the martyr queen wrote “about Happiness in the Family” as a deeply unhappy woman. Yes, yes, it’s unlikely that a wife can be happy when her husband has a favorite (with whom the queen “became friends”); or a mother whose several children have died - can she be completely happy?
At the end of the book there are recipes for Lenten dishes - probably. This is the only thing this opus can boast of.
In general, the book left me with a terribly disgusting impression. How this rubbish got into the church shops - I have not the slightest idea. This is the kind of book that needs to be mercilessly thrown into the fire. To the fire!!! That's what I did with her. I think that in spiritual (and secular) terms the book is simply harmful! This is by no means a soulful read. I don't recommend it to anyone for anything.
Parents who overprotect their children deserve a separate chapter. Often a woman devotes her entire life to raising children. From the moment they are born, all her love and care switches exclusively to them. In this case, the husband becomes like an appendage, a source of material well-being. Sometimes they even look after him - like a cow that gives milk and, accordingly, income.
Such women treat their husband’s infidelity calmly, not seeing any tragedy in it, unless the family is destroyed and there is no material damage. As a rule, they do not hate their husband; they treat him like a naughty child. In general, their husband is somewhere “on the side”. Even when their husbands leave them, they resign themselves quite quickly; they usually do not remarry, devoting themselves to their children and then their grandchildren. And they are promoted in their careers most often for the sake of their children - to give them more.
Already from the first days of a child’s life, the “caring mother” takes up his upbringing, and with special zeal. Care and development according to special systems may be necessary for the mother, but not for the child. She usually does not take into account the child’s desires, needs, abilities and inclinations. Education is carried out through coercion, in conditions of increasing the moral responsibility of the child. Subsequently, the victims of such upbringing are constantly torn apart by contradictions between “should” and “want”...
At first everything looks quite good. The child attends clubs and studios chosen by the mother. But the little man humbles himself and obediently carries out the will of his mother, although at the same time, over time, he unconsciously strives to leave her care. The child, as a pure and trusting being, idealizes his mother, not fully understanding his contradictory feelings. On the one hand, mom loves, on the other, it’s very stuffy in the arms of her love. Such upbringing can lead an adult son or daughter to nervous breakdowns, depression, and dissatisfaction with their life.
The destructiveness of such upbringing manifests itself with all its force when the child, beginning to recognize himself as an independent person, learns to insist on his own. Since the “caring mother” does not give the child will, he cannot develop harmoniously and satisfy his spiritual needs, for example, the need for independence. Then baby gets sick. Both pediatricians and psychotherapists are unanimous in the opinion that almost all diseases arise due to unmet mental needs.
At the level of consciousness, the “caring mother” worries when she sees that the child is sick, but unconsciously she triumphant. Here it is, a lofty goal - to cure a child! So, while the treatment does not produce an effect, the mother’s actions seem completely justified. This is a search for doctors, medicines, psychics, blessed elders or just priests (the options for “rescuers” can be very different).
But if she accidentally brings her child to the priest, to whom, perhaps, the heart of his son (or daughter), who will subsequently become the child’s spiritual father, will help him find support in life, teach him to communicate correctly, then she will do everything to (sometimes to the maximum gently, so that the beloved child would not even guess!) terminate their relationship. After all, if a child finds support in someone else, he will either leave her or stop psychologically depending on her. Deprived of this dependence, she begins to feel worse.
People who have freed themselves from such care, who have broken psychological dependence, begin to feel more natural, freer, and cease to need maternal support, and “caring mothers” are indignant and promise “come and deal with this priest”.
Such a mother will stop at nothing, for her slogan is: “I will do everything for your happiness, provided that you remain unhappy. I will do everything for your recovery, provided that you remain sick.". In the first stages, recovering children develop hostility, even hatred, towards their parents. Then everything goes away, the relationship normalizes... but this requires patience and time.
“Caring mothers” block the spiritual, mental, moral, and physical development of their children. Feeling abandoned, many modern women try to find solace in a child, especially if it is a boy. He becomes the mother’s only support, interlocutor, friend, psychologically taking the place of the husband who has moved away or abandoned her. But a child cannot be assigned to the role of an adult man, he cannot do it! An overloaded psyche can become strained, and, having strained itself, become distorted.
Men who were in a “psychological marriage” with their mother in childhood often never enter into a real marriage, therefore, they may not have anyone born to them at all. Blinded and suppressed by their mother, they do not find a worthy match. If the mother decides to marry her son, she will certainly select the bride herself, who will later be assigned the role of a maid. The mother will never give up her place as the mistress in such a family.
Today, unfortunately, quite a significant part of our youth is in such captivity. Many mothers raise their sons alone. And, as a result, a manifestation of the mother’s strong emotional attachment to her son. And if a son was once saved from death by his mother in childhood, she becomes so attached to him, so envelops her son in her care that in the future he may not marry.
“In nature there is such a type of mothers - and woe to their sons! A witty and subtle poet, and in life a courageous and brave man, Count Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (one of the creators of Kozma Prutkov), suffered until his death, not daring to marry the girl he loved, because his beloved maman did not want him to marry.
Truly, love is evil. In this case, not according to the proverb “you will love a goat,” but evil literally, primitively. Sincerely believing that she loves her son, such a mother in reality loves exclusively herself - and sacrifices his fate, his own happiness, his life as a sacrifice to this love.
I knew one elderly - already gray - university teacher who lived his whole life with his mother. For many years she did not get out of bed, and he provided all her care. You don't need to have much imagination to imagine what it was like - provided that he worked and was not at home all day. When his mother died, he was left with only students. They replaced his children, grandchildren, family. He went on camping trips with them. You should have seen how he perked up in their surroundings. In turn, they adored him. But then retirement came. And sudden complete loneliness.
The currents of this maternal self-love are so strong that the son completely loses his will, resigns himself and exists with the conviction that he cannot do otherwise. Meanwhile, everything is always possible. There is always something different".
If the son of a “caring mother” gets married, then he cannot understand why, having barely gotten married, he returns to his mother after a month or two. But even upon returning, not every young man finds peace with his mother. A soul striving for freedom begins to look for an independent path in life. Some young men remain completely at the mercy of their mothers, showing infantilism, while the other part still breaks out. Some people leave to study or work in another city, others live in a dormitory or rent an apartment.
It happens that the son seems to have broken away from his mother, but the mysterious connection with her continues and the same youthful infantilism is present in him, but only internal: he behaves like a person completely unprepared for life. Internally His mother never let him go into an independent life. Because of this, he remains attached to her, although he is not aware of this connection. This is manifested in the fact that he absolutely cannot prove himself as a man in anything. He is completely irresponsible, he has no manifestations of will, mentally he still feels himself “under her,” under his mother...
A “caring mother” can have the same relationship with her daughter. When a growing daughter begins to break free from her mother’s emotional embrace (outwardly this manifests itself in the fact that she will contradict her), the mother enters into a very strong, multi-day quarrel with her daughter. Through these quarrels, she only strengthens in her inner desire to keep her daughter with her. And the more the daughter gets out of these bonds, the more the mother controls her. Such a mother does not want her daughter to marry one, another, or a third.
But at some point, being subject to the general rule, the girl is still going to get married. At the same time, the mother certainly wants the young to live with her. Or, if they live in the same city, it is necessary that the daughter visits her mother once a week.
Why does she need all this? It turns out that in this way she little by little, imperceptibly, begins to psychologically separate her daughter from her husband. They begin to find out why the husband is bad, why the son-in-law is bad, why he doesn’t do repairs in the house, why he earns so little. Ultimately, such a mother achieves her goal over a period of time. As a result, the young people get divorced, the mother gets her daughter back and... she is happy again. True, they live in very big quarrels, irreconcilability, sometimes it all ends with the daughter even leaving home. But, nevertheless, the mother is still calm, since she continues to control her daughter and feel like a caring mother. In this communication, her strong-willed nature, her pride, her inner passion, which once appropriated her daughter for herself, turns out to be satisfied.
“The relationship with my mother became a problem for me, and a serious one,” writes a 17-year-old girl. “She constantly interferes in my personal life, trying to protect me from mistakes that she herself once made. I understand that my mother is a person who not only can, but also must advise me, based on her experience and on her knowledge and understanding of me. But recently, these tips have begun to take the form of instructions on the principle “this way and only this way!”
This painfully unbalanced state of the human soul is illustrated by the dream of one young woman. A particular case of her relationship with her mother serves as a metaphor for internal contradictions and reflects the archetypal struggle of heterogeneous principles of the psyche...
The background of the dream is as follows, as far as I can convey it from Tatyana’s words: she, her young husband and newborn child lived with Tatyana’s parents. Her mother sought to implement her ideas about the family way of life, firmly believing in their lack of alternative. The daughter perceived her mother’s activity as a gross intrusion into her privacy, into the life of her own – small, newborn, like a child, family.
Tatyana’s attempts to defend her independence were ridiculed, and she had to listen to a lot of offensive things. Finally, Tatyana - with her husband, daughter in a stroller and a cat in a bag - left home, fortunately there was somewhere to go.
The mother was killed - by the collapse of the ideal of a large family in which she is the mistress, by a terribly empty house, by her daughter’s sudden hostility towards her and by the indifference of her son-in-law, by the disappearance of a long-awaited toy - her granddaughter.
The young couple began to live independently, sharing responsibility for the child and providing for the family. The creative act of liberation (read: growing up and realizing much of what was previously hidden by the veil of infantile attachment to parents) took place...
That's when Tatyana had a dream. The sea waves carry it about a hundred meters from the shore. She sees everything as if she were not immersed in water, but standing on the surface, only Tatyana does not feel her body at all.
The shore is a sheer cliff on which a huge black female silhouette is depicted. “Mother,” Tatyana knows and feels that, although the woman is drawn, she is alive. The flat image is animated even somehow to a more human level of animation. And there is no portrait resemblance to her own mother; her face cannot be seen at all. This is simply Mother.
A voice sounds in Tatiana's head. A confident baritone says: “You can’t be offended by your mother.” And immediately Tatyana understands that since the voice said it, it means it’s true. She doesn’t think about who the voice belongs to, but the indisputability of the truth is as if it had been proclaimed by God.
However, the spoken truth still has to be accepted - not on faith, but in one’s heart, that is, to agree with it, to be imbued with it. And Tatyana knows that this is her last task and goal in life. That she will continue to rush here on the waves until she manages to accomplish this.
And so, as Tatiana conscientiously tries to “feel” more and more into the meaning of the phrase, the wave carrying her on the crest accelerates more and more, rushing the girl onto the rock in order (Tatiana knows) to break her at the feet of the black Mother, as soon as the insight comes . Tatyana is not afraid, on the contrary, she understands: this is the last thing she is destined to do in life.
But at some point in the final truth, despite all Tatyana’s diligence, another thought appears in my head, objecting in a spoken voice: “But I couldn’t do otherwise!” (This refers to the break with her real mother).
The wave immediately rolls back into the sea, and everything - more than once - repeats itself from the beginning. The dream ends.
Whether the formula of cultural prohibition was uttered by the voice of God or conscience is immaterial. The important thing is that sincere acceptance of the repentant role of the “prodigal son” (prodigal daughter) in this case leads to death, contrary to traditional ideas. To the death of what? Individuals, of course, individuals".
The mother, who once felt like the savior of her child’s life, grows close to him and, regardless of the distance, retains an invisible umbilical cord. It is not surprising that such a mother senses the condition of her child thousands of kilometers away. Something happened there, and she was already worried. Her heart feels. This spiritual connection mysteriously connects them to each other. It can be extremely difficult to escape from this grip. In most cases, girls and boys, having matured, unsuccessfully try throughout their lives to escape from these maternal embraces.
A person brought up in an atmosphere of such attachment feels his lack of freedom and subsequently involuntarily tries to free himself from the people around him: husband, wife, friends, girlfriends, co-workers. It seems to him that his relationship with them is too dependent and unfree, and that he needs to get rid of them too.
Such people, tightly connected to their mother, simply cannot become deeply close to other people. No matter how their relationships with others develop, in the end, everything breaks down. As a last resort, the relationship remains distant...
Examples of this phenomenon can be found on the pages of classical literature. Here is the conversation between the mother, merchant Kabanikha, and her son in the drama by A.N. Ostrovsky "The Thunderstorm":
| Kabanova | ...I have seen for a long time that your wife is dearer than your mother. Since I got married, I don’t see the same love from you. | |
| Kabanov | Yes, we pray to God for you, day and night, that God may give you health and all prosperity... | |
| Kabanova | Well, that's enough, stop it, please. Maybe you loved your mother while you were single. Do you care about me: you have a young wife. | |
| Kabanov | One does not interfere with the other: the wife is on her own, and I have respect for the parent in itself. | |
| Kabanova | So will you exchange your wife for your mother? I won't believe this for the life of me. | |
| Kabanov | Why should I change? I love both of them. | |
| Kabanova | Well, yes, that's it, spread it! I already see that I am a hindrance to you... You see what kind of mind you have, and you still want to live by your own will. | |
| Kabanov | Yes, Mama, I don’t want to live by my own will. Where can I live by my own will! | |
| Kabanova | Why are you standing there, don’t you know the order? Tell your wife how to live without you. | |
| Kabanov | Yes, she knows it herself. | |
| Kabanova | Talk more! Well, well, give the order! So that I can hear what you order her! And then you’ll come and ask if you did everything right. | |
| Kabanov | Listen to mommy, Katya. | |
| Kabanova | Tell your mother-in-law not to be rude. | |
| Kabanov | Do not be rude! | |
| … | ||
| Kabanova | So that you don't stare at the windows! | |
| Kabanov | But what is this, mummy, by God! | |
| Kabanova | (strictly). There's nothing to break! Must do what mother says. It’s getting better, just as ordered.” |
And here is a letter about modern Kabanikha I received from God’s servant Lyubov. It became another argument in favor of the relevance of the book conceived five years ago, which you are holding in your hands today. I will quote the letter preserving the style of the original.
“Divine Providence turned out to be such that I encountered pathological maternal love in my life to the point of bleeding. I don’t know how to describe how much I suffered because of this. This question is very, very important. Because of this, destinies, souls, lives are broken. It needs to be illuminated urgently, it needs to be shouted outright. I consult about everything with my spiritual mentor, Fr. Alexander. But I hope to receive a more detailed answer from you. I would like this issue to be reflected in the books of your publishing house.
I'll start with my friend. She fell in love with her son (he is 9 years old, she is 44 years old). Late, sickly (heart defect), born without a father. She is a cripple with asthma. But she is very merciful, she works as a nurse, she walked towards God slowly, but when she came to faith, she saw the whole nightmare of her upbringing. She is very cowardly, she poured all her love on her son (she never had a husband). Kissed him. I slept with him until I was 9 years old. The boy, seeing such love, turned into a fiend of hell (you can’t think of better words). But this can still be fixed. I struggled with this for a long time and consulted with my father. Father said that now we need to correct it, like the crown of a tree when it grows. You just need to break your character with rods. But this is clear. Thank God that my mother understood everything.
And recently I came across an adult “mama’s boy” (he is 47 years old) and his loving mother. I tried to create a Christian family with him. It was some kind of nightmare. The end is my broken life. I have never read about this anywhere in Orthodoxy. I found the answer to this question in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. The article is called “Mama's Boy is a Diagnosis.”
It is written: “...He will separate himself from his mother and from his father, and will cleave to his wife...”. What if it doesn’t come off? Some women have such maternal love that they cannot even imagine their son getting married; they only need him to love his mother. They, like priestesses, devour the will of their sons; any woman with whom a son wants to start a family is not like that. About my case, the priest said briefly: “Maternal jealousy.” The mother intervened all around, called the church, asked: “Well, did they leave together or is he alone? Did you stand together in church?” She gradually, slyly, insidiously broke us apart. And she achieved her goal.
He is 47 years old and has not been married. The parishioners immediately warned me that my mother would not let us live. I couldn’t even imagine that this could happen. How blind she is! After all, true motherly love is sacrificial, she sacrifices everything for the happiness of her son. I also have a son, he is now married, I always really wanted him to start a family and have children.
And at the end of this article it is written: “If you notice this, then leave immediately, because the mother will win anyway - instinct will win over reason.” And so it happened. I thought I would win, but this is such an avalanche (double-mindedness, deceit) that I simply cannot win. I had to break up.
What about son? What did he do in this whole story? He imitated his mother in everything; he could not live without her and without her advice. She suppressed his will, it was as if he was not a man.
I still can’t understand and am tormented by the question: “Why and why are men similar in character to women?” After all, he had and does not have any debt or responsibility to his family. He did not participate in the family budget. My mother didn’t allow him to bring me food, she said that we had to live together. “You are a ten, she is a ten,” - that’s how she taught. I supported my family and fed him by working several jobs. After work, I dragged heavy bags across the city, trying to arrive home on time so that there would be no complaints from him. One day I had to go to an appointment with a general practitioner, and when he listened to me, he noticed blue marks-stripes on my shoulders from my bags. The doctor looked at me questioningly, but didn’t ask anything. I was embarrassed. When she came home, she told her husband about this incident, thinking that she would regret it, her conscience would break through, and she would help. And do you know what he answered me? “Yeah, that’s not the point, I need to buy you a trolley bag...”
Sometimes my husband and I went to visit his mother. Ridiculously interesting stories happened there too. They left me in the living room to watch TV, while the two of them retired to the kitchen to have lunch or drink tea. And this was considered quite normal, natural. I didn't exist for them. And when his mother came to visit us, she always brought her mayonnaise and half-liter jars of food for her son. This is what a caring mother my former life partner is... Maybe, reading my letter, someone will not believe all this. But it was, it was...
Once on Easter, my husband and I went to an early service, prayed at the Liturgy, and returned home very happy and inspired. But what coldness and darkness wafted from the face of his mother, who was waiting for us at home, who, with resentment and reproach, immediately began to reprimand him for leaving for work at a time when she was rushing to him. You should have seen this guilty face of my husband, his abrupt phrases of apology. In front of his mother stood not a forty-seven-year-old man, but a fifth-grader who was being reprimanded for getting a bad grade. “It’s all her, she, you exchanged me for her, she takes you to churches...” the mother said irritably to her son, without even bothering to look at me.
And at the same time, his mother is a believer, kind to other people, sympathetic...
But how many such mothers are there in our city alone! How many are there in the whole country?!
With respect to you, Lyubov Nikolaevna".
We hope that not only you, dear Lyubov Nikolaevna, but also many others will find this book useful, written with a feeling of deep compassion for the problem you raised.
Any adult who has authority with the child, be it a teacher, coach, priest, friend, bride (groom) - anyone, can become a hindrance for a “caring mother”, the object of her jealousy and hatred. The most cruel, most insane attacks and actions towards a “rival” in the eyes of others can be justified by “maternal love and care for a son who has fallen under bad influence.” In fact, we are dealing with a special case of mental attachment.
“We often think that we love a person, but to him our love seems like captivity,” writes Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, - How often would he like to say: love me less, but let me breathe! Or learn to love me differently, so that your love will be freedom for me, so that I will not be a captive of another person who knows better than me how I should live, what my happiness is, what my spiritual or everyday path is. Each of us can do this; each of us can ask ourselves the question of what constitutes the love that he talks about, that he experiences.
I have already said this many times, but I will repeat it again. So often, when a person says: “I love you,” the entire emphasis is on the word “I,” “you” are the object of my love, and “love” is the chain with which I have entangled you and hold you captive. How often it happens that the love of one person for another turns him into a captive or a slave. Then “I love” is not a creative, life-giving principle; the word “love” is like a link, a fishing rod with which another person is caught. And if we discover that such is our love for people or for one, especially loved one, we must first of all realize the horror of the fact that I consider myself the center, that everything comes down to me: both events and people - everything is viewed from from the point of view of my benefit, my joy, my life, and no one and nothing exists except in some relation to me.
If we realize this, if we are overcome with shame and horror, then we can begin, turning away from ourselves, look towards the other person and try to discern his features, understand him, realize his existence as a person separate from us, other than a person who connected with God mysteriously and outside of us; and behave accordingly towards him.”
Perhaps the mother will try to soberly analyze her actions in order to understand what their motivation is and what is happening to her. To do this, she should temporarily “move away” from the child so that the lost true maternal feeling and understanding of the need to respect the freedom of the child’s personality will supplant the unhealthy psychological attachment...
How do young men who find themselves in such “sweet” maternal captivity behave? The weaker, melancholic ones enter into the game imposed by the mother, are completely suppressed by the mother’s personality, are immersed in the world of women’s experiences and concerns, and, as a rule, grow up to be candidates for homosexuality. Their consciousness, psyche, healthy sexuality necessary for life changes under the influence of overprotective maternal upbringing.
Since the problem of homosexuality is increasingly manifesting itself in modern life, and the modern pastor has to accept repentance or answer questions related to this problem, we will consider it in the context of the main theme of our book.
There is no single reason that can comprehensively explain the formation of homosexuality. But researchers from different psychological schools see one common pattern: a power-hungry mother and a passive, loser father are the main figures against which homosexuality is formed.
Let's take for example a situation where only the mother controls everything in the house. Like a pilot, she leads her home in the stormy sea of life, towing small boats (her husband and children). She has a commanding voice, she commands the family, she is determined and ambitious about the future of her children. When disputes arise, she usually insists that she is right. Other family members try to express their own opinions, but no one can resist her confident pressure.
In other situations, her lust for power may not be so obvious. She can act more subtly, although no less tyrannically. Fragile and graceful, she at the same time rules the house thanks to her iron will, her moral leadership (how skillfully she can sometimes put a person in his place with a well-thought-out phrase!) or even cunning (for example, referring to a headache at the right moment).
However, in order not to be too hasty in attributing to her the role of the main culprit of her son's homosexuality, we must note that the mother is only one of the characters. Without the support of the entire cast, she would hardly have been able to successfully cope with the main role in this painful drama. Her husband indulges her with his non-interference. He knows only two ways to react to her actions: either feign anger, or go underground: TV, reading newspapers, dominoes, alcohol. Often the husband spends most of his free time outside the home.
Children in this situation may behave differently. But the image of the “mentor mother” on which they base their behavior is inherently unhealthy. They have nowhere to take an example of normal relations between parents. Is it possible to hope that, having started their own family life, they will behave correctly in their own family?
Of the many options for family relationships, one is especially important. If a mother chooses her son (or one of her sons) to be her special confidant, she can lay the foundations for his future homosexual behavior. However, to do this, he must conform to the pattern of behavior that his mother expects from him.
In this case, the son becomes (not physically or sexually), but in an emotional and psychological sense, her husband. The mother subtly instills qualities that are not sufficiently expressed in her real husband in her son. Without realizing what is happening, the son learns to dance to his mother’s tune and adapt to her moods.
From time to time, his ability to satisfy his mother's emotional needs is rewarded and encouraged. But because the son can never give his mother what she truly (but unconsciously) seeks, his affection for her ultimately disappoints them both. The son will never be able to become her real man. He learns passive behavior instead of active behavior. His desire to please his mother's wishes will never allow him to become free and independent. His sexual desires are under strict maternal control. On the one hand, he learns to confidently show his masculine perseverance to protect his mother, and on the other hand, to throw this perseverance aside if it contradicts his mother’s interests. He is constantly tied to his mother's skirt, and because of this, both remain losers.
If the young man had had a strong father who supported him and served as an example for him, everything could have been different. But the father, as we remember, is hiding underground; he has taken a secondary role, being an example of surrender to a strong and powerful woman.
More strong-willed young men, when attempting this kind of manipulation, understand that it is not maternal love that is being manifested here, but a harsh dictate. Intuitively sensing the substitution, they turn over the rich table of excessive care and affection, lined with maternal worries, withdraw into themselves and, over time, make an independent choice of life path. This is the most correct and healthy reaction on the part of the child! Further guardianship and courtship will only worsen his irritability, which often develops into open hatred.
In both cases, responsibility for the crippled psyche of the child rests solely with the adult, that is, with the mother. A woman who strives for emotional intimacy with her child at any cost can go so far as to severely humiliate him, even to the point of forced placement in a psychiatric hospital. Such mothers have an extremely developed ability to persuade, built on passion and strength of character. They easily find allies and comrades-in-arms among a variety of people in their “struggle” for the child.
A woman came to see a psychologist. Complains of insomnia. During the session, it became clear that she had a very difficult family situation. The son is disabled. Moreover, as she says, everything turned out to be her fault.
About five or six years ago, without her knowledge, her son went to a monastery, where he found a priest who answered the questions that worried him. I really wanted to become a monk. Before that, I was in my last year at a prestigious university and had a brilliant career ahead of me. The mother ran the family business in the food industry and saw her son as her successor.
After repeated attempts to “influence this priest” through the diocesan administration, the mother decided to take a desperate step. She asked her son to pick up winter clothes, which she allegedly gave to him through the train conductor. After the son entered the compartment, two strong guys tied him up and escorted him home. An ambulance was waiting for the prisoner at the railway station. At the insistence of his mother, the guy is forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital.
Having been discharged, he never returned to the monastery; he was engaged in the automobile business, never fully submitting to his mother’s will. In the process of resolving a conflict between criminal groups that control the transfer of cars, an explosion occurs and as a result the guy receives a severe traumatic brain injury, but miraculously survives. He loses his eye and has been undergoing treatment for a long time in the most prestigious clinics. The young man underwent many complex operations, but the wound turned out to be so severe that he remains disabled for life.
The mother perceives what happened as God’s punishment and experiences a deep sense of guilt. She has critical blood pressure, insomnia, and heart pain. She has also been treated in hospitals for a very long time, but the treatment provides only temporary relief.
The mother thinks that all this suffering is returning to her like a boomerang and does not know what to do. She is afraid to go to church because she thinks that God will not forgive her for what she did to her son.
The son never reproached her, because he is very attached to his mother. However, what happened did not improve their relationship; on the contrary, alienation appeared. Entering a monastery was the first independent choice for him in his life.
And now, my mother is seeing a psychologist.
The sessions lasted for two months, as a result of which the woman’s psychological state improved. The psychologist advised her to forgive herself first, forgive and bless all those people who participated in this story. And since the woman felt guilty before God for what had happened, he suggested going to the temple and talking to the priest. Indeed, in such a situation one cannot do without experienced spiritual guidance.
A child, so attached to his mother, does not even suspect how deep his dependence on “maternal warmth” is, completely paralyzing the will to live independently. Only the irretrievably gone time of youth spent under the “reliable” protection of a “caring mother”, most often a failed personal family life, will eventually force a sober assessment of such anomalous relationships and open their eyes to them.
Usually, children who grew up in an atmosphere of maternal affection, having matured, after the death of their mother, experience an unexpected novelty of feelings. The death of their mother seems to free them from something. And although such a death is experienced very strongly and dramatically, subsequently the person becomes free inside. It is the maternal ties that are broken; with the death of the mother, her power dies.
Not every woman has the courage to soberly assess the cause of what is happening. In a confidential conversation, the shepherd can try to explain to the mother (if she is able to hear anything other than her experiences) that true love seeks only the good of the beloved in the form in which he imagines this good, desires good, not possession, does not smother in his arms. And the Apostle Paul says even better: genuine “love does not seek its own” (Rom. 13), i.e. your own good, your own happiness through the subjugation and suppression of your loved one, no matter who he is. True love prepares a child as separate, as independent, which means living in his own way, having his own path in life, personality. The true, innermost feeling of love in a mother or father knows that she was born not my property, and a separate God-created personality, which, by its personal nature, is not “I” and cannot be my property . It is important for a mother to realize that her child is a separate person, and not an integral part of the parent. Sometimes it is especially difficult for a woman to come to terms with this, and if she has an authoritarian character, then it is doubly difficult, because “My child, I do what I want, and it doesn’t matter how old he is - twelve, twenty-three or thirty-seven.”
In order for the process of developing a person’s psychological autonomy to be completed successfully, it is necessary that his parents are sufficiently literate, and each of them is aware of the need to help the child in his separation from his parents at a certain stage of his development. In order for a child to successfully undergo a “second birth”, psychological separation from his parents, they need:
Perceive the child as he is, and not as they would like him to be;
Respect the child’s desire to independently explore the world around him, allow him to do this;
Encourage the expression of independent thoughts, feelings and actions (age-appropriate);
Be able to express understanding and support when the child needs it;
Be an example of a psychologically mature person, openly express your own feelings to the child;
Clearly define what you forbid your child to do and say directly why, rather than resort to forceful methods.
Do not forbid him to openly express his feelings, recognize and understand these feelings and the need for their disclosure;
Help and encourage the child’s actions aimed at healthy exploration of the world around him, using the word “yes” twice as often as the word “no”;
Do not fall into despair or depression if the child refuses to use your help;
Don't try to live your life for your child;
Recognize him as an independent person with his own views, desires and aspirations.
To conclude this chapter, I will give one more quote from K.S. Lewis: “Who hasn’t seen how a woman wastes her youth, maturity and even old age on an insatiable mother, listens to her, pleases her, and she, like a true vampire, considers her unkind and obstinate. Perhaps her sacrifice is beautiful (although I’m not sure of this), but no matter how you look for it, you won’t find beauty in your mother.”
13. K. Mikhailov “Patient care with elements of psychotherapy”, Rostov-on-Don, “Phoenix”, 2000, pp. 147-160.
14. S.N. Lyutova. Mother. Negative aspect of the archetype. Excerpt from the book “Social psychology of personality (theory and practice): Course of lectures.” M., 2002.
15. A.N. Ostrovsky. Plays. M., 1979, p. 167.
16. By the way, now such mothers justify their behavior with their “Orthodoxy”: they say that in Rus' young people always lived with parents who taught them the wisdom of family life, and that this is sanctified by tradition, everything that is not so is a sin. Among my friends, things got to the point where the husband took his wife abroad for some time to bring the family back to normal. So, before leaving, he told his wife: “You will come with me.” The wife’s mother told her daughter: “if you go, you are a bad daughter, you don’t love me and are leaving me.” Result: just before the trip, a young woman developed a strange illness; the doctors found nothing, but she could not get out of bed. Mom ran around to all the doctors, made a terrible noise, but her husband saved the situation: he still took his “sick” wife with him (note from one of the first readers of the manuscript).
17. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Man before God, M., 1998. The Law of Life. Attitude towards others.
18. K.S. Lewis. Love, suffering, hope. M., publishing house "Respublika", 1992, p. 224.
When a mother is not concerned about her career and making money, but can calmly take care of the children, this is, of course, good. “Distance” parental education has previously been fraught with what is commonly called “neglect” in official parlance. And with the current decline in morals, it is all the more dangerous to rely in such an important matter on strangers and, by and large, people who are not responsible for much, referring to one’s own childhood experience: they say, “school won’t teach you bad things... no one really cared about us - and nothing , grown up...” It’s wiser to keep your finger on the pulse.
I don’t know about other cities, but in Moscow and the Moscow region, whose residents en masse go to work in Moscow, in the last decade there have been many women who have the opportunity not to work, but to look after their children. Moreover, these are not necessarily “wives of oligarchs,” as some people think, who do not have a very good idea of the current Moscow reality. The fathers of such families can be computer scientists, lawyers, managers, PR specialists, journalists, editors, and television people. Someone has their own small or medium business. Some are engaged in construction and renovation. Someone is a driver. There are plumbers, electricians, architects, and designers who make good money. And even (to a person who thinks in outdated stereotypes of the Yeltsin era, this may seem like utter nonsense)... many teachers and doctors. Someone inherited an apartment and has the opportunity to rent it out. Some young families are helped with money by their parents (also not necessarily oligarchs). In short, over the last decade active people have somehow adapted to a new life, although, of course, fathers in such families have to work a lot. Sometimes even with overlap: you often hear complaints from women that their husbands are workaholics and practically do not see their wives and children. But the wife can no longer worry about earning money and can calmly take care of the children.
So what? If mom is at home, are all problems solved? Not at all. New ones may arise, expected in principle, but not always expected. Which?
Day and night - a day away
Yes, at least the problem of laziness! People, as you know, are different: some are active, active, collected, others are prone to relaxation. The first ones always find something to do; they have self-control and a sense of responsibility since childhood. The latter, even in adulthood, need “shoulders” and an “external corset.” Left to their own devices, they cannot organize their time and easily slide into a “vegetative” existence: “after eating, now you can sleep; We’ve slept, now we can eat.”
Of course, when you have several children, you won’t get much sleep, but sometimes you hear from people with many children that time goes up like smoke down a chimney. It seems like we just got up - and it’s already evening. And they didn’t go anywhere, and didn’t start cleaning, and there’s a whole heap of unwashed laundry lying around. However, here the impression of wasted time is rather subjective. A mother with many children usually has so many worries that you just have to turn around. And it naturally takes more time to peel potatoes for five or six children’s mouths than for one or two, and how many plates need to be washed and noses wiped in a day. And you also need to console these people, separate them, caress them, or, conversely, punish them... Before you know it, it’s already night outside.
Undoubtedly, there are also lazy people with many children, whose houses are in ruins, their children are neglected, they are starving - in a word, orphans with living parents. But here it’s not just laziness, but alcoholism or serious mental pathology. So serious that it drowns out even the maternal instinct that lies at the core of female nature. And although there are many such cases, we will not talk about them, since these people are unlikely to be among our readers. And they need much more thorough help than just reading books and articles.
Those mothers who do not suffer from the above-mentioned defects, but simply tend to relax too much, should often remind themselves that the more you relax, the more tired you become, since the will, like muscles, atrophies without training. I remember how about fifteen years ago, one friend, having celebrated her 70th birthday, said that in order to maintain her vitality, she now needed... to increase the load. Therefore, in addition to all her previous activities (despite her advanced age, she continued to work in the field of education and, in addition, was actively involved in social activities), Maria Petrovna took care of her first-grader granddaughter, who had to be taken to school and to clubs.
How do you have enough strength to do everything? - I was amazed, looking at the dry, little old woman.
“And it’s like when you’re running a long distance race,” she smiled, “you suddenly get a second wind.” Well, after 70, if you want to live longer, you need the third one to open. After all, modern people are physically very underutilized.
Doctor V.A. holds similar views. Kopylov, who headed the first Problem Research Laboratory of non-drug treatments in the USSR and developed a unique method of “external pain stimulation” (EPI), with the help of which he managed to put thousands of seriously and even fatally ill people back on their feet.
“In my opinion, God has given only one way to strengthen and improve - spiritual and physical tension,” writes Dr. Kopylov. “In all effective methods of treatment and health promotion... effective training systems, rational diets, the healing factor is tension.” And he adds: “It is a very common opinion that pathology arises from overstrain of an organ or system. My entire 35-year experience of treatment indicates the opposite: tension, even very strong, of any organ or system does not lead to their weakening. On the contrary, organs that have not received sufficient tension for them become ill... It is the lack of tension that leads to weakening of the organs and is the cause of the disease.”
However, without resorting to scientific justification, but simply from my own experience, I have repeatedly been convinced: as soon as you give yourself (or rather, your laziness) free rein, your health sharply worsens. Idleness sucks you in like a swamp. A state of chronic relaxation and loss of strength sets in. And with them - annoyance at their weakness. When you get into the working rhythm, the body mobilizes, the day becomes longer and busier. And the fatigue that occurs in the evening is perceived in a completely different way - as a natural result of a day not lived in vain.
To discipline yourself a little, I would advise people who tend to relax to use the simplest techniques of introspection and analysis. For example, every evening sum up the results of the past day: what we managed to do, what we didn’t and why; set some goals for yourself, learn to plan time. This is necessary not only for “personal self-improvement,” as they once said, but also for raising children.
Don't try to embrace the immensity
It is also not always easy for active, energetic women to adapt to the role of a stay-at-home mom. Having decided to devote themselves to the child, they sometimes load him up like a camel with activities and demands. And they stubbornly refuse to notice that he is already falling off his feet. And if the intention to “give the child the maximum” is mixed with the desire to overcome his complexes through him (from the series “since I didn’t succeed, at least let him succeed”), then persistent irritation may arise. Psychologically, this is understandable: it is easier to be angry with another than with yourself. And here there is double irritation: at yourself and at “that guy.” It is no wonder that children become neurotic and begin to show negativism and disobedience.
Nine-year-old Katya, having crossed the threshold of her home, changed beyond recognition. At school she was an efficient, neat girl, she didn’t quarrel with her friends, and didn’t cause any criticism from the teacher. Entering the apartment, Katya not only began to be capricious, but sobbed hysterically, collapsed on the floor, and did not want to take off her winter boots and coat. Preparing lessons, attending clubs, getting ready for school in the morning and going to bed in the evening - everything happened “with a fight.” Her mother was terribly tired of her and, when she talked about what was going on with them, she looked like an unhappy victim of a little tyrant. But it quickly became clear that when Katya behaves well, her mother is not particularly happy. She focuses much more on the bad. And, while verbally wanting to improve the situation, he does not do quite simple things that lead to the desired result. So, the mother did not agree to reduce the load in any way, although the girl was clearly exhausted, since she studied in two schools: in a gymnasium with a rather complex program and in a music school, and she also went to the pool, dances and English. It was difficult for mom to once again praise, caress Katyusha, play with her, feel sorry for her when she needed pity.
If you ask such a mother to compare her character with the character of her child, and then mark the listed traits with plus and minus signs, then the abundance of negative characteristics will be very clear. Moreover, mothers can evaluate their character in different ways; there will not necessarily be a “game of contrasts.” Often the mother has a low opinion of herself. But although the son or daughter clearly inherited the mother’s traits, this does not justify them in her eyes. On the contrary, the more dissatisfied she is with herself, the more fiercely she fights. Just not with your sins and shortcomings, but with your childish nature.
And then sometimes you ask yourself: “Is it really so good that your mother doesn’t work? Maybe it would be better for her to spend less time at home, entrusting the upbringing of the child to someone who will not make excessive demands on him and project her dissatisfaction with herself and life onto him?”
Of course, deep psychological problems cannot be resolved in a purely mechanical way. Even if this helps, it will only be partly. And it remains to be seen how it will come back to haunt us in the future. It is better to understand your feelings and put them in order. But it’s still worth redirecting some of the energy in another direction. This is not always easy for responsible mothers to do, because they are consumed by guilt. It seems that by doing something extraneous, they will not give the child enough attention and will miss some chances in his development. However, the constant, close (especially with a minus sign!) attention of an adult overstrains children, and harmonious development presupposes a certain degree of freedom so that the child has time to rest, digest impressions, and become interested in something himself. Existing in a constant rush, when you need this, and that, and the fifth, and the tenth, is tiring for most children. Sooner or later there is a feeling that mom needs all this, not them. Whining and refusals begin. And mom, of course, sometimes feels sorry for the wasted energy. She feels resentful and disappointed because the child did not live up to her hopes. And more and more new claims are being added to the already accumulated claims...
Darling Mommy
There is one more temptation that awaits a stay-at-home mom. Sometimes she is so passionate about motherhood that she literally bathes in it, trying to completely dissolve in the child. This happens especially often when the child is late and has suffered and been begged for. And while he is small, such a merger delights and touches. Especially now, when so many mothers strive to quickly move away from the baby and do much more important and interesting things, in their opinion.
But if this fusion lasts for a long time, it becomes unnatural. After all, in order for a child to grow up normally, he needs to separate from his mother and gradually gain independence. And we’re not just talking about overprotection here. A mother may very much encourage her son or daughter to be independent, but at the same time she lives exclusively in their interests, nothing else worries her. There is such a type of woman - “darlings”, beautifully described by A.P. Chekhov. They can be treated differently. In Soviet times, it was common to laugh. And even now, I think, young people mostly perceive him with contempt. But in fact, this is an image of all-giving love and self-sacrifice. Yes, Chekhov, of course, was ironic. As a personality, his heroine is secondary, she does not have her own opinions and interests. And even - this follows from the plot - she does not have deep feelings. Whoever happens to be nearby is the one she loves. In this sense, her love is omnivorous and superficial. Chekhov's Olenka Plemyannikova does not correspond to the Russian ideal “but I was given to someone else and I will be faithful to him forever.” And therefore, unlike Pushkin’s Tatiana, she does not inspire admiration.
But, on the other hand, the dominant feature of Chekhov’s image is the desire to love. It overwhelms the heroine’s soul. It is important for her not to receive, but to give. She absolutely sincerely and selflessly loves those who are “close” to her at the moment. Her love “does not seek its own.” Olenka does not betray or abandon anyone. In it, for all its secondary nature, there is not an ounce of frivolity. Separation from beloved beings is not her fault. What at first looked like a caricature, like a grotesque, at the end of the story is perceived completely differently. In the story about the heroine, not at all satirical, but touching, poignant notes appear. And (so, at least, it seems to me) many men who in their youth would have laughed at such a “darling”, chasing something (or rather, someone) bright, independent and original, in a more mature age would not away from having a life partner like Olenka. After all, if you look at it, this is a wonderful wife: faithful, respectful, caring, and an assistant to her husband in everything. Many great (and not only) people had just such wives. Only in an age spoiled by emancipation does such an image seem like a caricature.
But a husband is one thing, and a child is another. The mother, completely dissolved in his interests, begins to be perceived by him as something official, dependent, an appendage. She loses her place in the family hierarchy established by God, and therefore loses her authority. The egocentrism inherent in children, which parents must and can limit by the power of their authority, in such cases blossoms in full bloom. Children demand that their mother give up household chores and do only them. At the same time, they do not appreciate her care at all, do not strive to take care of her themselves, are very reluctant to respond to requests for help, but are terribly indignant if for some reason their requests are refused. In preschool and primary school age, they try to demonstratively capture the mother’s attention in the presence of third parties, do not allow them to talk to a friend on the street or even with a teacher, pull on the sleeve, insisting on going home immediately, make faces, and whine. The appendage mother has no right to get sick, tired, or upset. All this causes discontent and anger in children, accustomed to the fact that their mother exists only to serve their children's needs.
But even in those rather rare cases when the child does not sit on such a mother’s neck, but on the contrary, their relationship develops idyllically - they are inseparable and understand each other perfectly, sooner or later the child begins to feel burdened by such a symbiosis. Mom still, out of inertia, talks about him as “we”: “We failed at school,” “we got a B in math.” And he already needs another “we” - school and some other friends. And that's completely normal. Husband and wife are one flesh. In a harmonious relationship, the longer they live together, the more close they become. Children, on the other hand, are destined to leave their father and mother, go out on an “independent voyage”, acquire friends, acquaintances, get married, clinging to their soul mate. And they are secretly psychologically preparing for this.
By the way, in the mentioned story by Chekhov, the completely different reactions to the “darling” of adult men and the schoolboy Sasha are very accurately described. Men gladly accept her care; they like that she dissolves in their interests and “sings from their voice.” The boy, whom Olenka carefully takes care of as a mother and escorts to the gymnasium, “becomes ashamed that a tall, plump woman is following him; he looks around and says: “You, aunt, go home, and now I’ll get there myself.”
And he brushes off her instructions: “Oh, leave it, please!” (Today's less noble-bred children usually express themselves more rudely.)
For a mother, who for many years lived exclusively in the interests of her children, their distance can be very painful. There is a feeling of emptiness, uselessness, confusion and melancholy. It may even seem like years have been wasted (although this, of course, is not true). Often the mother cannot come to terms with the child’s changed status, perceives her son-in-law or daughter-in-law as an annoying nuisance, or, on the contrary, tries to disappear into the life of the young family, again causing annoyance with her excessive care and importunity.
Where is the husband?
By the way, where is the husband in this idyll? Does he have a place in it? Is it a coincidence that such a protracted symbiosis more often occurs in single-parent families, with single mothers, or when married people live nearby, but not together, and the woman feels like a straw widow? No, of course, not by chance. This is an unconscious attempt to restore family harmony and find support. And since a small child, for obvious reasons, cannot be a real support, a distortion arises.
But now our topic is not raising children in a single-parent family, but the problems that a non-working mother may face. And she risks facing the fact that her preoccupation with motherhood can create friction in a completely prosperous family. Although if work takes a lot of time and effort from a husband, he will not necessarily notice it right away. And maybe he’ll even be happy at first. After all, many wives, sitting at home and not being particularly busy, tend to be jealous of their husbands for their affairs. And then the wife switches to the child, and the husband feels more free. But sooner or later he will begin to feel like a third wheel, and resentment will creep into his soul. It may seem to him that only his salary and help with housework are needed, that he is being “used.” In youth families (and youth now stretches out for quite a long time!), where relationships tend to have a lot of passion and maximalism, and where teenage selfishness has not yet been overcome, conflicts of this kind flare up especially often. A common scenario: while there were no children, the spouses did not quarrel and seemed to understand each other; and when the child was born, resentment and quarrels began.
Of course, sometimes the husband behaves like an overgrown child, competing with his son or daughter for the attention of “mommy.” There are many such cases now, since a whole galaxy of spoiled, infantile men have entered fatherhood, who in childhood did not have before their eyes an example of a caring, responsible head of the family, behind whom you feel like behind a stone wall. But it often happens that this is not the case. The husband is just trying to enter a new role that is not yet familiar to him. And the wife, having become a mother, does not show proper tact towards him, does not understand that a man does not and, in principle, cannot have the same umbilical cord connection with a child as a woman. And, trying to judge him by himself, he is sincerely perplexed: what is he dissatisfied with? Why am I not ready to discuss for a long time such interesting topics as choosing the right feeding regimen, the “right” diapers, educational games, toys, and activities? Why do you get annoyed when you come home from work if your children demand attention? They miss him, but for some reason this doesn’t touch him... No, of course, he pays them a little attention, but then he declares that he wants silence, and he turns his attention to the TV. Although there is no trace of silence there...
In fact, it often turns out that the husband has little interest in the children because the wife has little interest in her husband. The so-called “negative transfer” occurs: resentment towards the wife unconsciously extends to the children, since they are connected with their mother into a single whole. Of course, you can’t react like that, because the children are not to blame for anything. But since this is a fairly common scenario for the deterioration of family relationships, it is better to keep in mind the peculiarities of male psychology and avoid mistakes that lead to the development of such a scenario. This is an archetypal plot: the breadwinner husband returns home after a hard day, where a caring wife and obedient, loving children are waiting for him. Whether we like it or not, this is a story for all times, for all cultures and societies. It still exists in our collective unconscious. Even if we have never seen these idyllic pictures in our lives, they are still invisibly present in our perception. And when something goes “wrong,” we feel it, albeit vaguely, and give the appropriate reaction.
On the other hand, a wife (at least in our culture) is traditionally expected to be a helper and adviser to her husband. Remember the life of the holy believers Peter and Fevronia, who from ancient times were considered the patrons of the family in Rus'. Remember one of the favorite images of Russian fairy tales - Vasilisa the Wise.
With husbands, however, unlike an arm or a leg, the matter in such cases much more often ends in a “surgical operation” - divorce. Moreover, if we recall the archetypal and, alas, too common plot in our time, how a family is broken up, we will see that homewreckers usually catch someone else’s husband on the hook of “understanding”: they show a lively (albeit often feigned) interest in his personality , express solidarity, emotional support, respect and admiration. Such “misunderstood” people in the family and those who find “understanding” on the side are a dime a dozen. Well, they try not to take into account the fact that in a new family, which they then try to build on the ruins of the old one, the story of “misunderstanding” may well repeat itself, because if you leave a place where you feel bad, naturally you want to hope for the best.
Koshcheeva needle
Attention to the husband’s personality, to his work and those people who are dear to him, the sharing of his interests contributes not only to the strengthening of the family and the harmonious development of children, but also to one’s own, as they sometimes say now, “personal growth.” (Of course, we are talking about normal interests, and not about what, on the contrary, provokes degradation.)
And here we come to what is perhaps the main problem, which is often kept silent in discussions on the topic “work or motherhood,” but which, it seems to me, gives rise to an inexplicable, at first glance, intensity of passions around this topic. The fact is that the attitude of society and the state towards non-working mothers is very ambiguous. In words, everyone is for the family and for the fact that children need to be taken care of. In reality, legislators and officials, with tenacity worthy of better use, continue to build themselves into the ugly globalist structure, the designers of which did not and do not hide the fact that the traditional family in this “global world” must die out along with all its outdated stereotypes about the role of father and mother , about the unconditional value of parental love and other similar nonsense. Hence the ongoing attempts to impose sex education on school education, which is nothing more than methodical and massive anti-childbearing propaganda. Hence the initiatives to introduce a juvenile justice system in Russia, turning parents into powerless scapegoats, and officials working in this system into infallible priests with the power to destroy almost any family and take away its children. Hence the imposition of sexual perversion as a new norm and the demand to “stop discrimination based on sexual orientation,” allowing sodomites to enter into official marriages, adopt children, and work as kindergarten teachers and school teachers. Hence the obstacle to real measures to support the family and the birth rate. As you know, even the notorious maternity capital, which was introduced with great difficulty overcoming the resistance of the “birth controllers,” mainly exists only on paper. Most mothers have a chance to receive it only in the distant future, as an increase to their pension, which it is still unknown whether they will be able to live up to.
In short, our integration into the “brave new world”, which Aldous Huxley described in some detail at the dawn of its creation, is happening, although it is somewhat slowed down due to the fact that people (mostly Orthodox), who understand what this threatens, are actively expressing their disagreement. But no fundamental change in the process of embedding has yet occurred.
And in the “brave new world,” as is clear from Huxley’s novel and from the very logic of the destruction of the family, the word “mother” was classified as super indecent; socialized people never used it. The concept of “motherhood” was abolished as unnecessary, because children were born from a test tube and from infancy grew up in “educational communities” - nurseries, kindergartens and schools, under the watchful supervision of the relevant professionals who were responsible for the formation of the personality needed by the state.
Of course, Huxley is not a pioneer here. These utopias are like a joke - with a very big beard. (Only, unlike a joke, there is nothing funny in them, since in real life it is always a sea of tears and blood.) It’s just that Huxley, in my opinion, most succinctly, vividly and intelligibly reproduced the image of a globalist utopia at the present stage of “human development” . And a lot of his futuristic novel has already come to life!
No, the word “mother” has not yet become completely taboo. Although, as we know, steps are being taken in this direction, and since February 2011, in the documentation of the US State Department, the words “mother” and “father” have been removed from official circulation. When submitting applications for official documents, the forms will now indicate “parent No. 1” and “parent No. 2.” “The State Department explained,” Larisa Sayenko writes in the article “The United States is abolishing the word “mother”,” “that the previous gender identification of “father” and “mother” contradicts modern realities: in the United States, a same-sex family has firmly staked out its rights, and a whole generation of young Americans is not should feel inferior just because they have “two daddies.” Like the surrogate child of Briton Elton John and his partner, whom the couple showed to the world the other day. According to estimates for 2005, almost 300 thousand children are growing up in non-traditional American families. It can be assumed that over the next five years their number has only increased.”
It is clear that the matter will not be limited to official documents. Soon, school teachers and kindergarten teachers may receive instructions that talking to children about “mom” and “dad” is not tolerant. Back in 1997, NG-Religion published an article with the characteristic title “Catholics in Ireland will soon forget the word “mother”.” It described a Catholic program to introduce “expedient civility in the classroom.” At that time, tolerance was associated, however, not with the problem of homosexuality, but with the growing number of single-parent families. But this did not change the essence of the issue. In the program, intended for children 4-5 years old, educators were recommended to use the combinations “adults who live in your home” and “people who raise you” instead of the traditional words “father” and “mother.” In 1997, more than 100 children were already studying under this program.
Gradually, “intolerant” words are leaving communication at the everyday level. Especially if their departure is facilitated by the application of various punitive sanctions. Whether the word “mother” will suffer the same fate, time will tell. But time has already shown that the attitude towards motherhood has changed over the 20th century thanks to birth control fighters, far from for the better. In particular, being “just a mother” has become not only economically difficult, but also not prestigious. And this is where, it seems to me, we should look for Koshcheev’s needle, the injections of which probably so wound the conscience of some people that at the mere mention of motherhood as the main purpose of a woman, they have a violent reaction of protest.
Although in Latin praestigium- this is an illusion, a deception of the senses, which suggests the ephemerality of human glory, honor and respect; issues of prestige have always played a big role. Well, now - even more so, because in modern society, aimed at competition and personal success, ambition is so fueled that the word “ambitious”, which until recently was pronounced with a hint of condemnation, has acquired an unambiguously positive connotation. And the word “careerist” will definitely turn into a plus.
In traditional societies, mother of the family is a very prestigious position for a woman, which she is aimed at achieving from childhood. Accordingly, it is prestigious to possess those skills and abilities that a wife belonging to a particular class and occupying a particular position in society should have.
Where did the feeling come from that housework is nonsense and a boring routine, but “work” (no matter how boring and routine it actually is) is a completely different matter - serious, “real”, and only there can there be something -prestigious?.. This feeling arose, of course, for a reason. When the traditional way of life began to be intensively destroyed, the usual concepts of how to live and what to strive for were destroyed along with it. Accordingly, ideas about prestige also changed.
Russia, which after 1917 became a vast testing ground for utopian projects, embarked on a new path earlier than other countries. In the resolution of the board of the People's Commissariat of Labor of the RSFSR dated February 15, 1931 on events for the International Day of Working Women on March 8, it was emphasized that “in the conditions of the elimination of unemployment and the ever-increasing need for new cadres of workers, all opportunities are created for the actual emancipation of women from the household and their involvement in socially productive labor." The resolution provided for another campaign to inspect government institutions and enterprises under the slogans “1 million 500 thousand women into the national economy” and “Life at the service of the industrial and financial plan.”
That is, in word and deed it was instilled that domestic work was humiliating, since it was a form of slavery from which a woman needed to be freed (“emancipated”), and that “socially productive” work was prestigious, although in fact it was then often much more difficult and forced than doing housework. Gradually the new psychology took root. Moreover, the West also followed the path trodden by Russia, although not necessarily under socialist slogans.
From the idea of “freeing women from family slavery” the idea automatically followed that children, especially when there are many of them, interfere with a free worker. It is not for nothing that abortion was first allowed in Soviet Russia. Another thing is that “family planning” did not acquire a fascist orientation, when the poor and “racially inferior” were declared unworthy of having children and were subject to forced sterilization, because in our country it was in no way connected with the ideas of social equality and the brotherhood of workers. But if we leave the last aspect aside and focus on creating the prerequisites for women’s involvement in “socially productive” labor, then a direct connection with birth control can easily be traced. In other words, to put it bluntly, many millions of people had to pay for fitting into a new life, for what began to be considered socially recognized and prestigious in this new life, by killing their own children. They, of course, tried to veil this terrible truth by citing “strictly scientific” data that the embryo is not a person at all, but “passes through the stage of a frog.” Well, about the immortal soul - this is completely “priestly nonsense.” But the truth still broke through, albeit askew: melancholy, divorce, bitterness, belated repentance - all that Western pro-lifeists call “post-abortion syndrome.”
And of course, with unrepentance, when the truth hurts the eyes, people tend to become aggressive. This, it seems to me, is where such an acute, if not hysterical, reaction to the topic of “work or motherhood” and cries about poverty stem from. In late Soviet times, poverty and starvation did not threaten children, but they were still getting rid of them: one, maximum two children was enough. Where more?! Of course, we can still speculate about the small living space, but, on the other hand, in the peasant huts where the vast majority of our ancestors with many children lived, there was even less space; the Western standard “room per person” never occurred to anyone.
Yes, standards have now changed, that's true. But most people do not dare to say directly that the lives of unborn children are being sacrificed to these changed standards. And thank God! If the anti-family, anti-children ideology, which the forces that we now call globalist have persistently propagated over the last century, had finally triumphed, there would no longer be a need to hide behind talk of poverty. Abandonment of children and contempt for family life would become prestigious. And those who accepted the new rules of the game would not have to justify themselves either to themselves or to others. On the contrary, you could proudly declare that you are child-free, that a child is a “screaming piece of meat” and that only those who have nothing else to do in life, who have no interests other than becoming “can dream of children.” sow" and "maternity machine". But for now, despite all the efforts of “birth control” people who invest fabulous amounts of money in anti-family propaganda, such statements, especially in the public space, are by no means welcome. This looks rude, defiant and cannot win over the majority of the people, who for the most part, on the contrary, are for family values.
On the other hand, the revival of family values is not going so fast. People are reluctant to change their usual way of life and thoughts. Especially when the socio-economic structure is not conducive to this. In modern conditions, unemployed women are a kind of dissidents. But it is not easy to be a dissident, since swimming against the tide is always very difficult and not prestigious. How many mothers have I heard in recent years complain that their relatives do not understand and do not approve of their choice!
“Were they teaching you in vain?.. You’re ruining your life within four walls, but you showed such hope! Loser! - such words hurt when they come from loved ones, whose opinion is especially dear to us.
And for how many young women, each subsequent preserved pregnancy was given with a fight! Their own mothers almost cursed them for this, and not at all because the daughter was going to “hang” the children on them. But it’s just “I’m ashamed in front of people, they all have normal daughters: they work, they get a second degree... And this one sits like a weasel, completely lost in her religion!”
But even if loved ones provide support, sometimes there is still a worm of doubt: did I do the right thing? What if life really just passes you by? After all, let’s be honest, many women prefer to go to work as soon as possible, not because you can’t live without work, but because it’s more interesting there. Although if you look at it, “there” everything is also quite the same. There are rarely jobs with a complete and constant change of impressions. But overall, of course, there are more impressions. Especially if you don’t look closely at the child...
I don’t remember in what year, at the “Family of Russia” festival, the Grand Prix was awarded to an unpretentious, but very deep in content documentary film about a large Moscow family. It consisted mainly of mother's monologues. A young intelligent woman shared her memories of how difficult it was for her to get into the taste of motherhood. She really liked her work as a fashion designer, she was considered talented, and at some point, when there were, if I’m not mistaken, only two children, she returned to her favorite job, participated in competitions, and received prizes. And then it all lost for her the enormous meaning that it had just recently. She suddenly realized that the main thing - how her children grow and change - was passing by. In the most unique years, when every day brings something new, when they so greedily absorb impressions and need their mother so much, their upbringing and development cannot be entrusted to other people. Not only because others will invest something of their own in them, but also because these moments will never happen again. And soon my mother discovered that parenting is also a creative activity, and for her personally it became much more interesting than what she had done before. With each subsequent child, a new world opened up before her, new ideas and opportunities arose.
Indeed, observing children develops thoughtfulness, helps to understand not only them, but also other people; a fresh child’s perception also refreshes an adult, already rather “washed out” look; the need to speak with children in their language awakens imagination, naive children's questions penetrate to the very essence of things and force not only to remember physics, chemistry and other wisdom, but also to test your conscience, open your soul. So the heroine of the film was not exaggerating at all when she said that being a mother of many children turned out (at least for her) to be even more interesting than being a costume designer.
Don't let yourself dry out. Or sour?
But, on the other hand, not everyone has teaching talents; not everyone can be equally interested in child psychology and the process of developing a child’s personality! It’s not so rare to hear from unemployed women that, despite all their love for their family, over time they began to feel that they were “souring”, “degrading” and they needed some other field of application of their strength and abilities. And this, of course, is not a whim, as relatives or friends who are tired of endlessly making money and who are unlucky with earning husbands think. Modern women, whom family and society from a young age aim at existence and self-realization outside the family hearth, find it extremely difficult to get rid of this attitude. It is actually absorbed now with mother’s milk and by adulthood, figuratively speaking, becomes part of our cells.
And men, as a rule, want their wife to represent something. Calls for self-realization and success heard from all sides often lead to men forming inflated and very contradictory demands on their spouse: on the one hand, it is prestigious to have an intelligent, educated, talented - in a word, a bright personality; but if this person begins to “burn at work,” complaints arise: at the same time, he wants his wife to be an excellent housewife and a caring mother. Is it possible to combine these seemingly difficult to compatible hypostases?
In a sweatshop system, when career growth (and simply maintaining a job!) in most cases is associated with daily work from bell to bell, this, of course, is unrealistic. Even a two-wire man can’t cope here. Simply due to lack of time. Recreating a more traditional family structure, when the wife bears the main responsibility for the home and children, and the husband is focused on earning money and advancement at work, does not actually limit the woman, but, on the contrary, provides her with ample opportunities to expand her sphere of interests and apply her talents. Everyone has creative abilities, because we are created in the image and likeness of the Creator. They just need to be revealed. And to do this, start doing something, moving somewhere. Moreover, if, remembering the parable of the talents, we move in the right, soul-helping direction, trying to understand the Creator’s plan for ourselves, the talents that He gave us will certainly be revealed and multiplied. Any more or less attentive person has noticed this so many times that examples can be given endlessly.
Unfortunately, not all adults feel an internal creative impulse that prompts them to “suddenly” become interested in one thing or another, to try to apply their strength in one area or another. Many suffer from a feeling of emptiness, but without an impulse from the outside they cannot break out of it. This often stems from childhood, because even children, beings much more frisky and inquisitive than adults, sometimes suffer from boredom, but at the same time refuse to engage in any form of children's creativity: they cannot play independently, do not like to draw, sculpt, or make crafts , design, sing, recite poems, compose fairy tales. And in the company, inspired by the example of others, they gradually overcome the complexes that give rise to internal constraint.
In classes using my puppet therapy technique with Irina Yakovlevna Medvedeva, we see this regularly. Moreover, not only children, but also mothers blossom, since for many this unexpectedly opens not only the spiritual world of their children, but also allows them to apply their abilities, which seemed to have long been lost or were buried under a blanket of gray everyday life.
In general, taking care of children does not necessarily mean stooping to their level and living in their interests. A mother, who has her own creative, cognitive interests, gives the child so much by this very fact that it is still unknown where he will receive more: in the appropriate circle or sitting next to her when she plays the piano, draws, knits, reads, being like him explaining something, showing something, answering questions. For example, I am convinced (and my parental experience confirms this) that the second is much more important than the first.
Not to mention the fact that a lot of activities that are interesting to mothers make it possible to directly involve children in them! In the families of the creative intelligentsia, we see this from generation to generation. In fact, this is an analogue of the life of the Russian nobility, when women did not go to work, but if they wished, they could engage in various types of creativity and works of mercy. This is how, by the way, a modern Orthodox culture can be created (and is slowly being created), which - I am convinced of this - will become a real counterweight to the destructive mass culture coming from the West.
Many wives, while taking care of children and home, manage to help their husbands in his work: they search the Internet for the necessary information, conduct telephone conversations, correspondence, accounting, compose letters, papers, advertisements, etc.
And the most ordinary, routine household chores generally do not interfere with personal development. If you wish (especially with children in mind), you can turn this into such an exciting, fun activity that the children will happily remember how they baked pies with their mother, “swept the deck” (that is, vacuumed or washed the floor), “watered” the room plants, while learning something interesting from the field of botany... Recently it turned out that for my eldest son, the most delicious candies are still those that resemble homemade truffles, which I made 25 years ago from the baby milk formula “Malyutka”. Store-bought truffles were then expensive and in short supply, but this was cheap and cheerful, so the guys and I made candy: on weekends, on holidays, and just, as they say, from an excess of feelings... And my daughter and I made a cake with a house and dolls from gingerbread dough, which we decided to bake, flattered by a beautiful picture in some magazine, did not please anyone with the taste - apple charlotte, which I baked almost every day in the fall during apple-rich years, was much tastier - but on the other hand entered the annals of family history as an example of culinary sculpture.
Of course, there is no time and no need to organize a “holiday every day”; everyday life is necessary, otherwise satiety arises, and the brightness of holiday feelings dims. In this regard, in feminist literature there are often curses against women’s domestic work, because, they say, it is a bad infinity: the dishes get dirty again every day, the furniture gets dusty, the floors get dirty. All this, of course, is true, but, on the other hand, monotonous physical work is good because it does not occupy the mind and it is easy to pray and think conveniently. Since childhood, hearing about the importance of alternating mental and physical labor, I did not attach much importance to it until I began to engage in literary translation and, purely empirically, came to just such an algorithm. When the right word could not be found (and this is a common thing in literary translation), I began to get nervous, sway in my chair, fidget with something in my hands, walk from corner to corner... And then I remembered about the unwashed dishes in the sink or the fact that It wouldn't hurt to cook some soup for tomorrow. And at some point the necessary verbal turn of phrase appeared as if by itself. At the same time, the housework was done, which was also pleasing. So now, as soon as I have a “creative block”, I immediately go looking for homework. Fortunately there is always plenty of it.
Do what you must, and it will be as God wills.
For Orthodox churchgoers, especially after 35, among whom, as I already wrote, there are now quite a lot of housewives, it is, of course, easier to get used to this role than for those who have only recently graduated from college. On the one hand, they have already managed to pull the burden of working in the difficult conditions of Russian capitalism. On the other hand, if a woman really tries to live like a Christian, to seek not her own, but God’s will, then she perceives many circumstances of her life completely differently. The humility that Christians are called to acquire extinguishes vain ambitions. At the same time, the Lord, if He is asked to do so, helps a person find a use for himself, gives those opportunities that you need to save your soul. There is always something to do in the parish, where to apply your strength and abilities. If you have musical talent, sing in the choir. (And children, by the way, from an early age are imbued with the beauty of church hymns, and later they often ask to join the choir themselves.) For needlewomen there is such space that their eyes widen. Those who love to share knowledge can teach in Sunday school, conduct clubs, courses, psychological or legal consultations. Some mothers with many children who have obstetric education prepare pregnant women for childbirth. In organizing pilgrimage trips and summer children's camps, mothers also often play a big role, who, of course, try for their children, but, on the other hand, have the time and opportunity to take care of strangers. There is always a lot of cleaning and cooking, there are always sick and infirm people who need to be visited and who need to be helped.
And how many women, not burdened by the need to go to work, happily respond to the call to read an akathist, take part in a religious procession, or pray for someone’s health or repose! At religious processions you can meet mothers even with tiny children. And how many of them pray at home, invisibly helping their loved ones! How many of these women have been praying to God for years for unchurched relatives, who, naturally, do not know what difficult work this is (and often do not suspect it), and consider their daughter or daughter-in-law to be a slacker and a narrow-minded, narrow-minded fanatic.
As for the “career growth” that advertisements and modern images of prestige are now targeting young women at, then, of course, you will no longer be able to occupy important government positions after giving birth and raising children. And in a “cool” company, you most likely won’t be the boss. But, firstly, many of those who persistently pursued a career at some point leave the race, realizing that family is more valuable. And all their career achievements turn out to be of no use to anyone, including themselves. And secondly, life does not end at 30, nor at 40, nor even at 50. I know cases when a woman, having raised children and become freer, takes on some new business with such energy that in a very short time achieves great success.
A close friend of mine, a mother of three children, was forced to “settle down” at home because one of her sons began to develop a serious illness. For many years, the father became the sole breadwinner in the family. The boy was given a disability, his mother regularly brought him from a distant northern city to Moscow, took him to doctors, and admitted him to hospitals. In the intervals, she taught him lessons at home, and in fits and starts raised other children (fortunately, my grandmother had already retired and could stay with them during her absences). She also took Alyosha to holy places, because at some point the doctors directly said that in his case one could only rely on God. And hope did not disappoint. Now my son is 25, he is healthy, he graduated from college. And my mother, having become a church member during the process of his treatment, first became an active parishioner, then created a branch of the parent movement in her city, uniting people who did not want sex education and supposedly anti-drug, but in fact harmful, “prevention” programs to appear in schools . And now she is already a member of the local Public Chamber, regularly speaks on radio, television, in the press, and participates in major conferences and round tables. Including in the State Duma. And the children, whom she raised with her selfless example, help her, proud that they have such an amazing mother.
Another woman, my neighbor at home, also had no time for work: her youngest daughter could not go to school due to poor health. Homeschooling, housekeeping, treatment - everything was on my mother. Sometimes she could not leave the girl for weeks, because an attack could happen at any moment, and she would have to call an ambulance. Moreover, the eldest, about the same age, demanded attention, care, and affection. When we met on the street or at the elevator, all the conversations revolved around children. Mom didn't care about anything else. But when the girls grew up and the eldest’s health began to improve (and the doctors said that it was a lottery: either by the age of 16 everything will start to improve, or we need to prepare for the worst), my mother had free time, and she began to think about how to fill it. Olga considered sitting in front of the TV, like many housewives, beneath her dignity. It was unrealistic to return to a good, promising job from which I quit more than ten years ago. She had lost her qualifications and could not count on any advancement in her previous job line. The train left long ago and forever. And suddenly a friend, who made and sold women's hats, suggested that she... make hats. Olga considered this proposal a joke, because she had never done anything like that. True, she liked to sew, but this is completely different... And yet the neighbor decided to try. After all, they don't starve; If it doesn't work out - no big deal!
But she really succeeded. After some time, she became quite a skilled and original craftswoman; art salons gladly accepted her products for sale. When we met again, Olga said that she was participating in exhibitions and was going to join the Union of Artists. And she added: “You know, sometimes it seems to me that this is an amazing dream. I would never have thought that life could turn out this way.”
And I thought that this was God’s reward for her patience, faith and fidelity. After all, no one except Him knew what would come out at the end of this many-year “lottery.” The story could very well have ended differently. But the mother, as they say about defenders of the Fatherland, “honestly fulfilled her duty,” without demanding any guarantees. And this debt of love was immeasurably more important, higher and more beautiful than any super-successful career.