But, it seems, in the past thinking men are not-no, and they allowed feelings different from those permitted by social and religious morality. Remember how, in "Anna Karenina," Levin hears the cries of his wife Kitty, suffering during childbirth: "Leaning his head against the lintel, he stood in the next room and heard someone's never heard a squeal, a roar, and he knew it was screaming what was before Kitty. He had not wanted a child for a long time. He now hated this child. He did not even want her life now, he only wished for the cessation of these terrible sufferings. " And even when a newborn son is shown to the hero, he does not feel any tenderness or tenderness at the sight of this red-faced "piece of a piece".
Leo Tolstoy , the father of as many as thirteen children, has invested so much in Levin that such a move seems a very bold public confession. And in fact - fathers are deprived of a purely feminine physiological mechanism: immediately after birth, a powerful hormonal release occurs in the mother's body, causing the body to forget unpleasant sensations and feel joyous fatigue, as after a hard work done well. It is because of this that many women dream of giving birth to both the second and third child: pain is erased from memory, and maternal euphoria is a feeling that you want to experience again.
Do not blame the insensitivity of the future father, who is frightened by the changes that occur with a beloved woman and during the father's participation in the upbringing of the child. Men, on the contrary, are sometimes too sensitive and susceptible to the state of the future mother to such an extent that they themselves experience morning sickness, pelvic pains and even get fat. This is the so-called "sympathetic pregnancy". French doctors call this state "Kuvad syndrome" (from the French couver - "hatching chickens"). By the way, in their opinion, men who survived the pregnancy of a friend or wife as their own become the most anxious and attentive fathers.
However, the participation of the father in the upbringing of the child and in pregnancy and childbirth has the downside: it can take the companionship of life at birth too close to the heart, and simply not tolerate this, to put it mildly, unappetizing spectacle. Later, this may affect his relationship with the child, who has no idea what caused suffering to the family by the fact of his appearance. "Father's instinct" (it is not clear whether it exists at all) does not come from the very fact of the birth of a new little man, even on the contrary - it can turn off. And to predict how it will be with this or that particular man, it is quite difficult. By the way, a curious thing: the French pediatrician Michel Lyakosye studied the appearance of newborns for more than ten years and came to the conclusion that at such a tender age a child is most like a father, and, only, by the age of three, mother features also appear in him. According to the expert, this is the cunning nature - so that the pope, taking the baby in his arms, could be sure that this is his child, and easy to love him. If this is true, then the "father's instinct" and the father's love are things acquired, rather social than biological. Although the need to continue in the offspring, of course, natural, firmly associated with the fear of death and the thirst for physical immortality. And just with this desire for men, as a rule, everything is in order: it is no accident that many of them, for example, like to be donors of sperm. However, the child needs not only to conceive, but also to grow - and the problems begin at this stage.
On the paternal side
The Institute of Paternity was formed at the dawn of patriarchal culture and the birth of private property: the accumulated material values had to be transferred to someone, so that the fathers became vitally necessary and valuable to the children, especially the sons. Monogamous marriage and the cult of conjugal fidelity is also an invention of about the same times: in order to pass something by inheritance, a man must be sure that the heir is his own child, his flesh and blood. Become a father - meant to gain a certain status and position in society, and childlessness was considered a disgrace. However, before the representative of the stronger sex, it was necessary to create and accumulate what he would transfer, and only then take care of the successor. That is, first - to build a house and plant a tree, and only in third place - to raise a son.
It is this conviction guided by modern men who prefer to build a career primarily, to gain material and social stability, and then start a family and spend the rest of the time for the father's participation in the upbringing of the child. However, they overlook that in the past, marriages were, usually, quite early, but this did not prevent the career of the fathers of the family. They just did not do children at all - it was considered the prerogative of mothers, and even if they had such an opportunity, they preferred to use the services of wet-nurses, nannies and governesses. The fathers were considered "earners", their task was to provide for the family, "so that the children would not need anything" (and even now many men think so).
In fact , the active participation of fathers in the education of children began to speak only in the XX century. In the 1950s, a book was published in the United States under the landmark title: "Fathers are also parents." Psychologists began to write about the fact that the child at each stage of his life needs both parents, including the famous Erich Fromm in his "Art of Love": "A mature man unites his mother's and father's consciousness in his love, despite the fact that they seemed to would be opposed to each other. If he had only his father's consciousness, he would have been angry and inhuman. If he had only a maternal consciousness, he would be inclined to lose a sound judgment and would prevent himself and others from developing. " In other words, love and mums and dads are needed by a child in order to learn how to love yourself: not blindly as a mother, and not as demanding as a father.
But fathers are not born, and if the upbringing of the girl is largely intended to activate her motherhood, the boys, as a rule, do not explain how to be popes. Future men rarely play in their mother's daughters, except occasionally and forcedly. They are more often offered not dolls, but cars and soldiers. It would seem that everything is logical: the boy is oriented to a career, and the girl is to a family. In the modern world, everything is much more complicated, and the family, like much more, is gradually becoming a matter for both partners. Both mom and dad can change the baby's diapers, take a walk with him, read a fairy tale for the night, help with homework, and supplement the family budget. Now it becomes more and more difficult to single out a specific, specifically, father function. However, it exists, and it has not been erased by any changes in social relations for the participation of the father in the upbringing of the child.
Third you?
Although boys do not undergo "paternity lessons" as a child, they still understand - each in his own way - what it means to be a father, and an example of this is their own parent. He learns from him not only how to deal with the child, but also the relationship with the future wife - it depends on how the father treated his mother. But, by the way, the father in this case is not necessarily a biological parent or stepfather. It can be any figure, different from the mother, on which the child's need for the father is projected. And this need always exists.
A loving father to a child is absolutely necessary for his successful psychological development. In the absence of the father in his role, anyone can act - men, women, friends. Most often, it can be people who are next to the mother: grandmothers, grandfathers, godparents - someone whom the child is initially able to identify as not the mother. " And then the grown up child may not have an extremely important personal experience and a direct example of paternity. " In other words, the hero Begbedera, which was discussed at the beginning of the article, is an example of a man who admits in his psychological unpreparedness and inability to become a father himself. "Someone the third" - the father appears in the life of the child, just beginning to understand that he no longer is one with the mother. This occurs much earlier than it may seem - at the age of 5 - 9 months. In psychology, this process is called an early triangulation, when the dyad "mother-child" is replaced by the triad "child-parents".
At a later stage (1 to 3 years) - the so-called "doedipov" - the child realizes even more clearly that, apart from him, there are other people and other relationships in the world. And it is the father (or the figure that replaces him) that plays the main role in this child's realization of his "separation". It depends on him, what kind of father the grown up boy will be and whether he wants to be a father at all. It is important only to realize that the kid needs the manifestations of his father's love no less than in the mother's, and this has nothing to do with the notorious "providing the family" - because the kid has no idea what money is and why they are needed. But he understands well what love and attention are.
The key function of the father is to help the child to separate from the mother, to learn to live their own, autonomous life. The best thing a father can do for a child is to give him the resources necessary for his development: to give him time, to play with him, to help him cope with feelings that he is not able to "digest" himself. And also through his relationship with his mother to demonstrate to the child how he should behave with her, in particular, in cases where she disappoints, frustrates. A father can even create situations when the mother becomes an "excluded third". The fact is that many mothers tie the child to themselves, and then the father is inappropriate, he does not win emotional competition with his mother, he does not seem to. This is the unconscious collusion between the mother and the child against the pope, and then he becomes the "excluded third". But if the father takes the initiative and establishes contact with the child, then the kid can later apply for emotional support to him, when the mother can not provide the necessary for her child. All this helps the child to understand both the world of men and the world of women, to identify with both mother and father, but most importantly, what the child does, he absorbs the nature of the relationship between the parents.
It is the ability to be the third in a relationship - that's what the boy will most likely need when the beloved woman tells him: "Darling, we will have a child." Fear of appearance of someone third, anger and disappointment in him (fastidiousness at the sight of the process of birth and the resultant "lump of meat") indicate that as a child, the man just did not complete the path of separation from his mother, did not learn to join in a close relationship, in which the participants are more than two. Especially if this incomprehensible and frightening third will for some time become the main thing in the life of a loved one. Many men can make a connection "on the side" during pregnancy or the postpartum period of the wife - they think that this way they are taken care of. They leave the child "good enough mother", but deprive themselves of a wife and mistress in her face. This is their way of coping with a situation with which they can not cope psychologically. Finding another woman, they create an inverted situation, when not a man competes with a child for the attention of his mother, and two women compete because of him.
School for a young father
In the twentieth century, this "inability to be the third" is the common misfortune of whole generations, deprived not only of traditional ways of male initiation and the transfer of father experience from father to son, but often the very possibility of communication between father and son. Two world wars and many other cataclysms have seriously weakened the male population. So the winged phrase from Fight Club: "We are a generation of men brought up by women" - in our latitudes is true not for one generation. Sometimes such men do not manage to leave the "mother-child" relationship for a lifetime.
But this does not mean that parts of the stronger sex should generally be legally forbidden to have children. Simply in their case, paternity becomes conscious - with or without the participation of the therapist. Much depends on the behavior of the future mother, her ability to tactfully connect a loved one to the process of expecting a child and care for him, as well as explain what and why the baby needs.
Conscious paternity for a modern man, according to American psychologists, is based on three pillars: participation, persistence and awareness. Participation is the involvement of the father in the life of the child, the desire to do something with it, its accessibility and responsibility for the baby. Persistence is important for the baby in so far as it means the presence of the father next to it, if not every minute, then at certain guaranteed intervals of time. Finally, awareness implies not only knowledge about the development of the child and the current state of his affairs, but also dedication to his inner life, knowledge of secrets that the child can entrust to his father. Perhaps, if a man is ready to give the heir all this, he can really become a good father, at least, will strive for it.
Statistics show that men are now gradually returning to the family: as studies show, in the West the popes now spend more time with their children than 20-30 years ago. Paternity, having ceased to be just a biological necessity, turns into a consciously cultivated skill - there would be a desire.