How does the absence of the institution of paternity threaten Russia?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Psychologists and sociologists talk about an acute crisis of paternity in Russia, where this problem has a unique specificity. The breakdown of the institution of the traditional family under Soviet rule, coupled with the tendencies of the new era, led to the fact that the average man lost his characteristic role in the family and home. Hence divorce, suicide, alcoholism.

The solution to this problem for society is a matter of survival.

At the beginning of the new year in Russia will appear "Council of Fathers" … Its composition is still classified, but the goals are known. This almost the first in a hundred yearsa systemic measure at the federal level aimed at strengthening the institution of paternity, the crisis of which in the light of the general situation with demography is obvious not only for family psychologists.

Today there is no single idea of what the functional of the modern pope is, what his rights and obligations are, and how to implement in practice the protection of paternity mentioned in a number of bills. All attempts to form an integral picture are reduced either to the disputes between the Westerners and the Slavophiles, or to the furious war of the sexes.

At the thematic forum in the Public Chamber “Father. Paternity. Fatherland "its participants put forward many proposals, such as: legislative consolidation" traditional family values", A ban on advertising of small families, a special maternity leave for fathers (which cannot be transferred to mothers), a mandatory written consent of the husband to an abortion of his wife," strengthening the status of home education "and a number of innovative" family-saving technologies ", taking into account that ". As a result, in addition to good intentions, the forum participants were united only by a common opinion about the need to introduce an official Father's Day in Russia, which has been discussed since the beginning of the 2000s.

Lenin is to blame for everything

Over the past century, the institution of paternity in Russia and a number of other countries of the former USSR has become so deformed that it has become almost a decorative element … For example, the once irreplaceable function of a father-breadwinner is no longer relevant: in an average Russian family, spouses earn about the same. At the same time, society does not put forward intelligible additional requirements for dads, which in a sense has become a trap: by old standards, a man is now, as it were, untenable, but there are no new standards at all.

A study by the Public Opinion Foundation in August showed that that 92% of Russians consider parenting to be the task of both parents … But even in complete and loving families, it is not easy to realize these good intentions.

With the depressing statistics of divorce, parenting together becomes an almost impossible mission. Some single mothers are quite successful in raising children in cohabitation, while divorced dads often cut off all ties with their offspring, up to evading child support.

Sociologists have yet to say what the implications of what is called the "parentage crisis" will be. But they emphasize that the paternity crisis in Russia has a unique a century-long history.

According to the director of the ANO Institute for Demographic Development and Reproductive Potential Ruslan Tkachenko, the main impetus for the undermining of the patriarchal family based on private property and the distribution of gender roles was the 1917 revolution and the subsequent “liberating” decrees that made available promiscuous relationships, abortion, divorce "by letter" and homosexual relationships … However, it quickly became clear that anarchy is good only at the stage of destruction and the young Soviet state, if it wants to survive, urgently needs to set a strict framework for its citizens.

Already in the 30s, a new concept was formed and actively began to be implemented: now the Soviet family was strengthening, but as a unit of society, and not as a self-sufficient unit with a patriarch at its head.

"At the very foundation of the Soviet system resolutions were laid to undermine paternity … In order for everything in common to appear, it is necessary to select the particular. But the memory of property rights cannot be erased without eliminating the institution of paternity, - Tkachenko told the VZGLYAD newspaper. - The founders of socialism wrote that it is impossible to educate a collective person in a traditional family, he must be placed in a collective - in a nursery, a kindergarten, a school. Professor Vladimir Druzhinin in his book "Psychology of the Family" pointed out that in the Soviet years there was no methodological literature on education, where would the father be present, and the word "father" itself in regulatory legal acts was used mainly for scheduling alimony. The right to education, transfer of experience and knowledge took over the Soviet state, in fact, removing parents from these issues ».

This trend continues to this day. “The education system actively denies that it is family subcontractorin the upbringing and education of a child, and the state considers its general customer. It is not surprising that the school perceives family education as a threat, while the deliberate transfer of some of the powers and responsibilities to parents would give the school itself the tools to solve many crisis phenomena in general education,”Tkachenko emphasizes.

A clear logic can be traced in the described actions of the Soviet government. The socialist regime needed stable family men, suitable for building a bright future and not prone to revolts. Loving fathers who are ready to protect their families by right of ownership from anything (including government interference) would be a problem … And then the Great Patriotic War broke out. Those of the men who were lucky enough to return from her were crippled, if not physically, then morally. And the women who returned from Hell felt sorry for them, were painfully grateful to them. In addition, few returned - and this meant not only competition for the right to get married and continue their family, but also the need take on male responsibilities: rebuild the countryafter the war, to work a lot both in production and around the house.

Thus began the era of the dramatic, but still not fully realized matriarchy, whose family way of life assigned his father the role of status in the house furniture.

Women have learned to compete for men, initiate weddings and the birth of children, without stopping to work and conduct life - in general, they took on all the responsibilities of the head of the family. Post-war generations have finally mastered this convenient totalitarian system scheme, where dad behaved as an extra child in the house, who drinks with friends for three at the garage, but from time to time bangs his fist on the table, or even grabs the belt, and the educational impulse was often explained precisely by the alcoholization of the teacher. But he, as the most capricious child in the family, mom - strong, economic, pulling the house on herself - forgives a lot, and kicks out only in extreme cases, when dad fails to re-educate even at party meetings.

All this is not a literary sketch, but a translation of ideology into practice. Since the post-war years, the family policy of the Soviet government has been officially identified childhood with motherhood, and the problems of paternity were mentioned only in the context of the fight against drunkenness, domestic violence and other vices. As a result, during the entire existence of the USSR, no intelligible alternative to the outdated form of patriarchal paternity has appeared, although in all other respects a system was being built that was directly opposite to the pre-revolutionary one.

Kill a mammoth, dig up a field, defeat the enemy

In the 90s, tendencies from the West were added to local problems, where fatherhood was experiencing its own crisis - with a consequence of the cult of consumption, the decline of religion and the availability of promiscuous sex. Male wealth began to be measured by extrafamilial achievements - career, earnings, the number of mistresses.

It would seem that this scheme was supposed to make men happy, now free hunters of the new world. However, experts are sounding the alarm: perhaps it is the collapse of the institution of paternity that is one of the reasons for the increased mortality of men working age in Russia.

“Speaking about the supermortality of men, they usually mention alcohol, risky behavior, but at the same time do not think about why do people live like this … Most modern men there is no need to live, they have no goals, no major achievements, so it doesn't make much sense to take care of their health. They also lost the habit of taking responsibility for their wife and children. The men relaxed today, since the women took over everything, and it is difficult to say what measures would help change this. Employers also do not need male employees who are overly involved in family affairs, which is reflected in the general information policy regarding paternity,”Tkachenko comments on the situation.

The theory outlined by him is generally confirmed by the statistics of suicides. In the second half of the twentieth century, for one woman who decided to commit suicide, 30-44 years 6, 7 cases of suicide among men … At the same time, the peak rate fell in the early 90s, when eight times more men from this age group died from suicide than women.

The high importance of paternity for a man's life is also noted by Tatyana Popova, an expert of the Social Justice All-Russia People's Front working group, head of the public relations department of the Family and Childhood charity foundation. “From my work experience I will say that fatherhood gives a man an opportunity to satisfy his ambitions, makes its self-sufficient … Men are discrete, they think pointwise, by setting goals and objectives: to kill a mammoth and feed a family, dig up a field and get a crop, go to war and defeat the enemy. In the modern world, they are under stress from the work routine, where the result and achievements, let's be honest, are not really tangible for anyone. But raising children is also a work for the result, a global life cycle project. The salutary target function for them is become an accomplished father who has something to be proud of , - said Popova to the VZGLYAD newspaper.

The main thing in a fatherhood crisis is the fear of taking responsibility for the family, she said. “He proceeds from the fear of failing as a man, because in such an important project it is a complete failure,” the expert said. - For a woman, family is a state. Normally, she should shift the responsibility for the project onto her husband, but we are already used to deciding everything ourselves. Many men marry either spontaneously, young, or forcedly, under pressure from a partner. At the same time, both the statistics and the simplicity of the divorce procedure are such that at any time, dad can be thrown out of the educational project, depriving all leadership positions and leaving at best a co-investor and an employee on weekends. This is how a vital project becomes alien.… And the man is already scared at the start."

At the same time, the situation with the crisis of paternity in Russia can be turned to the benefit of the cause by rebuilding everything taking into account the mistakes of both Western and Eastern practices.

“In fact, any upbringing is, first of all, the transfer of experience, traditions, own cultural code, but it is also a movement forward. It is good when several generations of families gather at the festive table, as in the East, or when several young families are organized to hold a common event, as in the West. It is worth paying attention to the best without going to extremes. Let the woman learn to positively reinforce the authority of her husband for the sake of common children, support the authority of the dad, and the man, in turn, stop hiding from family affairs at work and realize that he is a full-fledged co-author of the entire project, and not a bad student,”advises Popova …

Dad can

Even if a woman can provide for the child herself and raise him to his feet, this does not mean that there is no need for a dad. Vladislav Nikitin - director of the social rehabilitation center "House of Mercy", located in the Vasileostrovsky district of St. Petersburg - I am sure that in the process of forming a harmonious personality father's role is fundamental.

“A man, of course, is not emotionally as close to a child as a woman-mother, but in the consciousness and feelings of a child, both parents are one,” he told the VZGLYAD newspaper. - Full parenting outside of a stable marriage is an extremely difficult task for which there is no universal solution. Each case, each set of tools for a particular dad who is divorced, is unique and requires an individual approach."

The expert sees the integral role of the father in the following: “ Father is a continent where safety, law and order reign … The father helps the child to realize the boundaries: his own, other people, his own capabilities, as well as the boundaries of what is permitted. At the tactical level, the norm of maternal love is absolute acceptance and merging, because a woman carried and gave birth to a child. Even the most loving dad is perceived as something more strict, as a protective and limiting principle. Exactly emotional sobriety allows him to always remember about the tasks of education and solve them more systematically, requiring compliance with certain rules.

Before a child gets into society, he will already know and understand that even in relationships with loving people, he must fulfill a number of requirements, in something sacrificing personal interests for the sake of the interests of society. This is an important skill that a person gets from his father."

By and large, fatherhood and motherhood do not need reinforcing tools of public and state thinking. If it is alive and creative, there is enough of it in each specific manifestation. Such a manifestation is the soul of a child, the soul of a new person. If an artificial holiday like Mother's Day and Father's Day is required, then fatherhood and motherhood lose their essence - they are abandoned by the living and creative.

At the same time, give children the opportunity to feel protected, without shifting their own problems and unfulfilled ambitions onto them, this is not only a personal task, but also a common one.… To teach to learn, to enjoy life, to oneself, to those around - where this will work out, there is hope for fatherhood and motherhood in completeness, close to the highest intention. Over the past 50–70 years, people have learned a lot about their own nature, and they have had an unprecedented opportunity to soberly comprehend the process of raising a child, taking into account new realities and, as a result, the importance of the father in this process. But this understanding can be truly accessible only for that person who has managed to clear the path to himself and the path to another from myths and negativity.