How the Slavs raised their sons

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

The liberal approach to upbringing, which is introduced into our families from the West, spoils our sons, and as a result, weak men grow out of them.

There are many technologies: this is the infantilization of children - the process of the onset of social maturity is artificially delayed, this is the same upbringing for boys and girls - their masculinity is taken away from the sons, these are the strictest prohibitions on punishment and the policy "I accept your choice" - children grow up in permissiveness, these are "hikes" to psychologists - parents are inspired with the idea that they do not understand anything about raising children.

We see a completely different picture with our ancestors. Of course, life changes, a modern boy does not need to be taught to plow and sow - although why not? But it is possible and even necessary to adopt the principles of labor education.

About any identical standards of upbringing and speech did not go, and from the very first day. After the birth of a son, the umbilical cord was cut with an ax or arrow. To grow up as a successful hunter and skilled artisan.

At what age did the baby become an adolescent? At about three years old, from the moment of realizing oneself as a person. During a special ceremony - mounting a horse - the boy was given an orientation toward the masculine principle. However, this was not the only initiation rite.

From the age of six to seven, children began to have stable household responsibilities - at the same time they looked at what he was reaching for, what his soul was in. Labor acquired division: the boy gradually moved into his father's labor sphere, he was attracted to male occupations, the girl to female ones.

Becoming an assistant, the boy participated in everything that his father undertook. “Due to lack of time,” the father rarely explained what and how to do. Yes, there was no particular need for this: the son adopted the techniques during work. Of course, there was a discount for age in everything: when the boy was taught to plow, his father trusted to lay a couple of furrows or allocated a small area of arable land for self-cultivation. The teenager mastered harrowing by the age of 10-12, plowing by the age of 14-15 - on the threshold of adulthood.

The boy was always involved in taking care of the horses. He gave them food, gave them to drink, in the summer he drove them to the watering place. Already from 5-6 years old he learned to ride a horse, sitting astride. From 8-9 he learned to harness a horse, to control it, sitting and standing in the cart. At this age, he was already sent to the night - to graze the herd.

Taught crafts: hunting and fishing. By the age of 8-9, the boy knew how to put loops on ducks on a nearby lake, shoot a bow. At ten years old I was catching gophers, columns. By selling the booty to visiting merchants, he received the first money, which he could spend at his own discretion. At this age, almost every boy in a Siberian village could independently make a "snout" for catching fish and install it in the river.

By the age of 15, the teenager had adopted all the household skills, was fit for any male work and, if hired as workers, received a pay equal to an adult. He was considered the right hand of his father, a substitute for absences and illness. In the fishing areas, adult sons took over all the spring field work.

The boys not only worked, they also adopted the skills of proper housekeeping (they were present when discussing economic issues) and their father's demeanor.

Of course, upbringing among the Slavs was not only labor - ceremonies and festivals, training in crafts, military science also played a very important role. But it was men's labor that formed respect for the land, nature, home, family, love for the Motherland.