Lyudmila Petranovskaya: dad - maybe

2024 Author: James Gerald | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 14:00

The well-known psychologist Lyudmila Petranovskaya has published the book "Selfmama: Life Hacks for a Working Mom". These are practical tips for modern women who strive to devote an equal amount of strength and energy to each side of their personality.

One of the most exciting chapters - about the participation of the father in the life of the child - the author shared with "Cleo".

As soon as we start thinking about who the mother can leave the child with when she leaves, we immediately come across another stereotype belief: a woman must certainly take care of the child. If not a mother, then a grandmother or a nanny, but not his second parent, from the point of view of the law, meanwhile, having all the same rights and obligations.

The remnants of the archaic way of life, with its idea of the division of labor into "male" and "female", and the difficult history of our country, in which whole generations of children grew up without fathers and then, creating their own families, had no idea. then dad should do with the children. This stereotype renders dad functions entertaining (go fishing on weekends, go to the zoo, have fun on the carpet) or disciplinary (threaten, punish).

Both that and another become relevant from the age of three, and before that, the child's dad only takes pictures and sometimes takes on the pens, well, he can also buy diapers and baby food, constantly checking with his mother on the phone. Mother is responsible for feeding, washing, changing clothes, laying down, comforting and treating. Of course, in its pure form, this option is now less and less common, especially among educated citizens, but even from a young and otherwise quite modern resident of the capital, you can still hear: "My husband cannot stay with a child."

123RF / Wavebreak Media Ltd

Dear ones. There are things that your husband definitely cannot. For example, have sex five times a night. And this is absolutely normal, physiological, there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. However, can you imagine a loving wife who says to the right and to the left: "No, what are you, my five times can not"? It's true, and that's okay, but that would sound … disloyal, to put it mildly. It would be unpleasant for the husband.

At the same time, absolutely any man is capable of caring for a baby or doing everything necessary for an older child (if he does not lie in a layer from the disease). There is nothing impossible in feeding, washing, changing diapers, shaking, changing clothes, playing, putting to bed. An eight-year-old child and an eighty-year old man can handle this. This can be done while sitting in a wheelchair. It is available to people who are unable to learn to read. Why, then, do women easily discredit in the eyes of their husbands around them, young, healthy, intelligent and successful men, declaring that "he cannot"? And why do men sometimes readily agree with this?

My cousin's family has three small children (while the book was being prepared, there were four). He and his wife are both highly qualified and sought-after programmers. Both work. Their day is organized as follows: by agreement with her superiors, mom comes to work very early, by seven in the morning. He gets up before everyone else and leaves. Dad gets up with the children, feeds everyone with breakfast, collects and delivers to kindergartens and nannies. But my mother is released early and already at three o'clock in the afternoon she collects them back and takes them home. Sometimes she studies in the evenings (the programmers study all the time), and then in the evening she’s also dad with the children. Usually he bathes and lays down.

To anyone I tell from my Russian acquaintances, they are amazed and delighted. But for Israel, this is the norm. It's all about the settings.

123RF / Maria Sbytova

Let's be clear: the patriarchal world no longer exists. What seemed unshakable to our great-grandmothers is irrelevant today. There are families where wives are better at computers and better at hammering nails than husbands. There are families where husbands do better cleaning and like to go shopping more than wives. We are in the XXI century. The beauty is that you can be yourself, do what you do, what inspires you, and not play the boring role of "father or mother of the family." We are glad of this new freedom, we are using it with might and main. It's normal for a woman to drive a car. It's normal for a man to like to bake pies. Snorting and mocking this is usually a sign of poor education and culture. Why is the sphere of caring for children standing apart? Why is the myth about "the husband cannot" so persistent?

Sometimes it seems that in addition to simply reproducing a stereotype, there is also a layer of secondary benefit. It is convenient for a man to make a helpless and confused face and pathetically exclaim something like: "I'm afraid to drop him" or "He is crying and wants to see you." And no worries, duties and responsibilities for the child. It is convenient for a woman to stake out the sphere of family life, in which she is an irreplaceable master. This gives her confidence, especially at a time when she sits at home with her child, loses her professional identity and depends on her husband financially.

But let's think about the price that has to be paid for such a solution.

Dad gets an extra couple of hours of rest and less responsibility. But along with them - an exhausted and irritated wife and a child, whom he does not know and does not understand. Mom gains power over the “everything about the child” sphere, strengthens her importance and acquires a legitimate reason to take offense at dad and at any time pull out the trump card “you don’t take care of children at all”. But the set includes overwork, irritation with the husband and distance from him, which blocks the opportunity to recover, having been together - what kind of recovery is there against the background of grievances and claims. The child turns out to be a hostage in this game, he is caught. Children are always very sensitive to even the unspoken wishes of their parents. And the further, the more the child will demonstrate that he is bad with his dad, but only with his mother is good. He will cling to mom, not letting go of her, he will push dad away and catch cold, barely going out with him for a walk. Anything for the most important people in his life.

123RF / Antonio Diaz

Our great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers could live in the model "dad appears in the life of a child at the age of seven" without destroying themselves and their relationships, because, firstly, everyone lived this way, and secondly, there was a harsh truth behind this model - caring for children and the household was so laborious that it required training from childhood in complex skills and technologies, and the work of extracting resources from the outside was so physically difficult and sometimes dangerous that a man was delegated to it. Today, everything is different for a long time, special skills and years of study are no longer needed to take care of the house and children, you do not need to be able to spin, darn, milk a cow, bake bread, collect and dry medicinal herbs. On the other hand, “hunting for a mammoth” now requires not strength and willingness to take risks, but professionalism, and a woman's contribution to the family budget can be no less than that of a man.

There are no longer any objective grounds for rigid boundaries between parenting responsibilities based on gender. Therefore, in the model “mothers are engaged in children” every year there are more and more lies, tricks, hidden messages and secondary benefits. And where it is not true, there do not expect love, harmony and family happiness.

“He wants to see you” - it is very easy to say this and, having handed the roaring baby to his wife, sit down at the computer. But it might be worth asking yourself: why doesn't he want to to me? Why am I, his father, not a person with whom he feels good, calm and cheerful, why does my embrace not comfort him, why does he not believe in my ability to respond to his needs, protect him and take care of him? And does that suit me? And isn't it time to do something about it, even if the first couple of times it will be difficult and the child will cry in response to my awkwardness and confusion? If you do not give up and continue, gradually that day or evening when dad is alone with the child will begin to be perceived not as an evening sacrificed so that mom “disperses”, but will be an ordinary pleasant evening of an adult family man - after all, it’s normal to spend time with your kids.

123RF / Viktor Levi

“Give it here, you don’t know how” is very easy to say, but perhaps you should ask yourself: why am I so afraid? That dad will not do everything as perfect as I thought? Not the way I would? What such a terrible thing will happen if his father, an adult, sane person who loves this child, does something “wrong”, that is, differently? Maybe it’s even better? And maybe even worse, but then you can draw conclusions from mistakes. If you are seriously afraid that your child's father is so infantile, or stupid, or cruel that the child may seriously suffer (this sometimes happens), then this is already a reason for urgently seeking help from social services, and not for reading books.

Want to make sure your dad can? Just leave the child to him and go about your business, expressing confidence that they will cope. And after the third call with questions, turn off the phone. Perhaps, this evening, it is not the child who goes out at eight, but the husband, perhaps something will be stained or eaten in the wrong form and in the wrong order. But, I think, in general, they will cope.

For example, at one time, upon my return, I was met by my husband with a ten-month-old son in his arms, and the child was healthy and cheerful, but striped. That is, just like a zebra, in an even black strip from top to toe. It was a bit of a shock, especially when it turned out that the strips were not washed in any way. Dad just didn't notice how the kid got to my typewriter with a brand new ink ribbon just inserted. Nothing, it was like that for three days, gradually the stripes turned pale and disappeared.