A family is more than a union of two people who have decided to link their destinies and live together. A family can be compared to a living organism: it is born, matures, “gets sick”, gets old, and so on. This is the life cycle of a family with its history, length in time, events. Each family, like a person, has its unique characteristics, but it is still built according to the same plan. This plan repeats the human development plan and has its own characteristics. The family is based on our collective portrait. When creating a family, we combine our values, behaviors, ideas about the world, something becomes the main thing in our family, and something goes by the wayside. This is how family values appear – they are the core of any family. Moreover, an important step in the family is the birth of a child.
I conducted a survey of three parents from different families with children of different ages in my research. I asked the first interviewed girl Mary how her life changed after the birth of a child. Mary described her experience, focusing only on the negative consequences. She was exhausted, faced with misunderstanding on the part of her husband, and disappointed in herself as a mother. For the first three months, a young mother is under constant stress and often on the verge of her physical abilities. And sometimes, he unwittingly begins to compare this time with the time when there were not only difficulties in life but also joys, pleasures, time for himself and her husband. At the peak of these experiences, she may begin to think about good when the child was not there. Moreover, there is an inner duality and dissatisfaction with yourself. There is joy and happiness from the fact that the baby was born, but at the same time irritation, fatigue because he requires so much attention.
The next person I interviewed is Fred; he is a young single father with a 5-year-old son. He likes the educational process, as he feels himself in the role of a teacher. He tells how cute his son is learning new things and asks many interesting questions. However, one of the disadvantages is that you need to devote a lot of time to educate and preparing for school. This is a very important time for the formation of the baby’s personality, emotional, intellectual, and moral development, the formation of the most important skills for later life (Gestwicki, 2016). Therefore, parents will have to make a lot of effort to grow a pleasant personality, be ready to receive secondary education, and enter the ‘big life.’
Anna is the mother of an 11-year-old student and talks about the difficulties faced by parents of students. First of all, the child faces the first problems on his life path. Anna says how sometimes it is to give him the right advice and teach him independence. The help should be such that the child could cope with difficulties and believe in himself and his strength. With the help and support of parents, the child becomes stronger, freer, more confident, more optimistic.
By way of conclusion, each person has his own vision of what it is like to be a parent, how to behave with a child, what to allow and what to forbid, what the child really needs, and what he can do without. Today, to be a good parent, not only are parenting traditions, parental feelings, and intuition needed, but also planning careful preparation and thinking through the educational process.
Reference
Gestwicki C. (2016). Home, School, and Community Relations. Cengage Learning.