What role does the family play in generational change? Family roles and their distribution

Statistics show that the transition to a market economy has had a very negative impact on the state of the family. Demographers record a catastrophic drop in the birth rate, sociologists note an increase in the number of asocial families and predict a decline in living standards and a decline in the moral principles of family education.

One of the best gifts a parent can give a child is to teach them about their family history. As an adult, he himself will become a link between generations. The connection between generations becomes visible when we look at photographs of our relatives together, tell or listen to life stories, “family legends.”

It’s sad that, basically, we don’t know our ancestry beyond three generations. In the modern world there are a lot of technical opportunities to leave it and leave a memory of yourself. This activity will be very interesting and very important for the family. And we know that nothing unites a family like a common hobby. How great it is to get everyone together in the evening not in front of the TV, but in front of the family album over a cup of tea with raspberry jam prepared according to grandma’s recipe!

The main function of the family in life of society as a process of generational change - birth and upbringing of people. Everything else in family life is secondary to this.

Raising a person is a multi-year process in which initially predetermining and defining family plays a role. Therefore, education must be subject to a certain expediency, which should be understood by adult family members. In particular, crisis-free development society requires that new generations enter adulthood free from those moral and ethical vices, from those ideological errors, delusions and inadequate understanding of the world that were characteristic of previous generations.

This, in turn, requires adult family members to have a reasonable attitude towards life society as a “social organism” (i.e. “system integrity”) in the process of historical development. If this is not the case, then the family, to a greater or lesser extent, fails to cope with its social function, although the biological function of reproduction (including “expanded” reproduction) of the “biomass” of new generations of the species “Homo sapiens” can be performed more or less successfully .

If the role of the family as a means of reproduction of new generations of society is more or less recognized by everyone, then the needs of an adult in family life in a historically established culture are either not realized, or are repressed, suppressed or distorted by heterogeneous personal self-interest: the family as a system requires that all its participants incessantly and generously gave away she has something of her own, but personal self-interest requires only one thing - to take as much as possible from the environment, giving to others as little as possible.

As a result, self-interest is myopic and does not see prospects: neither those of others, nor one’s own. Therefore, if you tune out current momentary self-interest (I want to have everything right now, without giving anything away from myself), That family of several adult generations - not only a means of reproduction of new generations, but also the primary means of supporting an individual in old age or in the event of a person’s loss of health and performance at an earlier age.

Since a person is characterized not only by physiological and everyday needs (which in the future will be able to cope with household appliances with artificial intelligence), but he also needs communication - and especially, with people close to him in spirit (thoughts), then as a means of supporting the elderly and those who have lost their ability to work for other reasons a family of several adult generations living in harmony, Neither nursing homes, nor lonely old age in rare communication with neighbors at the entrance, nor homes for the disabled, nor boarding houses and centers for temporary stay of pensioners can replace.

But in order for a family of many generations to carry out this personally significant and socially significant function, its home must be spacious enough for each member (at least several generations of one branch of the family living in one place) it was not crowded in their common house and that the house was cozy.

Accordingly, nursing homes, etc. - auxiliary social institutions, means of providing support to those who, due to various reasons - not typical for the normal life of people and society as a whole,- left without a family in old age or disability.

If institutions of this kind pretend to become the main means of supporting the elderly and disabled, this means that society is collapsing, especially if this is accompanied by the so-called “social orphanhood” - lonely children (loneliness in a child’s family is especially depressing) and street children, whose upbringing their biological parents and other relatives avoided.

The second circumstance requiring state support and state cult is precisely healthy family of several adult generations, is that the personal and psychological development of a child proceeds best in such a family, since it is in this family that the child, in an informal setting - in ordinary everyday life - sees all the ages of life ahead of him and the relationships of people of different sexes and different ages. And living in such a family, he unconsciously and consciously and critically adopts the morality, ethics and behavior skills of adults in diverse everyday situations. And in this capacity, a family of several generations cannot be fully replaced by any edifying and educational institution (school, church, etc.).

A family of several adult generations, in whose life there is discord, the tyranny of one of the adults, or a war to establish this kind of tyranny, can only show a child an example of how how not to live - if he can understand it; and if he cannot, then he is doomed with a high probability to unconsciously “automatically” reproduce in his life the vices and mistakes of past generations of his family. But in modern conditions, when clan-tribal image of village life of a family of many generations on one farm has become a thing of the past, such internally conflicting families of many generations, as a rule, cannot arise because younger generations, in conditions of conflicts with older generations, prefer to start a life separate from them, or because young families are destroyed (including with the active complicity older relatives).

A family in which there is only one generation of adults cannot give a child much of what he needs in his personal development, even if harmony reigns in it.

Moreover, “single-parent families” in which one mother (more often) or one father (less often) raise children alone (especially if there is only one child) are even more flawed in this regard: since the psychology of the sexes differs from one another, then overwhelmingly in most cases, neither a single mother nor a single father can show in their everyday behavior to the child everything that he should learn from them for a full adult life; and besides, the child is unable to protect himself from the psychological pressure of one of the adults (if it occurs), and there is no one to protect him. If a single parent lives with his parents (or the parents of the second spouse who has gone “to the side” or to another world), then the generation of grandparents can partly compensate for the absence of the second parent.

But in the vast majority of cases An “incomplete family” (in which there is only one parent and children, and especially if there is one child) cannot give the child everything he needs in his personal moral and psychological development. It cannot give, also because the family falls apart and becomes “incomplete,” mostly as a result of the fact that the parents were unable to identify and resolve their own moral and psychological problems in such a way as to live in harmony and harmony while raising their children. And after the collapse of the “full family” (or refusal to marry if there is pregnancy), these moral and psychological problems are transmitted to the child on the basis of the biofield community of members both the families of his ancestors.

This means that in relation to such families, state assistance should be provided in some aspects not to the “incomplete family”, i.e. essentially not the “head of the family”, but directly to the child. One form of this type of assistance directly to the child There may be specialized kindergartens and schools for children of single mothers, in which the staff of educators and teachers should be mostly male, and a special “extended day” program (in such special schools) should be carefully worked out by psychologists and teachers so that children can to gain what a “single-parent family” cannot give them.

For the same purpose - raising children growing up in “single-parent families” and improving marriage opportunities for single women in a society in which there is a shortage real men (husbands and fathers rolled into one),- It is advisable to legally allow polygamy.

According to what has been said, society will have to overcome the family crisis that has developed to date for many decades, since only over such a very long period of time can healthy families of several generations form and take a position main family type in society.

This will require a state strategy for the development and support of a healthy family, which excludes an economic policy in which the vast majority of the population constantly wanders around the country and the world in search of better earnings: such nomadic “labor power” is one of the most effective factors in the destruction of the family and the transfer of the function of education from parents - “the street” (or even worse - TV and the Internet, which is the key to more or less pronounced moral and mental defectiveness of everyone who receives such an inhuman upbringing); In addition, the nomadism of the “labor force,” whose life is either fundamentally unsatisfactory or distorted by a long life without a family, is one of the sources crime in general and mafia organized crime, in particular.

There is also another significant circumstance that biologists know about, but which sociologists ignore: the modern city is a powerful mutagenic factor that changes human genetics, mostly not for the better. And the state must take this circumstance into account in its demographic policy in the interests of ensuring the health of future generations and the stability of society. This means that under the current biologically unfavorable conditions of urban life, when considering the life of society as a whole in the continuity of generations, maintaining the population of cities should be ensured only in part due to the reproduction of new generations by the citizens themselves. Those. biological population growth in cities (due to the birth of children by city residents themselves) should be negative, but there should be a constant influx of young people into cities from regions where the mutagenic impact is less intense than in cities. This is especially true for cities with a population of more than approximately 200 - 250 thousand people, in which dense development of multi-apartment high-rise buildings predominates, which almost completely pulls people out of natural biocenoses.

But such a demographic policy of the state requires a coordinated interaction of cultures - urban and rural - and, above all, on the basis of achieving a real commonality of standards for compulsory education of schoolchildren both in cities and in rural areas, as well as the general availability of works of art and culture in general, which should be the main task of television and educational Internet portals. The activities of the system of upbringing and education of the younger generations should also be subordinated to the same task: kindergartens, schools, libraries. At the same time, all named and unnamed educational institutions should not program the psyche of children with cultural norms and knowledge, but should show them the ways of growing up as individuals and becoming human, providing the means by which these paths can be better understood, mastered and followed into adulthood .

All family life is initially built on the distribution of responsibilities, and it is extremely important to resolve the issue of their optimal division between spouses. Moreover, household responsibilities should be distributed in accordance with the desires and capabilities of each spouse, so that their fulfillment does not turn into a heavy burden.

A modern family does not always follow traditional rules and norms; the practice in each couple is individual and is often related to what patterns of family life and distribution of responsibilities the spouses took from the parental home, what they observe in familiar families. Developing your own family structure and distribution of family responsibilities often becomes a long and complex process. But the consistency of ideas about the functional and role assignment of the responsibilities of each of them depends only on the spouses themselves.

In accordance with the most important functions of the family, the functional-role consistency of the spouses is the basis for the stability and well-being of the family union.

The system includes the following family roles: Responsible for the financial well-being of the family. This role includes a set of responsibilities related to providing the family with the necessary level of well-being. In a traditional family, this role belongs to the husband. In a modern family, as a rule, both spouses work.

The role of the owner (hostess)) Houses implements the function of organizing and supporting everyday life. The implementation of this role involves purchasing products, preparing food, ensuring comfort, cleanliness and order, and caring for clothes. In a traditional family, this role is assigned to the wife. In egalitarian families, these role functions are distributed approximately equally, taking into account cultural stereotypes and ideas about the role of men and women in “maintaining the family hearth.”

The role of those responsible for maintaining family ties. This role includes organizing communication with family and friends, participating in family rituals, ceremonies, holidays, and promoting the social and psychological development of family members.

The role of the organizer and creator of the family subculture, a kind of spiritual leader of the family. This role is aimed at developing in family members certain cultural values, diverse interests and hobbies, spiritual communication and providing conditions for the cultural growth of family members.

The role of the organizer of family leisure. This role includes the initiation and organization of family activities in the field of leisure, the implementation of the family’s recreational function, aimed at planning and conducting weekends and vacations. In the modern situation of a lack of interpersonal communication in the family, this role is undoubtedly important; it contributes to family cohesion.

The role of the family “psychotherapist”. Fulfilling this role presupposes the implementation of emotional mutual understanding, support, security in the family, and a sense of personal self-worth for family members. Traditionally, this role is assigned to a woman due to the recognition of her greater emotional sensitivity. The fulfillment of this role is closely related to overall marital satisfaction.

The role of the sexual partner includes the manifestation of activity in sexual behavior. Traditionally, the role of leader in sexual relations is assigned to the husband, although recently there has been an increase in activity in sexual behavior among women.

The role of the person responsible for raising the baby. Fulfilling this role requires providing the child with physical and mental comfort in the first year and a half of his life. Traditional norms ascribe this role to the mother. In a modern egalitarian family, it is quite successfully performed by fathers, but traditionally this function remains with the mother, since it is the mother who is the most adequate figure for the formation of the child’s first social need for contact with an adult and attachment. The prerequisites for the synchronicity of interaction between mother and child are laid down during the period of prenatal development; the formation of the mother’s parental position occurs much earlier compared to the parental position of the father. In addition, breastfeeding is a biologically determined function of the mother.

The role of a child educator. This role includes responsibilities related to the development of the older child's personality and is usually carried out by both parents.

Acceptance of roles is carried out in accordance with sociocultural norms and standards that determine the criteria for assessing the success of fulfilling roles. Role behavior is characterized by the degree of identification of the performer with the role, i.e. the degree of acceptance of responsibility for fulfilling the role, role competence; role conflict, i.e. the inconsistency in the human mind of the behavioral models necessary to implement the role. The parental family factor of each spouse has a significant influence on role behavior. There are two possible types of influence of the image of the parental family on the acceptance and fulfillment of roles: 1) repetition in one’s own family of the nature of the distribution of family roles and the execution of learned roles in the form in which they were performed in the parental family; 2) rejection of the family structure of the parental family due to the dysfunction of child-parent relationships in the family of one of the spouses.

Any of the social and interpersonal roles is acquired by a person in childhood among peers and family. This role becomes a habit, a basic behavior pattern. Unfortunately, having become accustomed to a certain role and behavior, the young spouse often does not take into account the peculiarities of the family situation and the personal role position of his marriage partner. Therefore, it is very important to correctly understand the appropriateness of the role that each spouse chooses, its relevance to the situation and consistency with each other’s preferences.

The role behavior of spouses in the family, especially in the initial period of its formation, is associated with an unconscious tendency to repeat the family model of their parents. At the same time, each of the marriage partners learns his marital role on the basis of identifying himself with a parent of the same sex, supplementing this role with his own ideas about the role of a parent of the other sex.

The form of parental relations acts as a kind of standard for young spouses, with which they compare their roles in their own family. At the initial stages of marriage, compliance on the part of one of the spouses for the sake of his marriage partner often appears due to the desire to adapt to him (primary adaptation). However, over time, it is possible to return to the previous program of behavior that does not meet the role expectations of the second spouse, repeating the mistakes and problems of one’s parents, which creates conditions for conflict and negatively affects the stability of the marriage.

The model of the parental family influences the model of families that their children subsequently create. The closer the family models from which the spouses come, the higher the likelihood of a harmonious union in the family being created.

A serious factor that largely determines the nature of the adoption of interpersonal roles in the family is sibling relationships in the spouses’ own family.

Depending on the sibling positions, several options for combinations of role expectations can be distinguished:

• complementary marriage- complementary sibling positions of spouses. For example, the positions of the eldest and youngest child. In the case of complementarity, the most favorable option for the formation of a role structure is observed; partners can create a stable model based on cooperation. In particular, an older brother who had a younger sister can form an exceptionally stable union with a wife who also had an older brother. Similarly, a younger brother who has an older sister expects his wife to take care of him, protect him, look after him. A wife who had a younger brother in her parental family will show a similar attitude towards her husband, maintaining the same behavior; the union will be stable and harmonious. Thus, a complementary marriage can be considered as a union in which each of the young spouses occupies the same position as he had in relation to brothers or sisters in the parental family:
• partially complementary marriage - partial coincidence of sibling positions. For example, the positions of the middle and eldest children only partially meet the spouses' expectations regarding interpersonal interaction;
• non-complementary marriage - the identity of the sibling positions of the spouses, leading to competition in the struggle for the assignment of the same interpersonal role.

Role behavior in marriage will also largely depend on whether the partner combinations correspond to each other’s ideas and expectations. In such cases, partners recognize each other more easily and quickly reach mutual understanding.

The functional-role positions (behavior) of young spouses largely depend on what model of marriage they intend to create, taking into account personal attitudes and their ideas about the role of each of them in the family union.

Psychologist T.S. Yatsenko identified four main marital roles: sexual partner, friend, guardian, patron. It is these roles that are associated with satisfying the most significant needs of marriage partners: sexual, the need for emotional connection and warmth in relationships, the need for protection, guardianship and in the sphere of performing household duties. The arrangement of these roles determines the nature of the marital relationship. For example, if a wife has a very strong need for emotional connection and warmth in a relationship, then the husband should act as a friend to her so that this particular need is satisfied. For a husband, in accordance with the characteristics of age and the psychology of gender, sexual need may prevail in the first years of marriage. Therefore, it is advisable for the wife to act as an intimate partner. In principle, for a normal married life the presence of all these roles is necessary, otherwise the marriage becomes defective. The strength and stability of the family in the future will depend on the coincidence of the role expectations of the partners and the corresponding characteristics of the role behavior of the marriage partner. Therefore, it is important to know what types of family roles exist in a modern family in order to intelligently approach their coordinated choice within the framework of intra- and extra-family behavior.

Three main types of family roles are decisive in marital relationships: traditional, companionate and partner roles.

Traditional roles require on the part of the wife the birth and upbringing of children, the creation and maintenance of a home, domestic services for the family, devoted subordination of her own interests to the interests of her husband as the head of the family, adaptability to dependence and tolerance of restrictions on the scope of activity. On the part of the husband, in order to maintain the harmony of family relations in this case, the following are necessary (strictly consistently): devotion to the mother of his children, economic security and protection of the family, maintaining family power and control, making basic decisions.

Friendly role requires the wife to maintain external attractiveness, provide moral support and sexual satisfaction, maintain social contacts that are beneficial to her husband, provide interesting communication, provide variety in life, and eliminate boredom. The role of the husband involves admiration for his wife and a chivalrous attitude towards her, reciprocal romantic love and tenderness, providing her with the means for clothes, entertainment, social contacts, and spending leisure time with his wife.

Role of partners requires husband and wife to make a certain economic contribution to the family budget, share responsibility for children, participate in housework, and share legal responsibility. The husband is also required to accept the equal status (position) of his wife and agree with her equal participation in making any decisions. From the wife - readiness for the husband to renounce knighthood (the spouses are equal), equal responsibility for maintaining the status of the family, and in case of divorce and absence of children - renunciation of material assistance.

For the stability of a marriage, the consistency of not only social but also interpersonal roles in the union of two unique individuals, differing from each other in their individual uniqueness, is important.

The relationship between husband and wife can be built on models: father-daughter, mother-son, brother-sister, friend-friend.

The mother-son model is comfortable for some men, but not many women are happy to play this role. The role of the patron father in the “father-daughter” model is more popular with men, but not everyone can act in this role and role conflict often arises, leading to the breakup of a married couple. The “buddy-buddy” model is obviously not suitable for creating a family, since from the very beginning it does not imply clear mutual obligations.

The “brother-sister” model is the most harmonious in marital relationships, since if you quarrel with your sister (brother), you will not break up. Attachment is stronger than any resentment, and this attachment helps to look for ways to reconciliation, teaches you to tolerate the shortcomings of another person, allows you to objectively understand complex family problems, and find common ground.

When there is true love in a family, people become everything to each other, since differences always remain in the male and female makeup of the soul, attracting one sex to the other and ensuring mutual complementation of characters, an irreplaceable center of sincerity and human warmth.

For example, family role"mother" implies that any woman takes care of her children. This role also includes a complex of feelings, the most important of which is love. However, “mother” is also the goals that she strives to achieve, namely, to raise her children as worthy people. This concept is associated with the phenomena of norms and sanctions. Norms determine what exactly, from the point of view of society, should be performed by the role holder. Thus, the mother is obliged to help children master various skills, control their behavior, and, if necessary, punish them. Sanctions are the reactions of others or the person himself to the fulfillment or failure to fulfill a role. People may judge a mother who abandoned her children. She may also experience an internal sanction - remorse, realizing that she does not love her child.

Family members perform different duties: spouse, mother, father, son, daughter, grandmother, grandfather, grandson, father-in-law, mother-in-law, daughter-in-law, older brother, etc. Moreover, in a family consisting of three generations living together and leading a common household, one and the same person must be able to flexibly function in several roles at once (for example, as the husband of his wife, the father of the eldest child - a son and the youngest child - a daughter, son-in-law and mother-in-law). Otherwise, a variety of family role conflicts and family dysfunction may arise.

Each family role individually and their entire system in a particular family must meet certain requirements.

First, they must have logical integrity. If expectations from a representative of a certain family role are contradictory, serious difficulties arise in its implementation (for example, when a mother demands from her son that he be gentle, soft, obedient and, at the same time, independent and courageous).

Secondly, the totality family roles which an individual fulfills in the family must ensure the satisfaction of his needs for respect, recognition, and sympathy. Thus, the role of a husband places on a man not only the obligation to provide financially for his wife, but also gives him the right to expect love, affection, and satisfaction of sexual and erotic needs from her.

Thirdly, it is very important that the tasks performed correspond to the capabilities of the individual. When the demands are unbearable, neuropsychic tension and anxiety arise (as a result of one’s lack of confidence in coping with the role). An example of this is the “child playing the role of parent” in a situation where, due to the absence of elders or their personality disorders, he has to take on parental responsibilities.

In normally functioning families, the structure family roles is holistic, dynamic and psychologically comfortable for all its members. However, they are often pathologizing and, due to their structure and content, have a traumatic effect on family members. These are the roles of “family scapegoat”, “family martyr who completely sacrifices himself in the name of loved ones”, “sick family member”, etc.

In some families, one member is forced to play a social role that is traumatic for himself, but psychologically beneficial to his relatives.An illustration of this is the delegation of the role of an adult to a child, which is typical for families with the problem of alcoholism, where the mother “saves” the father and suffers, and the child faces the need to be his mother’s “support” - to support her, console her, not upset her, and hide his childhood difficulties from her. so as not to upset. In this case, the child is used by the mother to resolve marital conflicts: he is put forward as a “shield” during drunken scandals, sent to negotiations with the father the next morning in order to “reason” with him, etc.