The modern mother is constantly on the move. She has so much energy and strength! Sometimes it seems that nothing is impossible for her. Mom is engaged in the upbringing and development of her children, and life and home are on her shoulders. Work and career are not in last place. After all, a modern mother understands that she must rely on herself and be financially independent so that her offspring are provided with not only basic necessities. She has a lot of obligations. And she's also a woman. She needs to be beautiful, fashionable, healthy and full of energy. What does a modern mother mean, what should she be like and can she be called ideal?
Types of modern mothers, according to psychologists
Modern mothers are very different both in character and in their views. Each has its own rhythm of life. Psychologists believe that all of them can be divided into several types, each of which is given a clear description. What does a modern mother mean, according to psychologists? Let's figure it out.
The image of a modern mother, who completely devotes herself to her children and tries in every possible way to take care of her offspring, is compared by psychologists to a mother hen. She is ready to devote her life only to her family. The desire to build a career, have hobbies, and waste time on trifles is not for this type of mother. Very often she forgets to take care of herself and take time to rest. The main thing is to constantly and everywhere take care of your child, protect and protect from negative events. And it doesn’t matter how old the offspring is. Such mothers refuse to understand that the chosen method of education is not entirely correct. After all, the child grows up dependent. Without approval and advice, he cannot take a single step, a feeling of inferiority develops, and the offspring is not able to make the right decision himself.
The second type includes psychologists of career-obsessed women. Such mothers are crazy, there is practically no free time. They completely surrender themselves to the power of work, forgetting about communication with the child. To compensate for their inattention, they shower him with gifts and pamper him, without understanding or admitting that in the end they will grow up to be an egoist.
A mother who tries to raise her child in an authoritarian style of communication will not be called wise by psychologists. Although such modern mothers are a common type. From childhood, they instill in the child that the parents’ opinion is authoritative and not discussed. The adults are right about everything. As long as the baby is 5 years old, this is how it should be. And it’s time for a 10-12 year old child to have his own opinion and know how to defend it. Of course, the mother’s authority must take place in communication, but this cannot be reflected in the child’s personality and influence the formation of his character. Otherwise, he will grow up to be a weak person with low self-esteem.
According to psychologists, there is a type of anxious mothers. Such women try to protect their child from everything in the world and are always nearby. Anxiety appears in their soul out of nowhere. The thought of a child tripping, falling and getting hurt on the way to school is terrifying. His mother does not allow him to explore the world on his own. When the baby grows up, he will be afraid of everything.
What should a real modern mother be like?
Psychologists are convinced that a modern mother should combine all types in one person without fanaticism. She is caring and gentle, attentive and fair, listening to the child’s opinion, but not forgetting to guide him on the right path. She must learn to let him discover the world on his own and learn life lessons. When raising children, try to instill the best qualities and reveal the talents and abilities of the child. At the same time, she does not forget to take time for herself and takes care of her appearance and wardrobe. Of course, mom must be healthy and strong.
The main responsibility of a mother
The purpose of a mother is to raise and care for the child. In the first years of life, it is very important not only to teach a child to walk, eat, talk, but also to instill in him qualities that will help him live in society in the future. Of course, he must grow up healthy and strong.
A child, once born, really needs his mother’s constant care and care. He can’t do anything and doesn’t know anything yet. Mom should open the world to him and help him learn to live in it. The baby requires constant attention. He is interested in everything, he wants to touch and taste everything. Mom can't relax. You need to be constantly alert to prevent trouble.
Finding balance between career and personal life
Being a stay-at-home mom is not fashionable in the modern world. It must be successful. Many women, after giving birth, try to go to work as soon as possible in order to build a career and realize themselves in society. In addition, a woman must be financially independent from her husband. Climbing the career ladder, many women devote themselves entirely to work, forgetting about their family and their children. To become a good modern mother, you need to clearly plan your day and learn to draw a line between career and family life. Besides, children grow up so quickly. A career woman, looking back, will feel disappointed that she set her priorities incorrectly and quietly missed the most important moments in the lives of her children, thereby alienating them from herself.
Fashionable and beautiful mother
A woman at any age wants to look beautiful and well-groomed. It is important for her to please not only herself, but also her loved ones and those around her. Of course, the child walking next to her should feel proud of her mother’s appearance.
Modern mothers take care of themselves. Despite their busy schedule, they find time to visit a hairdresser, manicurist or makeup artist, and also try to look elegant and fashionable. Fashion magazines help you know how to dress a modern mother in the fall or spring. Famous fashion designers, exhibiting photos of their new collections in printed publications, often give recommendations on which figure a particular outfit will suit, and talk about fashion accessories.
For a child, a mother is the best in the world. The baby doesn’t care what kind of figure she has, whether she’s dressed fashionably, or whether she missed a planned trip to the hairdresser. In the eyes of a child, she always looks perfect. But at the same time, it is important for him that the surrounding peers, seeing his mother, also consider her beautiful, well-groomed and fashionable.
Healthy modern mother
The child will be fully happy if he knows that his mother is healthy. Women do not always seek help if they feel that their health is not perfect. Often they endure pain until the last moment, and after starting treatment, they realize that an advanced disease is not so easy to get rid of. Modern mothers understand how necessary it is for them to maintain a healthy lifestyle and regularly undergo medical examinations. It is especially important to consult a gynecologist and mammologist. In our age, breast diseases and gynecological ailments are common problems.
And it’s not permissible for her to just mope. She should be fresh, full of strength and energy, as in the photos of modern mothers who adorn the covers of women's magazines.
Rest
Some men believe that a modern mother can do without rest. What will she be like after a while if she is busy only with work and caring for her household? No, a woman, like no one else, needs rest. She needs to switch gears and make time for herself. For example, go chat with friends at a local cafe, visit stores to buy new clothes, or just take a walk in the park.
Joint family vacations should also be a mandatory rule for a modern family. The more time mom and dad spend with their child, the stronger their bond. The baby not only knows, but also feels the love of his parents. And it is very important for him to understand that his family is strong and reliable. It is important to go for walks as a family, celebrate family events, visit entertainment venues and, of course, go on vacation together.
Distribution of household duties
In the last century, it was believed that all housework should be done exclusively by women. The man was the main breadwinner and, when he came after work, he rested to his advantage. The fact that the fairer sex also felt tired after a day of work did not bother anyone. But such rules are a thing of the past.
In many modern families, housework has long been practiced. Work is not divided into women's and men's work. Everything is done together and to the best of our ability. And this applies to raising children too. Modern dads feed, play with children, put them to bed to give mom time to rest a little.
At one of the conferences where the discussion was about the destruction of the child’s psyche by means of mass culture, psychologists illustrated a report on computer games with a slide show. However, the people rebelled after the third: people could not stand the horror that the demonic characters shown in close-up inspired in them. The speakers noticed that children who play computer games en masse see these images not for a few seconds, but for many hours in a row. The same images can be found today in.
Negative Charm of Evil
Psychologists showed, in particular, the image of a “fallen angel”, a she-devil - a naked woman with wings behind her back and horns on her head. The repulsive image was made in a fashionable “fantasy” style. It's easy to imagine that teenagers might find him attractive and even handsome. Of course, not right away. And after the protective barrier is broken. The one that prevented adults from looking at the screen for long.
In modern culture, many techniques are used to make a person fall under the negative spell of evil. To achieve this, scary moments are presented with humor. Then teenagers have an ambivalent attitude towards them - “that’s cool!” And if the villain on the monitor suddenly does a good deed, then young viewers will stop considering him bad altogether.
The famous psychologist Erich Neumann wrote about what happens in these cases with the human psyche: “We say that a personality is dual when it simultaneously contains positive and negative directions, for example, love and hatred for the same object... Consciousness turns out to be in confusion, and affective reactions appear...” In other words, the mind gives up, and the person begins to be overwhelmed by emotions and instincts.
The image of the mother is part of the genetic program
In the 1970–1980s, the theory of attachment arose (M. Ainsworth and J. Bowlby), according to which the relationship with the mother in the first year of a child’s life largely determines the further course of his mental and personal development. The most favorable relationships are those in which the mother shows tenderness, care and understanding of the baby. If the mother behaves hysterically, unpredictably or aloofly, the parent-child connection is distorted, and children develop behavioral and even mental disorders. There is an opinion that a child is genetically programmed not only with an attachment to his mother as the closest creature in the world, but also with a certain image of a woman programmed. Exactly the kind that makes the baby feel calm and safe. Moreover, as the child grows up, this image remains unchanged.
“The mother, that is, the nurse caring for the baby, should be good-natured, calm, indulgent, affectionate, and benevolent towards the child,” writes the famous child psychiatrist, Professor G. V. Kozlovskaya. “Even her appearance: lush breasts, gentle, skillful hands, a friendly smile, the smell of breast milk - everything disposes the baby to trust and instills in him a feeling of security.” If the mother’s appearance and behavior do not correspond to this image, the baby experiences anxiety and restlessness. The “ball” does not seem to fall into the “pocket”, and the “program crash” begins. In infancy, very minor details are enough for this. For example, my mother smells like tobacco, not the natural smell of a woman. Or she has a rough voice and abrupt movements. In addition, from the first months of life, the child lives in a certain cultural environment and absorbs this “cultural air” with all his soul. And the image of a woman is one of the key images of any culture.
In the child’s perception, three layers overlap: the genetically embedded idea of the mother, the image of his mother, and those maternal images that are transmitted by the cultural environment. The child will feel the greatest psychological comfort when there are no contradictions between these three “pictures.”
The image of the mother and the fifth commandment
The “construction” can be shaky, even if everything is in order with the real mother, but the “third picture” - cultural samples - contradicts the prototype of the mother. The soul rebels, seeing this discrepancy and blatant untruth. Discrediting the image of the mother in modern culture purposefully blurs traditional ideas about good and evil and is painfully perceived by the child’s intact consciousness. Even in the most favorable environment in the family, a child who watches cartoons in which the mother is shown as stupid, ridiculous, or a caricature, is involuntarily imbued with the spirit of disrespect. "You're a wet chicken!" - a frustrated five-year-old boy shouts to his mother, who dared to displease him in some way. He has not yet mastered strong curse words, but he has completely mastered the vocabulary of his favorite cartoon characters and their free, relaxed manner of communicating with elders.
Relatively recently, in the mid-1990s, this almost never happened. And if it did occur, then, as a rule, it served as a very alarming symptom, indicating that the child should be shown to a psychiatrist. Because even terribly angry, but mentally intact children did not think of treating their mother in this way. It is better not to quote what the mothers of many teenagers are now hearing addressed to them. Those interested can easily find examples on Internet forums where “freak ancestors” are discussed, or in LiveJournal - online diaries posted for public reading.
The theme of bad, irresponsible, and even criminal mothers, which is constantly circulating in the mass consciousness, also feeds into the same mill. Hardly a couple of weeks go by without another heartbreaking story appearing in the media. The image of the “terrible mother”, one might say, is in the air. And this, naturally, does not help raise the prestige of mothers.
Rough sexualization
The situation is further aggravated by the fact that the image of women in modern culture is grossly sexualized. Just look at the advertisements depicting women in an unbridled form, which every child, willy-nilly, sees from a very tender age. But for children, the image of an adult woman is closely connected with the image of the mother. And the humiliation of female dignity, which inevitably occurs when debauchery is promoted, cannot but affect the attitude of children and adolescents (primarily boys) towards women in general and towards their mothers in particular.
Not knowing life, children, like a sponge, absorb the impressions that the world around them provides, and think that this is the normal order of things. On the other hand, children are closer to God, the “inner eye” of their soul is not clouded by sins, and it sees the substitution of the image. He sees that it is not the Mother of God at all, but her antipode - the Babylonian harlot - who is now being presented as the ideal woman whom she is asked to imitate. And he is horrified because he intuitively senses where imitation of evil will lead.
What is the conflict?
A conflict arises: consciousness says one thing, the inner voice (conscience) says another. And since the pressure from outside is now colossal, because “mass culture” is not just a term, but the mass production of products that destroy traditional values, put on stream, then at the level of consciousness most children are not able to resist this. Consciousness can be captivated by an exciting plot, deceived by external beauty, and confused. It can succumb to the herd feeling - everyone has, looks, listens, and am I worse?
The more it deviates from the right path, the more alarming the voice of conscience. This means that the more violently it is necessary to drown it out. Hence the militia against relatives. First of all, on mothers, since a mother’s heart hurts more about the child and mothers more often than other relatives try to set limits for him.
But, rebelling against conscience, consciousness has to fight on two fronts: it also has to fight with its genetic memory, which suggests that the path that the culture of sin proposes to follow is mortally dangerous. Therefore, the aggression and rudeness of today's children is largely an unconscious rebellion against, which modern mass culture introduces into consciousness. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why children and adolescents not only resign themselves, having become convinced of the unshakable prohibitions on the part of adults, but are also happy about it.
How many times have we seen how schoolchildren, who have fallen into some kind of deranged state due to their passion for computer games and are ready to tear to shreds their mother, who is timidly trying to limit the time they play, suddenly change for the better when, having gathered their courage, the mother decisively excommunicates them from the computer. But just recently he showered his mother with insults and threatened to leave home.
Mother's rejection is a pathology
When attachment to the mother is formed defectively, the baby does not feel protected, and this does not have the best effect on his psyche. Children may develop increased anxiety, fears, and excitability. They often grow up as hysterical manipulators, show aggression, try to attract attention to themselves, or, conversely, hide in their shell, become fearful and shy. It is impossible to say that there is a serious pathology here. If you show such a child to a psychiatrist, he most likely will not find anything relevant and will advise him to see a psychologist.
But when a small child rejects his mother, the psychiatrist may well become worried. The fact is that such a gross violation of the phenomenon of attachment occurs in schizophrenia or early childhood autism. This test is widely known in child psychiatry. It is used when a child experiences severe anxiety and it is necessary to understand whether he is developing schizophrenia, or whether these are neurotic reactions. The child is asked to imagine a certain critical situation: someone offends his mother or enemies attacked his homeland. And the child must say whose side he will be on. If the compensatory mechanisms are not violated, then the child, even in a psychotic state, will worry about his relatives, say that he will protect his mother and go to fight for the Motherland. He himself will not speak badly about his mother, and he will not give it to others. If such a test is applied to a child with a deeper pathology, we will get completely different results. A schizophrenic who rejects loved ones will in this test stand up for the opposite side - for those who insulted the mother, for enemies.
The negative attitude of a small child towards his mother is a very alarming symptom that may indicate a deep pathology, serious mental decompensation. But then it turns out that the distortion of the image of the mother in modern culture contributes to the development of pathology! It turns out that this is the path to mass schizophrenia!
Without images that are basic to Russian culture, such as the positive image of the mother, no culture can exist. And the collapse of culture inevitably entails the collapse of society and the human psyche. Let's hope that an understanding of the “maternal issue” will come. And, of course, we ourselves need to more actively fill the cultural space. How many poems about mother do our children know? What about the songs? What about stories and fairy tales? What about historical examples? The topic of motherhood is inexhaustible and beautiful, because it is life itself. By chasing Lilith and Barbie, we can only plunge into the darkness of madness. So let us more resolutely defend life and the ideal of motherhood.
It is important for most people to be modern and keep up with the times, to be open to innovation and progress. Everything around us is changing at an unimaginable speed: both material things and the worldview and views of people, their attitude towards many aspects of life. Now the vision of a woman is radically different from the classic image of a housewife in the mid-20th century. What about the typical mom then and now?
If you were to ask me what a modern mother is like, I think my fantasy would paint the following picture. This is a young woman who does not accept outdated authorities and relies on the research of modern child development specialists. She is aware of all modern parenting trends and new products in the field of child care - and is not afraid to use them, be it slings, sterilizers, educational toys and aids. A modern mother always and everywhere takes her baby with her, and from infancy travels with him abroad. A modern mother is not a housewife, but a wife and woman; she does not make an idol out of her child, and finds time for herself and her husband. In order to get everything done, he relies on the principles of time management and uses all kinds of gadgets in the household. And, of course, the young mother finds time for professional and intellectual growth.
But, it seems to me, these are all extremes, and a little slyness. For example, rejection of authorities and “grandmother’s” advice. Authorities change, but they still exist, many refer to the opinion of their personal pediatrician, others to the opinion of the respected Dr. Komarovsky (for example, I enjoy watching his programs). As for grandmother's advice, of course, there are outdated methods and beliefs that are unacceptable because their expediency is refuted by the research of modern specialists. For example, there are a huge number of myths about breastfeeding and complementary feeding, ranging from the advice of experienced matrons to express foremilk and supplement with water (honestly, I don’t even understand where this could come from, there’s not even a logical justification), ending with the expressive rolling of the mother-in-law’s eyes, if she finds out that her daughter-in-law is not giving her child apple juice at 3 months and, oh horror! does not plan to start complementary feeding before 6 months. Although, of course, there are a lot of individual cases and personal recommendations. And some of grandma’s advice still works, for example, putting a warm diaper on the tummy of a colicky baby.
Or here’s another thing: it’s fashionable to carry a child with you everywhere. Of course, setting up a quarantine zone in an apartment and sitting with a child within four walls until he is six months old is not an entirely adequate extreme. But dragging a newborn, who is not even a month old, into a shopping complex is unreasonable. There are situations when there is no one but the mother to go to the store, whether you want or not, you can go with the baby, but why, unnecessarily, take a fragile baby to a store full of people who are coughing and sneezing. Many will say that such “micro-vaccinations” of any infection are useful for developing immunity, but sorry, our life is not too sterile to deliberately expose a newborn to viruses and bacteria.
By the way, about vaccinations. Another modern trend is to debate the harmfulness or advisability of vaccination. I will not develop this topic now, and then everyone must decide for themselves. In short, I am for vaccinations, but according to an individual plan.
Slings, backpacks, carriers, etc. - this is the issue of closeness with the child always and everywhere. I believe modern psychologists when they talk about the importance of constant contact with a child, but this should not amount to fanaticism. For example, we had a BabyBjorn, a convenient thing when you have to go somewhere or just get tired of carrying a child on you, but one day I tried to “do household chores in the company of a child” sitting in the BB and, you know, I have to admit - When you wash the floor, closeness with your child is inappropriate.
Co-sleeping is another stumbling block. I remember how my mother edifyingly told me, “We didn’t teach you to sleep with us.” Well, first of all, I don’t teach my child to sleep with us, it’s just that at 4 o’clock in the morning it’s really easier for me to put a child who has woken up or sleeps restlessly due to teething into my bed than to try to put him back in his crib when he cries - and all his sleep will disappear, and I, who have not slept, will be of little use. And secondly, well, I am familiar with the opinion of pediatricians that co-sleeping is a modern trend that has nothing to do with the child’s health, but on the other hand, if it suits both parties, then why not?
Early child development is the latest trend. “What, you don’t go to developmental classes?” The mother of a one-year-old child asks me with amazement, mixed with righteous anger. Nowadays it is fashionable to take children who are not even a year old to all sorts of activities. But let’s be honest, this is often more for the socialization of the mother and for self-awareness as a good parent - “I’m taking care of the child” than for true development. It seems to me that it is the duty of parents to provide their child with a happy, carefree childhood, and this is not at all equivalent to going with the baby to all sorts of educational activities. As a mother of the same age as my son told me, “We went to these classes, so we can make appliqués at home,” which they do quite successfully. After all, really, what do teachers do in these classes that mothers cannot do at home? It is enough to read a little about the Montessori method, or read the book of the famous Masaru Ibuka. As for children’s socialization, it seems to me that we have enough communication in the pool and on the playground (I’m talking about children under 2 years old for now).
The debate between “classics and contemporaries” can be continued endlessly. Do I consider myself a modern mother? Probably partly. I would like to think that over time I will reach the golden mean - a compromise between innovation and everyday experience. And I hope maternal intuition will help with this.
PS I apologize if I spoke too categorically about anything. But as they say, everything said is IMHO, and does not claim to be true. But your thoughts on modern motherhood are very interesting to me.
The image of a mother is the first human image that appears in a small child. He begins to recognize her face before all other faces. The touch of hands distinguishes even in sleep. While in the womb, the baby feels the mother’s mood, hears and remembers her voice. The wonderful Russian doctor Boris Zinovievich Drapkin even invented an original method of treating children, because the mother’s voice affects the child with such a force that no other voice in the world affects! Having worked all his life in child psychiatry, Boris Zinovievich in his declining years came to the conclusion that it is impossible to find a better psychotherapist for a child than a mother. Therefore, he taught women to instill calm and confidence in the baby, give him a positive attitude and thereby activate the body’s defenses to fight the disease. How exactly? The mother had to tell her falling asleep child every evening about her love, and gradually the children’s stuttering, tics and enuresis went away without any medication, speech development normalized, and excitability and disinhibition decreased. Of course, the technique had its own subtleties, otherwise she would not have needed special training. But now we are not talking about them, but about the fact that only the voice of his own mother, and no one else, had such an amazing effect on the child. Neither fathers nor adoptive mothers (even if the child was taken in infancy and did not know that he was adopted!) could achieve such an effect. Drapkin sought some positive changes by including maternal grandmothers in his work - he explained this by the similarity of voices. However, the invisible umbilical cord connection that is established between the mother and the child even before his birth was absent in the grandmother and grandson, and therefore the results were not so impressive.The child grows, and the image of the mother also acquires details. Even though he is not really able to speak, much less express his thoughts coherently, the baby knows an amazing amount about his mother. About her character, disposition, tastes, habits. He absorbs this knowledge with all his senses, unconsciously imprints it and just as unconsciously (and then more and more consciously) begins to imitate. Research by modern scientists shows that a baby, lying in his mother’s arms, unwittingly copies her facial expressions. At first it’s not even noticeable, his grimaces are so fleeting. But soon enough, in the child’s facial expressions and plasticity, in the gaze or turn of the head, in some gestures and intonations, in the facial expression, “mother’s motives” begin to slip through. Even when the baby is the spitting image of dad, if you carefully watch him, you will see his mother in the background. As boys get older, they normally imitate their father, adopting masculine behavior. However, deeply imprinted, as if “soldered” into the psyche, the image of the mother still continues to influence the son. In particular, it largely determines his relationships with the opposite sex, the choice of a life partner, the building of family relationships and approaches to raising his own children.
But let's go back to early age. Gradually, awareness is added to feelings and sensations, to involuntary, intuitive reactions. At some point, the meaningless syllables of babbling speech begin to be filled with meaning and form words. Little by little, imaginative thinking develops and ideas about the surrounding reality are formed. And this is where interesting things start to happen.
How does an image appear?
The baby thinks concretely and does not yet understand abstract concepts. But in order to make any very elementary generalization, it is necessary to some extent abstract from the details and isolate the essence. If this is not done, then how can you understand that a mother in a robe and a mother in a coat, a mother with her hair down and a mother with her hair tucked under a scarf are not different people, but one person? The leading researcher of child psychology, Jean Piaget, called this ability of intelligence the “symbolic function.” Without it, we would perceive reality as a set of static frames unrelated to each other. Together they make up a slowly unfolding film, but without the ability to symbolize, which is the basis of imaginative thinking, a person could not see the connections between the pictures or understand the essence of the things depicted in them. That is, the basis of figurative thinking is the ability to perceive objects, objects and phenomena of the surrounding world at the level of symbols.
And a child in the second year of life, even without being able to speak, produces such symbolization, showing his mother not only in reality or in a family photograph, but also in a picture in a book, which depicts not his mother at all, but the mother of a fairy-tale hero. This means that in his mind there already exists not only the image of his own mother, but also the mother “in general,” a certain generalized image of motherhood. And, which is very important for the topic of our article, these two images coexist peacefully, without coming into conflict, and often overlapping each other. An older child, already well aware of the difference between people and animals, and the boundary between the concepts of “mine” and “alien”, being captured by the action of a cartoon in which a baby mammoth is looking for its mother, internally identifies himself with the hero (on which the effect of empathy is based), and his mother with her own. This is an even more striking example of symbolization, since his mother, of course, does not look like a mammoth, but he “looks to the root,” abstracting from the external and focusing on the semantic content of the mother’s image. So far, the baby understands this image not so much with his mind, but with his “smart heart”, which Aglaya, the heroine of the novel by F.M., once spoke about. Dostoevsky's "Idiot". The baby cannot yet coherently express his ideas in speech, but his soul in some mysterious way knows more than his mind. She knows what should it be Mother. He knows, even if an orphan child grows up in an orphanage or if the behavior of his mother absolutely does not correspond to the standard of motherhood! And it is precisely this knowledge, obtained in an incomprehensible way, implanted into the soul by God, that makes it possible to make generalizations, make analogies, and grasp the essence. It serves as a guide for the child, determining his reactions (for example, the reaction of empathy), as well as a tuning fork to which his perception of reality and, accordingly, behavior are tuned. Of course, everything I’m talking about now happens in the baby on an unconscious level.
An illustration of what has been said can to some extent be the story of raising an autistic child, described in the book of his teacher Sergei Aleksandrovich Soshinsky “Light a Candle” (M., 2005). The boy Andryusha, who ended up in the Soshinskys’ house when he was 4 years old, suffered from a very severe form of autism and was practically uncommunicative. I don't think he had any speech either. Even the few words that he knew, Andryusha did not always apply correctly. Sometimes he would get stuck on a word and repeat it mindlessly twenty or even fifty times. At the age of 5, he did not recognize the animals or people depicted in the pictures. “Obviously,” writes Soshinsky, “words were in no way connected with images, especially animated ones.”
At the first stage, he was taught to simply repeat words, even without understanding them. It was incredibly difficult, but breaking through to the level of understanding turned out to be even more difficult: the lack of integrity of perception hindered me. The fragments did not fit into a single picture, the image did not work out. Through repeated repetitions, literally “training,” the Soshinskys managed to teach Andryusha to speak and, to a certain extent, restore the integrity of his thinking. When the armor of autism was finally partially broken through and a shift for the better occurred, the boy began to develop quite quickly, not only repeating what he had learned according to a pattern, but also understanding. And then... Then the teachers noticed that “Andryusha began to give out certain knowledge that he had not yet acquired from us. For example, in the spring of 1999, Natasha (wife of S.A. Soshinsky. – T.Sh.) I started studying colors with him and suddenly it turned out that he knew some names, although he had not shown this knowledge before either with us or with his parents. The knowledge lay hidden in him, perhaps not even in his mind, and yet was still present. Andryusha also knew some letters. Apparently his parents showed them to him. But while Andryusha’s thinking was blocked by autism, this knowledge lay motionless, and, perhaps, Andryusha himself was not aware of it. This applies not only to specific knowledge, but also to the level of thinking. In some unmanifested form, apparently, his thinking was more complex than one might suspect... With undeveloped verbal thinking, Andryusha, of course, could not “understand everything,” but he understood more than his behavior might suggest. Four and a half years after his appearance, it turned out to us (to my great amazement!) that Andryusha remembers a lot about his life in his father’s house and about his first appearance with us. This confirms assumptions about the greater depth of his inner world and the greater complexity of his thinking at that time.”
But when he first found himself in the Soshinskys’ house, Andryusha did not seem to react in any way to the fact that his relatives brought him and left. He never remembered his parents and did not recognize his mother in photographs. But it turns out that he knew, and remembered, and worried. Images of close people and, in particular, his mother, were stored in the depths of Andryushin’s memory, but he could not express this knowledge and his experiences, since the disease blocked his connection with the outside world.
“From the moment Andryusha appeared with us,” continues the author of the book “Light a Candle,” “I was always struck by the duality in him. The inability to say and understand the simplest thoughts, the complete intellectual helplessness of his behavior. And at the same time there was a constant feeling of having an “inner mind”... He has a silent, deep, intact I and intact silent intellect<…>who could perceive, think, understand holistically, deeply, comprehensively, if there were means for this, if the second component of the intellect, logos, verbal (the word “verbal” is more typical for psychologists) acted next to it and at the same level as it. I'm talking about the “intact silent I”, of course, not in the absolute (theological) sense, but in the human – psychological, psychiatric. It also seems to me that this “silent I"undeveloped and undevelopable even within the personality itself, living beyond the threshold of its voluntary consciousness, as if "hidden I" This is some deep “being in oneself” of a person.”
In a healthy, harmoniously developing child there is no such gap between internal and external. The content of mental life and its form are adequate to each other. But "internally silent I“still exists, and, apparently, it is in its depths that some basic, key symbolic images common to all humanity are stored. Images that are activated when the child receives appropriate external impressions, and, surfacing to the surface, facilitate “putting fragments together into a whole picture,” forming the child’s ideas about the world around him and about life in general. In modern Western (and now domestic, following in Western footsteps) psychology, when discussing this, they usually operate with the concepts of “archetypes”, “archetypal images”, “collective unconscious”. In recent decades, one can often hear about genetic memory, a “genetic program” that is, as it were, “embedded” in a baby and largely determines its reactions.
But in essence these explanations provide little. Here, rather, it is simply a statement of fact: they say, there is something “like that” that does not allow us to talk about the baby as a “blank slate”. But where it came from and what exactly it represents is unclear. But the Christian view of the problem allows us to clarify a lot. (Although, of course, still the creation of man and endowing him with intelligence, which no other living creature on Earth possesses, is God’s great mystery).
It's time to think about the soul
By excluding the concept of the soul from reasoning, we doom ourselves either to mechanicalness, when a person is likened to a complex computer, or to some kind of cloudy, confused mysticism. The creator of the doctrine of archetypes, Carl Gustav Jung himself, “defined “archetype” in different ways at different times, writes his follower Michel Vannoy Adams. – Sometimes he talked about archetypes as if they were images. Sometimes he more strictly distinguished between archetypes as unconscious forms devoid of any specific content, and archetypal images as the conscious content of these forms.” Jung, as is known, classified God as an “archetype.”
But speaking about the soul of a child, which, according to the teachings of the holy fathers, he possesses from the moment of conception, and remembering that, according to the beatitudes, only the pure in heart will see God (see: Matt. 5: 8), we can come to an understanding the essence of the issue. Infant purity brings the child closer to the spiritual world, gives the opportunity to see and feel what is already closed to adults. Father Alexander Elchaninov compares the child’s soul with the one that Adam had before the Fall. (This statement is probably especially true in relation to a child’s soul, enlightened by holy baptism.)
As we know from the Holy Scriptures, Adam named the animals in paradise. Moreover, these names were given not anyhow, but with meaning, reflecting the essence of each bird, beast and other creatures. “Think about what wisdom was needed to give names to so many breeds of birds, reptiles, animals and other dumb things... to give names to all of them, and, moreover, proper names and corresponding to each breed,” writes St. John Chrysostom in “Conversations on the Book of Genesis” (XIV, 5). And for this it was necessary to comprehend a certain internal image of every living being.
But the matter was not limited to animals. “The beasts of the field and the birds of the air, brought to Adam, are our unreasonable feelings, because beasts and animals represent various passions of the body, equally strong and more moderate in nature,” teaches St. Ambrose of Milan. “God has given you the power to be able to distinguish, with the aid of sober reasoning, the appearance of all objects without exception, in order to encourage you to form a judgment about all of them.”
Of course, there cannot be complete identity of the soul of a child with the soul of Adam, since the Fall damaged human nature and made it susceptible to sin. But in early childhood sin does not yet have time to attach itself to the soul. It is then that passions begin to overwhelm the soul and, like black clouds, close its inner eye. “The soul,” wrote Metropolitan Veniamin (Fedchenkov), “has its own, deeper mind, true reason, intuition, inner perception of truth.” And while the child is pure and innocent, he, not having life experience and logic, comprehends a lot with precisely this “true mind.” Especially what is closely connected with the spiritual world. “You hid it from the wise and prudent and revealed it to babes,” says the Gospel (see: Matthew 11:25). How many adults for years (or even until the end of their lives!) are unable to understand what a child understands without much explanation, almost without a word. He understands, of course, in his own way, in a childish way, but he understands – and that’s the main thing!
When she was two and a half to three years old, my daughter was afraid of a transformer box, which made a menacing, in her opinion, hum. Seeing the booth for the first time, she asked who lived there. I said something about current, about electricity, and pointed to the wires. And when we passed by again the next day, I learned that the booth, it turns out, was inhabited by an “evil spirit.” What was reported to me in a mysterious whisper, with a lot of hilariously “scary” grimaces. Not Barmaley, about whom Kristina knew everything by heart, or Karabas-Barabas, well known from pictures - namely, the “evil spirit”. Although there were no evil spirits in any of the fairy tales that we read with her. Cartoons or computer games with appropriate themes, too. Christina had not yet grown up to see Carlson, who, wrapped in a sheet, portrayed “the little ghost from Vazastan.” Conversations about spirituality on a mass scale had not yet begun in the first half of the 1980s, when the events described took place. The vast majority of adults did not think or talk about spirits, and when they saw, for example, the title of F. Fellini’s film “Juliet et al.” at hi" (which in those years could only be seen by a narrow layer of the creative intelligentsia), would have decided that we were talking about the spirit A X. The most that the baby could hear was an idiomatic expression like “an evil spirit has possessed you.” But no explanation was given to her on this topic, and she did not ask. However, the image behind the words was correct, and the essence was captured: the spirit, like the current, is invisible. But, unlike current, for a child it is not an abstraction. Well, since he’s scary, he’s naturally “evil.”
And Kristinka called the closed, dilapidated church in Troparevo, which we often drove past then, “The Goddess’ House.” And again, I did not have any special “educational” conversations with her about God at that time. A children's Bible with pictures, a Sunday school - all this appeared in her life later (if only because in 1985 there were simply no Sunday schools in Moscow). She was only in church when she was one year old, when she was baptized, so it was not imprinted in her conscious memory. Of course, she heard from me about the fact that the church is the house of God. And maybe (I don’t remember exactly) I once said that God lives in heaven. But I remember for sure that I did not tell my three-year-old child either that the Lord is omnipotent, or that He created everything, or even about His kindness. But the child somehow knew that God is good and most important. And he was so happy, pointing at the church, eager to “visit” Him, speaking as if he were a beloved, close, dear person... Although I had never heard of the incarnation of Christ, we had no icons at home at that time. Christina also did not see the image of God the Father, which can be seen in churches. Why, one might ask, did she even imagine Him in human form, and not, say, in the form of the sun, which “lived” in the sky, illuminating and warming everything around? In some incomprehensible way, the little child’s soul grasped the essence. In fact, without explanations and even without silent prompts from the “video sequence,” he correctly understood the word “God,” which was new to him.
Many similar examples can be cited from observations of other children. Of course, the environment, the child’s immediate and distant surroundings, the national structure in which he lives, the cultural and historical “air” he breathes intensively shape his ideas about the world. But the soul is primary in relation to all this. Therefore, the “inner mind, the inner perception of truth” is also primary, and it willingly responds to external “call signs”, easily perceives and assimilates them, without requiring lengthy “lectures on the topic” and correctly capturing the essence of many things at the level of the image.
Image and prototype
What is the ideal image of a mother? Historians, literary scholars, cultural experts, and sociologists who study this issue note its amazing stability. “The main characteristics and standard features of the sociocultural image of a woman-mother have not actually changed since antiquity,” writes T.G., with reference to numerous studies by other authors, in his monograph “The Female Image in Sociocultural Reflection.” Kiseleva. – This is a woman with extraordinary life experience and the gift of intuitive foresight of the most likely paths of events (especially related to her children); distinguished by rare kindness, a sense of compassion and the ability to understand her children and their decisions; a woman gifted by nature with extraordinary abilities for education and persuasion; a person by nature is unusually persistent, faithful to the interests of his children and unconditionally accepting in their name (or instead of them) any trials of fate, etc. Of course, in accordance with the cultural traditions of different peoples, this set of characteristics could vary to a greater or lesser extent, but in general it remains relatively typical in the cultures of most civilized (post-primitive) communities.”
Well, as for the prototype of the ideal mother, for the Christian world, as you might guess, it is the Mother of God. Sacrificial love, purity and tenderness, meekness and at the same time moral steadfastness - these associations arise when mentioning the Blessed Virgin, even among people far from the Church. And in the recent times of late Soviet state atheism, it was with Her, and not with some pagan goddess of fertility, that mothers were compared, if they wanted to express themselves sublimely poetically (although they usually called them in the Catholic manner - Madonna, apparently recalling the paintings of the Renaissance masters, who were then accepted to know and love, or Pushkin’s textbook poem dedicated to Natalya Goncharova, which many then also knew by heart). Although, of course, the Soviet government, which made a huge leap forward on the path of women's emancipation, intensively glorified women - fighters for the people's happiness: revolutionaries, war veterans and workers, meaning by this word professionals in a variety of industries, and not housewives at all. It's like they didn't work! (However, here, too, everything was ambiguous: there was the title of “heroine mother,” but only a few received it—women who gave birth and raised at least ten children.) And yet, the image of “just a mother” remained the most important image of culture, without undergoing fundamental changes. The dominants were traditional: dedication and moral excellence. In this sense, the continuity was not interrupted.
Sofya Nikolaevna from “Family Chronicle” S.T. Aksakova, a hereditary noblewoman who lived at the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th centuries, did not close her eyes at the bedside of her seriously ill son, and the lyrical heroine of the famous song from the times of the Great Patriotic War “Dark Night”, hardly of noble origin, did the same. A mother who does not sleep over her child is an eternal image for all times. And it may very well be that the soldier’s wife from “Dark Night,” like Aksakov’s Sofya Nikolaevna, “prayed fervently, raising her hands to the sky,” although prayer is not mentioned in the Soviet song for obvious reasons. But we now know how the churches were filled during the war. And there is no doubt: among them there were many women to whom “Dark Night” was addressed. In any case, the “white handkerchiefs”, who during the years of “stagnation” (when it seemed to all progressive humanity that religion was dying out) quietly baptized their grandchildren from their son-boss and stubbornly celebrated Easter, are, by age, the same lyrical heroines who “at the nursery cribs secretly wiped away tears.”
But those who did not pray, but simply cried, pitied, loved and worked tirelessly, in fact, with their selfless lives, begged for children, husbands, and the country. “Russia survived thanks to its mothers,” said Elder Paisiy Svyatogorets. – A father’s hug, if it does not contain the Grace of God, is dry. And a mother’s hug, even without God, has milk in it.”
“Mom, dear mother! How I love you..."
We cannot count the bright images of mothers who brought to us fairy tales and legends, poems and songs, short stories and stories, novels and memoirs, plays and films. They surrounded the child from early childhood and accompanied him throughout his life. It was like a familiar background - in the sense that such an interpretation was taken for granted. (Although, of course, in artistic terms, there was no uniformity. There were many finds, sometimes real masterpieces. Naturally, there was some hack work, but that’s not the point now.) I will not overload the text with a list of names of authors and titles of works. I’ll give just one example that demonstrates the scale of the phenomenon being described: Sokolov’s love played about 300 roles in her life (including in the films “Quiet Don”, “I’m Walking Through Moscow”, “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath”, “We’ll Live There”) until Monday") and was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the actress who played the most roles as a mother. Moreover, she always refused negative characters, saying that the established image of a faithful wife, kind mother and grandmother should not be destroyed.
The very tone of the conversation about the mother already set up love, tenderness, respect and gratitude.
“The constant presence of my mother merges with my every memory,” wrote S.T. in his autobiographical novel “The Childhood Years of Bagrov the Grandson.” Aksakov. “Her image is inextricably linked with my existence, and therefore it does not stand out much in the fragmentary pictures of the first time of my childhood, although it constantly participates in them.”
“So many memories of the past arise when you try to resurrect in your imagination the features of your beloved being, that through these memories, as through tears, you dimly see them. These are tears of imagination. When I try to remember my mother as she was at that time, I imagine only her brown eyes, always expressing the same kindness and love, a mole on her neck, a little lower than where the little hairs curl, an embroidered white collar, a gentle dry hand, who caressed me so often and whom I kissed so often; but the general expression eludes me” (L.N. Tolstoy. “Childhood”).
“A great feeling, we keep it alive in our souls until the end. / We love our sister and wife and father, / But in agony we remember our mother” (N.A. Nekrasov).
“I remember the bedroom and the lamp, / Toys, a warm bed / And your sweet, meek voice: / “Guardian angel is above you!” (I.A. Bunin. “Mothers”).
“Oh, motherly love, love that does not forget anyone! Manna from heaven, which the Lord divides and multiplies, a table always set at the parental hearth, at which everyone has their own place and at which everyone gathers together!” (V. Hugo).
“If from childhood you have not learned to look into your mother’s eyes and see anxiety or peace in them, you will remain a moral ignoramus for the rest of your life” (V. Sukhomlinsky).
Of course, especially - which is not surprising - the image of the mother is found in works for children. Somewhere she (as, say, in “Little Red Riding Hood”) is an episodic character. Somewhere (for example, in the play “Two Maples”) it turns out to be at the center of the plot. And somewhere we are talking about a winter evening, but as if by chance a comparison of the month with mother’s earrings will flash, and mother will appear invisibly on the page, and will immediately become warmer and more comfortable. The light of mother's eyes, the warmth of mother's hands, a gentle voice, a gentle smile - these expressions do not become boring, do not seem hackneyed, because they are genuine, organic, there is no affectation in them. The soul - with joy or with sadness - but always responds to them.
Seriously or playfully, directly, directly or with a transparent hint, using the example of a literary hero, the child is shown how to treat his mother. Let us at least remember the lines of E. Blaginina: “Mom is sleeping, she is tired... / Well, I didn’t play! / I don’t start the top, / But I sat down and sat” - or “All kinds of mothers are needed, all kinds of mothers are important!” S. Mikhalkova.
But from teenage literature. Reuben Fraerman’s famous story “The Wild Dog Dingo”: “Tanya’s mother stood close behind her shoulders. In a raincoat and a white doctor's coat, she seemed completely different to Tanya than she had been a month ago. Thus, an object brought close to the eyes suddenly loses its familiar shape. And Tanya, not yet coming to her senses, stared motionlessly at her mother for a second or two. She saw two barely noticeable wrinkles radiating from the corners of her nose, and thin legs in shoes that were too roomy for her - her mother never knew how to take care of herself - and thin, weak hands that so skilfully healed the sick. Only her gaze remained unchanged. This is how Tanya always wore it in her memory. Her mother looked at her with her gray eyes. And in them, like a pinch of salt thrown into the sea, all Tanya’s grievances instantly dissolved. She kissed her mother carefully, avoiding touching her eyes, as if she was afraid to extinguish their gaze with her movement.”
Let us also recall the misadventures of the Star Boy from O. Wilde’s fairy tale of the same name, which befell him because he rejected his beggar mother. And also his answer to the nobles in the final pathetic scene, when they offer him power: “I am unworthy of this, for I renounced my mother, who carried me under her heart, and now I am looking for her to beg her forgiveness, and I will have no peace until I find her. So let me go, for I must set off again to wander the world, and I must not hesitate.” There seems to be no moralizing, the hero speaks exclusively to himself, but the educational effect of these clear, precise formulations is enormous, because the words are put into the mouth of a child with whom young readers empathize and with whom, naturally, identify themselves.
(The ending follows.)
We cannot count the bright images of mothers who brought to us fairy tales and legends, poems and songs, short stories and stories, novels and memoirs, plays and films. They surrounded the child from early childhood and accompanied him throughout his life. It was like a familiar background - in the sense that such an interpretation was taken for granted. We can cite the actress as an example, testifying to the scale of the phenomenon being described: Lyubov Sokolova played about 300 roles in her life (including in the films “Quiet Flows the Don”, “I Walk Through Moscow”, “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath”, “ We'll live until Monday") and was included in the Guinness Book of Records precisely as the actress who performed the most roles as a mother; it is hardly possible to find another actress in other countries who had at least an approximate number of similar roles.
Of course, especially - which is not surprising - the image of the mother is found in works for children. Somewhere she (as, say, in “Little Red Riding Hood”) is an episodic character. Somewhere (for example, in the play “Two Maples”) it turns out to be at the center of the plot. And somewhere we are talking about a winter evening, but as if by chance a comparison of the month with mother’s earrings will flash, and mother will appear invisibly on the page, and will immediately become warmer and more comfortable. The light of mother's eyes, the warmth of mother's hands, a gentle voice, a gentle smile - these expressions do not become boring, do not seem hackneyed, because they are genuine, organic, there is no affectation in them. The soul - with joy or with sadness - but always responds to them.
Using the example of a literary hero, a child is shown how to treat his mother. Let us at least remember the lines of E. Blaginina:
“Mom is sleeping, she’s tired...
Well, I didn’t play!
I don't start a top
And I sat down and sat"
- or “All kinds of mothers are needed, all kinds of mothers are important!” S. Mikhalkova.
An interesting pattern was discovered: the traditional, attractive image of motherhood is presented mainly in films about animals. In human form, motherhood, as a rule, is depicted unconventionally: mothers are either too old (that’s how grandmothers are portrayed in our cartoons) or unattractive. They may (as in the TV series Goofy and the Crew) be caricatured and act ridiculous, stupid, etc. They can resemble witches (or in fact be one), repel with an unpleasant facial expression, authority, and anger. Well, in the mini-episode that flashes for a few fractions of a second in the cartoon “Beauty and the Beast”, almost all these characteristics are combined.
In modern cartoons, the image of a mother is still sometimes exploited - a sex bomb, and sometimes, at the same time, a superman ("The Incredibles").
And in many fashionable cartoons (for example, in “Monsters, Inc.”) the mother is simply not present.
In the cartoon Finding Nemo, the mother is eaten in the very first frames.
In Toy Story, only the legs are from the mother. But even when there is a mother, it is not at all a fact that her existence will be perceived positively by the little hero.
Baby Stewie from the animated series “Family Guy” (I quote an examination carried out as determined by the court) “does not need a mother and is trying to get rid of “matriarchal oppression.” In relation to her, Stewie experiences a complex set of negative feelings: disgust, anger, contempt, disgust, while at the same time the mother is “second nature.”
In another widely publicized book, Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (Northern Lights, The Noble Knife and The Amber Telescope), which has won many prestigious awards, Tony Makarios' mother "thinks he's about nine, but what about There's no need for her - the poor fellow's memory is bad, and she drinks heavily. Thoughts of maternal love do not arise in her wine-stupefied head, but if her son caresses her, she does not push him away. If he finds out, of course. Let him caress himself. Not a stranger, after all.”
As for the mother of the world-famous Harry Potter, she is portrayed absolutely positively, with only one “small” amendment: Lily (that’s the name of Harry’s late mother) was a witch. As you can see, the image of the mother in cartoons and fairy tales is either distorted or glorified. But in the second case, usually the mother dies at the very beginning of the story, representing all the brightest and kindest.
The image of the mother in modern culture. Western culture
So, R. Descartes, J.-J. Rousseau, E. Kant, M. Wollstonecraft and others raised and considered the issue of the mother’s attitude towards a woman, both with traditional, centuries-old thoughts, and introducing new aspects of the attitude to motherhood. The feminist movement tried to consider motherhood not only from a biological or Christian position, but also from a social, cultural, and psychological one. Since the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, attitudes towards motherhood have changed, both on the part of women and men. With the advent of private property, division of labor, and the involvement of women in the socio-cultural process, motherhood acquired a negative connotation, hindering progress and inclusion in the public environment. In this regard, the status of motherhood has been shaken not only in the family and in interpersonal relationships, but also in the social environment. The status of a woman as a mother and breadwinner in the West has not acquired a primary role, but rather as a plan for realizing women's destiny. This could not, of course, fail to affect the state of the family, the upbringing of children, and the reproduction of offspring. Mass abortions showed the pricelessness of a woman’s natural function, giving priority to the fulfillment of other roles - economic, social, political, cultural. Modern feminism, represented by S. Beauvoir and others, has shown an unnatural approach to childbirth as a fact that complicates a woman’s life and darkens her existence, and advocates depriving oneself of this function through abortion. But, paradoxically, the attitude towards motherhood was a product of historical and cultural processes. Accordingly, the maternal role and behavior of a woman, the structure of the family in which a modern child is raised, the ratio of mother’s care for the child and household responsibilities have changed.
From the above it follows that attitudes towards motherhood vary from culture to culture. If previously it was considered the meaning of life for a woman to be a mother, now a woman’s self-identification depends on other areas. The prevailing stereotypical attitude towards a woman on the part of a man made her feel like a victim. “Patriarchy, seen as socially constructed male power in all its manifestations over women as a class, is an environment in which a woman can only identify herself as a victim.” From this position a woman looks at herself in the 20th century. The value of motherhood in the West has become secondary. For many centuries, the word “motherhood” has been associated with something sublime. In this regard, such stable expressions as “the joy of motherhood” and “happiness of motherhood” have emerged, but there have never been negative expressions. But in our century, a new term has been developed that relates to this topic - “safe motherhood”.
In other words, one can ask the question: is there such a thing as “dangerous motherhood”? Most likely, yes, because the trend of a negative attitude towards motherhood and pregnancy is observed these days. The birth of a new life prevents the continuation of a woman’s individual life.
In the West, there is an opinion that motherhood interferes with a woman’s self-realization. The motives, both on the part of women and men, for refusing to have children are not only economic, social, but also personal (“I want to live for myself,” “to make a career”). The result of such an attitude towards the value of motherhood was the interruption of the cultural and historical transmission of the model of motherhood behavior to the new generation. For centuries, the transmission of the tradition of maternal education developed, and it was interrupted at the turn of the 20th century, which undoubtedly led to a negative attitude towards the birth of offspring. D. Winnicott believes that the ability to be a good mother is transmitted and integrated through the previous connection and example of the mother. Accordingly, the new generation of women carries with them the attitudes that they borrowed from their mothers, and thus present a different model of behavior to the next generation. It is not surprising that the result of all this is a conscious denial of motherhood and its avoidance in various forms.
This is the mindset of most women in the West, not without the light hand of feminists: a woman “falls into cruel bondage to him (the child), he is no longer part of her: he is a tyrant; She looks with hostility at this strange little man who threatens her body, her freedom and, in general, her personality.” In his book “The Second Sex” S. Beauvoir continues to describe different stories of women, which mainly give a negative characterization of motherhood. For example, when describing Sofia Tolstaya, she tells how difficult it was for her during pregnancy, that these months were the most terrible in her life. The maternal instinct alone, as some psychologists believe, is not enough for a woman’s self-realization as a mother. On the contrary, S. Beauvoir denies the presence of maternal instinct in the human race, proving in practice that a woman is capable of not only loving, but also hating her child. A woman cannot be fully realized in and through a child; she feels like a victim when her other needs are not satisfied: social, cultural, personal. By glorifying motherhood, a woman cannot, due to these needs, realize herself fully as a mother.
The family crisis and spiritual degradation also bring a frightening, negative connotation to this issue. But, for the most part, egocentrism around the “I” plays a dominant role in this context. The break with cultural tradition deprived the woman of maternal baggage and positive experiences. The break with the spiritual, Christian tradition brought a woman into the realm of individualism, where, for the most part, there is no place for other individuals. And when there is a choice: to give birth or not to give birth, preference is given to the egocentric principle, calling on the axiom - to die in order to live.
Image and prototype mothers in Russia and Slavic countries
“The main characteristics and standard features of the sociocultural image of a woman-mother have not actually changed since antiquity,” writes T.G. Kiseleva. – This is a woman with extraordinary life experience and the gift of intuitive foresight of the most likely paths of events (especially related to her children); distinguished by rare kindness, a sense of compassion and the ability to understand her children and their decisions; a woman gifted by nature with extraordinary abilities for education and persuasion; a person by nature is unusually persistent, faithful to the interests of his children and unconditionally accepting in their name (or instead of them) any trials of fate, etc. Of course, in accordance with the cultural traditions of different peoples, this set of characteristics could vary to a greater or lesser extent, but in general it remains relatively typical in the cultures of most civilized (post-primitive) communities.”
Well, as for the prototype of the ideal mother, for the Christian world, as you might guess, it is the Mother of God. Sacrificial love, purity and tenderness, meekness and at the same time moral fortitude.
Although, of course, the Soviet government, which made a huge leap forward on the path of women's emancipation, intensively glorified women - fighters for the people's happiness: revolutionaries, war veterans and workers, meaning by this word professionals in a variety of industries, and not housewives at all. (However, here, too, everything was ambiguous: there was the title of “heroine mother,” but only a few received it—women who gave birth and raised at least ten children.) And yet, the image of “just a mother” remained the most important image of culture, without undergoing fundamental changes. The dominants were traditional: dedication and moral excellence. In this sense, the continuity was not interrupted.
A mother who does not sleep over her child is an eternal image for all times. But we now know how the churches were filled during the war. And there is no doubt: among them there were many women to whom this image was addressed. In any case, the “white handkerchiefs”, who during the years of “stagnation” (when it seemed to all progressive humanity that religion was dying out) quietly baptized their grandchildren from their son-boss and stubbornly celebrated Easter, are, by age, the same lyrical heroines who “at the nursery cribs secretly wiped away tears.”
But those who did not pray, but simply cried, pitied, loved and worked tirelessly, in fact, with their selfless lives, begged for children, husbands, and the country. “Russia survived thanks to its mothers,” said Elder Paisiy Svyatogorets. – A father’s hug, if it does not contain the Grace of God, is dry. And a mother’s hug, even without God, has milk in it.”
Television, and advertising in particular, have a significant influence on modern people. By creating certain images, advertising producers in one way or another influence the decision of potential buyers about a possible purchase. And in this area, the image of the mother occupies a certain place. Advice from a mother, as a symbol of reliability, love and trust, always seems more correct and reasonable. This is exactly what the creators of commercials play on, introducing a character into the plot who advises purchasing and using this or that product. The most popular are the image of a wise mother giving advice to a young family, or the image of a young mother pampering her babies with healthy treats.
Conclusion
As we can see, the image of the mother runs through many areas of human life, but in the two cultures represented it has slightly different meanings. If in Western culture the attitude towards motherhood has a more practical approach, then in the case of Russian culture motherhood is elevated to the level of an almost sacred and deeply revered phenomenon.
