Recently, data from the National Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Civil Affairs show that nationwide, 20 10139,000 couples are legally married, and the marriage rate is only 7.2‰, a new low of nearly10 years. According to current statistics, there are more than 200 million single adults in China, and more than 77 million adults choose to live alone.
A netizen on Douban said: Why don't you want to get married and have children? Because I don't want to marry a man like my father, become a woman like my mother and give birth to a child like myself. Perhaps, there should be more than one person who has this idea like this netizen. If we live in a poor family, the way parents get along in marriage is likely to become our future marriage template. We are afraid that we can't repair the damage caused by the family we came from, that our marriage will be destroyed, and that we will come from a terrible family when we become children.
Keigo Higashino said, "Everyone wants to be born in a good family, but they can't decide their parents. What kind of cards are sent to you, you can only play as well as possible. " We can't choose what kind of family we were born in, but we can try our best to change it. Understand your family background, explore the reasons why you are more and more like your parents, understand what is the right way to support your family, and then know what kind of parents you want to be.
The book Not born this way-How Family Affects Our Life tells us that what kind of person you will eventually become depends largely on your upbringing. As far as some congenital factors are concerned, it is not caused by genetic inheritance. The key lies in parents' attitude and feedback to their children.
Oliver james is the author of Life, Not Life-How Family Affects Our Life. He is a child psychologist and relational psychoanalyst. His works include "Youth Violence: In a Winner-Loser Culture" and "Britain on the Sofa". He collated and analyzed personal experiences and related cases by investigating and quoting cutting-edge research results, and came to the conclusion that intergenerational similarity at the psychological level is caused by acquired cultivation.
Let's take a look at the contents of this book.
Compared with other species, human beings depend on their parents for the longest time. In the animal kingdom, lambs that have just been born for a few hours will stand alone; The baby eagle just born a few days ago can practice flying; Only newborns have no ability to take care of themselves. Therefore, babies can only rely on caregivers, try their best to win their attention, and at the same time get survival materials to meet their own needs, otherwise they may face the threat of death.
However, it is not easy for parents to take care of their children, especially mothers who bear the main responsibility for raising children. During pregnancy and childbirth, many mothers suffer from prenatal/postpartum depression due to physical and psychological reasons. In addition, raising children means sacrificing your own time and devoting yourself wholeheartedly. They often stay up for 24 hours, nursing, changing diapers, cooking and so on. Even with the help of my father and others, my mother will be physically and mentally exhausted and tortured to madness and collapse by her children. Children are dependent on caregivers, but this dependence poses a threat to caregivers' spirit, and sometimes even hurts and abuses children. Therefore, in order to avoid being hurt and abused, children need to do everything possible to gain the attention and recognition of their parents, and the easiest way is to completely copy their parents' practices.
We are what we are today because we are influenced by our parents' words and deeds, role models and identities. Whether parents care for us or abuse us, the consequences will make us have different lives.
Parents are responsible for everything for infants. As children grow up, they will encourage some behaviors of children and criticize some words and deeds that they think are wrong. Therefore, children learn how to please their parents, how to avoid disappointing their parents, and learn to listen to their parents. In the end, the development of children's personality, whether positive or negative, will be directly influenced by parents' education, including good habits, ways of thinking and mentality. And some bad habits and mentality.
The first thing children learn is imitation. My best friend has been paying attention to her words and deeds since she gave birth to a child, although the child can't speak yet. One day, she told me that I am going home and reading every day. When my son sees me reading a book, he will learn from me and turn it over there with a picture book, although he doesn't know what is written in it.
As children grow up, they will imitate their parents' behavior in behavior and language. Of course, not only good behavior language, but also some bad behavior language will be imitated. Many parents don't do what they say: do as I say, not as I do. For example, many parents tell their children not to lie, but sometimes children will wave desperately to their children when they receive calls that parents don't want to answer, indicating that they are not there. By observing parents' behavior, children know that rules can be broken by exceptions, and sometimes we don't keep our word. Children will completely imitate their parents' behavior. Some people think that it is caused by genes, but it is not. Children will always observe their parents' personal styles, personality characteristics and behavior patterns. They are keen and earnest, and imitate quickly.
Children will substitute their parents' words and deeds into themselves as their own side. The root of identity is love or fear: if it comes from love, then children will please their parents by imitating their parents' loving behavior and language; If it comes from fear, such as being criticized, punished or even abused, then identity is a way to comfort yourself, which is equivalent to telling yourself to be like your parents or meet their expectations.
Besides the above three learning mechanisms, abuse is the biggest reason why children are similar to their parents. Because abuse will open a desperate coercive mechanism and make people repeat the same mistakes.
When parents are in a bad mood, they will scold their children for doing something wrong, and even start to vent their negative emotions. Parents abuse their children to relieve and release pressure, and children will either blame themselves for their mistakes or vent their anger in the same way. Surveys show that abused children usually become exactly like their abusers when they grow up. For example, the heroine in HBO's mini-series Oliver kittredge is both a victim of family of origin and a victim of family of origin when facing her next generation.
In short, the way parents treat their children will affect generations in the family.
At the end of 1950s, Harry Harlow, an animal psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, USA, made a famous experiment of "Rhesus monkey surrogacy": he raised a newborn monkey in an isolated cage and made two fake monkeys out of wire and velvet instead of the real monkey mother. The "steel monkey" has a nipple on its chest that can provide milk, but the "velvet monkey" doesn't. A few days later, Harlow found that the little monkey only went to the "steel monkey" to drink milk when he was hungry, and stayed with the "velvet monkey" most of the time; When the little monkey is frightened or attacked, it will run to the "mother marmoset" and hug it tightly.
In subsequent experiments, Harlow found that the monkeys raised by the "velvet mother monkey" could not play with other monkeys and were very withdrawn. So, he improved the experiment and made a "velvet female monkey" that can swing, so that the little monkey can have some time to play with the real monkey every day. The improved experiment shows that the behavior and personality of the monkeys raised in this way are basically normal.
Regarding the results of this experiment, Harlow said: "It proves that there are three variables in love: touch, movement and play. If you can provide these three variables, you can meet all the needs of a primate. "
Harlow's experiment tells us that parents can't just feed their children. If they want their children to grow up healthily physically and mentally, they must give them caring and safe parenting methods, and actively stimulate them from various sensory channels such as touch, hearing and vision, so that children can feel the existence of their parents and gain a sense of security.
Oliver james, the author of "Not Born This Way", said that good child care will bring positive results, while poor child care will lead to serious consequences. Psychologist John Balbi once said that love is as essential to a baby's growth as vitamins. There is a substance called cortisol in our brain, which is what we often call "stress hormone"-when we encounter stress or danger, cortisol will trigger the "alarm signal" in our brain to remind us to be ready to escape or fight back. Whether cortisol is stable or not directly determines people's ability to cope with stress. A large number of experimental data of researchers show that the baseline level of cortisol is determined by the care received in childhood: when there is no threat, your cortisol level will be at the baseline level; Unstable or abusive nursing methods can make the baseline level of cortisol too high or too low. In other words, those children who are carefully cared for and raised by their parents will have a more sound personality and a more stable personality.
An experiment was conducted in Colorado, with 469 adoptees as the research object. These subjects were adopted almost 29 days after birth, so their biological parents had little chance to influence them. Parents and children are tested in detail, but the test results show that there is no obvious correlation between biological parents and children's personality characteristics.
Experiments show that personality traits are not heritable. But why do we often hear such words: "You are just like your father"? In fact, the reason why personality traits are passed down from generation to generation is largely caused by learning (words and deeds, role models and identities), abuse and care.
Our parents' parenting style is inherited from their parents' parenting style, and we will largely raise the next generation according to their parenting style. Therefore, if we grew up under the care and care of our parents, then we will treat our children in this way. However, what should we do if our childhood is not very happy and we don't want our children to make the same mistakes? The first thing we should do is to admit the limitations of the family we came from, and admit our negative emotions such as hatred, helplessness, anger and shame. Face up to the past and look forward to the future.
Offspring Stockholm syndrome refers to children's efforts to gain the attention of their parents and to maintain this behavior indefinitely. Children will establish emotional ties with their parents by imitating their parents' personality characteristics and gain their love.
If parents are the potential psychological demands of "I'm fine, but you're not" in the family, then parents will often re-impose the abuse they have suffered on their children in order to expect their children's situation to improve. Of course, in the long run, children will be just like their parents.
If there is a model of "I'm fine and you're fine" in the family, such as encouraging and praising children's "you're great" and "you're beautiful", so that children can feel the care, support and encouragement of their parents, then their bodies and minds will be healthier. At the same time, spare no effort to care for children, and children will also benefit from these positive psychology when they grow up.
As Oliver james, the author of Not Born for this, said: We must remember that we are adults and don't take advantage of children's vulnerability to hurt them. When we are sad, angry or depressed, try not to let our children feel that they have to deal with our negative emotions. We should take care of them, not let them take care of us. Only by meeting children's needs for parents' dependence can we cultivate children's independent character.
When it comes to expectations, many parents want their children to grow up safely and healthily. Of course, it would be better if they could "get good grades, get into key universities and have a good job". With the continuous expansion of parents' expectations for their children, the burden imposed on them is getting heavier and heavier. However, in order not to disappoint their parents, some children reluctantly suppress themselves and cater to their parents, vacillating between growing up and being expected by their parents, and eventually their spirit is overwhelmed or even collapsed.
Why do parents have such expectations for their children? Maybe I haven't reached the hope that my child can help me realize my wish; Or maybe you did it yourself. If the child can't do it, it will make you lose face, so the child must meet his expectations.
The poor inherit the wind. However, children are independent individuals from the moment they are born. They have independent thoughts and feelings. They should not be "kidnapped" by their parents for various reasons to realize their dreams, and they do not need to bear the pain their parents have suffered.
Some people say that life generally goes through three stages. At the age of 20, I know that my parents are ordinary people; at the age of 30, I know that I am ordinary people; at the age of 40, I know that my children are ordinary people. After becoming a parent, you should correctly understand your expectations of your children and set a healthy and positive example for them. According to the theory that children are more and more like their parents mentioned above, as long as parents become better parents, children will also become better children, and may eventually grow into what parents expect.
"Being born without being born" is a lesson for all those who are about to become parents or have become parents. As the author Oliver james said at the beginning of the book, "It is more important to pass on love than to leave material things such as real estate, stocks and shares to future generations."