Problems of single mothers. Study of the psychological problems of single mothers. Acceptance of a family different from what you planned
Only a small part of women who have given birth to children alone are completely self-sufficient. These women, who are in their early thirties, either did not want to, or were unable to link their fate with men. Having an education, a steady income, they were able to financially take care of the future, that is, the first years of a child's life. And then work again, plus a part-time job on the side, in the event that the child goes to kindergarten.
Problems of single mothers do not cease to be relevant also due to the fact that the so-called state program to help single mothers brings them crumbs. What do these women have now? In our region, as in all the rest, except for Moscow, they receive 140 rubles (up to 1.5 years, another 150). If you try hard, find time to run around the authorities, collect everything required documents, then the woman can receive another 300 rubles. With this money you can buy 8 liters of milk and 8 loaves of bread from us. In a good scenario, my mother works, while receiving 5-7 thousand rubles, and even those in an envelope, since it is very difficult to find work with official employment in the provinces. Most often, she does not have an apartment, this is minus 3-4 thousand from her income for rented housing. Considering that the state gives her a sop in the form of 440 rubles, which will in no way solve the economic problem, you can stretch until the next salary, but with great difficulty. After all, a single mother still needs to dress and shoe the baby.
So the average single mother is doomed to a very difficult life if she does not have relatives who can help. The state gave her the right to work without layoffs and layoffs until the child was 14 years old, but it did not bother to find this job for her. She is unlikely to take advantage of her unpaid leave. Even preferential placement in kindergarten is not always possible. And her right to free meals and free textbooks at school goes sideways. For a child, even a first grader, there is nothing more humiliating than feeling like a poor outcast: not only do teachers constantly focus on this, but even wealthier classmates scoff. That's all the help of the state, whose leadership annoyingly and mockingly from the TV screen claims that gas is a national property.
But single mothers work conscientiously. The fear of being left without a livelihood makes them more responsible for their work, so the employer can safely take them to work. If I had the opportunity, I would open a private kindergarten, and take single mothers as educators and nannies.
Tatiana YurepinaIn the world, the number of women raising children on their own is steadily increasing. For some, this is the result of their own initiative and conscious choice, for others - an unfavorable combination of circumstances: divorce, unplanned pregnancy ... But for both of them, this is not an easy test. Let's figure out why.
Problem number 1. Public pressure
The specificity of our mentality suggests that a child must necessarily have both a mother and a father. If the father is absent for some reason, the public is in a hurry to put all kinds of labels on the mother: “Children from single-parent families cannot become happy”, “A boy needs a father, otherwise he will not grow up to be a real man.”
If the initiative to raise a child on her own comes from the woman herself, the public becomes indignant: “For the sake of the children, it was possible to endure,” “Men don’t need other people’s children,” “A divorced woman with children will not arrange her personal life,” and so on.
The woman finds herself alone with the pressure of others, which makes her make excuses and feel flawed. This forces her to close herself in and avoid contact with the outside world. Social pressure drives a woman into distress, a negative form of stress, and further aggravates her already precarious psychological state.
What to do?
First of all, get rid of misconceptions that lead to dependence on someone else's opinion, for example:
- People around me constantly evaluate me and my actions, notice shortcomings.
- The love of others must be earned, therefore it is necessary to please everyone.
- The opinion of others is the most correct, since “it is more visible from the side”.
Such prejudices make it difficult to adequately relate to someone else's opinion - this is just one of the opinions, and not always the most objective. Each person sees reality based on his own projection of the world. And it's up to you to decide whether someone's opinion is useful to you, whether you will use it to improve your life.
Trust yourself more, your actions, choices and opinions. Compare yourself to others less. Surround yourself with people who don't pressure you. Separate own desires from the expectations of the public, otherwise, for the sake of other people's interests, you risk relegating your life and your children to the background.
Problem #2 Loneliness
Loneliness is one of the main problems that poison the life of a single mother. And in the case of a forced divorce, and in the case of a conscious decision to raise children without a husband.
By nature, it is extremely important for a woman to be surrounded by close, dear people. She wants to create a hearth, to gather people dear to her around it. When this focus falls apart for some reason, the woman loses her footing.
Situations that remind her of her "loner" status exacerbate and intensify the experience. For example, in the evening, when the children are sleeping and household chores are redone, memories roll in with renewed vigor and loneliness is felt especially acutely. Or on weekends, when you need to go with the children on “lone trips” to shops or to the movies.
In addition, friends and acquaintances from the former, “family” social circle suddenly stop calling and inviting guests. This happens for various reasons, but most often the former environment simply does not know how to react to the separation of a married couple, therefore, it generally stops any communication.
What to do?
The first step is not to run away from the problem. “This is not happening to me” denial will only make things worse. Calmly accept forced loneliness as a temporary situation that you intend to use as effectively and beneficially as possible.
The second step is to find the positives in being alone. Temporary solitude, the opportunity to be creative, the freedom not to adapt to the wishes of a partner. What else? Make a list of 10 items. It is important to learn to see in your condition not only negative, but also positive sides.
The third step is active action. Fear stops action, action stops fear. Remember this rule and be active. New acquaintances, new leisure activities, a new hobby, a new pet - any activity will do that will help you not feel lonely and fill the space around you interesting people and occupations.
Problem number 3. Feeling guilty towards the child
“Deprived the child of the father”, “Could not save the family”, “Doomed the child to an inferior life” - this is only a small part of what the woman blames herself for. Moreover, every day she is faced with a variety of everyday situations that make her feel even more guilty: she could not buy a toy for her child because she did not earn enough money, or she did not pick it up from the kindergarten on time, because she was afraid to once again take time off from work early .
Guilt accumulates, the woman becomes more and more nervous and twitchy. She is more than necessary, worries about the child, constantly takes care of him, tries to protect him from all adversity and tries to fulfill all his desires. As a result, this leads to the fact that the child grows up overly suspicious, dependent and fixed on himself. In addition, he very quickly recognizes the "pain points" of the mother and begins to unconsciously use them for his children's manipulations.
What to do?
It is important to realize destructive force feelings of guilt. A woman often does not understand that the problem is not in the absence of a father and not in what she deprived the child, but in her psychological state: in the feeling of guilt and remorse that she experiences in this situation.
How can a man crushed by guilt be happy? Of course not. Can an unhappy mother have happy children? Of course not. Trying to atone for guilt, the woman begins to sacrifice her life for the sake of the child. And subsequently, these victims are presented to him as an invoice for payment.
Rationalize your guilt. Ask yourself questions: “What is my fault in this situation?”, “Can I correct the situation?”, “How can I make amends?”. Write and read your answers. Think about how your sense of guilt is justified, how real and proportionate to the current situation?
Perhaps under the feeling of guilt you hide unspoken resentment and aggression? Or is this how you punish yourself for what happened? Or do you need wine for something else? By rationalizing your guilt, you will be able to recognize and eliminate the root cause of its occurrence.
Problem number 4. same-sex parenting
Another problem faced by single mothers is the formation of a child's personality solely on the basis of a female type of upbringing. This is especially true if the father does not appear at all in the child's life.
Indeed, in order to grow up as a harmonious personality, it is highly desirable for a child to learn both female and male types of behavior in the process of becoming. A clear bias in only one direction is fraught with difficulties with the child's further self-identification.
What to do?
Involve male relatives, friends, and acquaintances in the parenting process. Going to the movies with grandpa, doing homework with an uncle, going on a hike with friends - for a child, this will be a great opportunity to learn different types male behavior. If it is possible to at least partially include the father of the child or his relatives in the process of raising the child, do not neglect this, no matter how great your offense is.
Problem number 5. Personal life in a hurry
The status of a single mother can provoke a woman to rash and hasty actions. In an effort to quickly get rid of this "stigma" and tormented by guilt before the child, a woman often enters into a new relationship that she does not like or for which she is not yet ready. It is simply vital for her that someone else was next to her, and that the child had a father. At the same time, the personal qualities of a new partner often fade into the background.
At the other extreme, a woman devotes herself completely to raising a child and puts an end to her personal life. The fear that the new man will not accept her child, will not love him as his own, or the child will think that the mother has exchanged him for a “new uncle”, can lead a woman to give up trying to build a personal life altogether.
Follow the main rule: "Happy mom - happy child"
In both the first and second situations, the woman sacrifices herself and, as a result, remains unhappy. Both in the first and in the second situation, the child will suffer. In the first case - because he will see the suffering of the mother next to the wrong person. In the second - because he will see the suffering of his mother in loneliness and blame himself for it.
What to do?
Take a time out. Do not rush to urgently look for a child a new father or try on a crown of celibacy. Be attentive to yourself. Analyze if you are ready for a new relationship? Think about why you want a new relationship, what drives you: guilt, loneliness or the desire to be happy?
If, on the contrary, you give up trying to arrange a personal life, reflect on what pushes you to this decision. Fears of arousing the child's jealousy or fear of your own disappointment? Or does previous negative experience make you avoid repeating the situation by all means? Or is it your conscious and balanced decision?
Be honest with yourself and when making a decision, be guided by the main rule: "A happy mother is a happy child."
about the author
Psychologist, Transactional Analyst, Dance Movement Psychotherapist.
A single mother has much more problems than a woman who has a husband. The decision to have a child without a father is a conscious choice of a woman. She is ready for this from the very beginning, and whoever is warned is armed. This mobilizes a woman for the systematic preparation of life in an incomplete family, primarily in material terms. However, difficulties may lie in the moral and ethical perception of one's status, especially in cases where the father of the child abandoned him in the early stages of pregnancy.
Benefits, rights, and subsidies for single mothers have a place in our society, and that's great. It is also not bad that incomplete families are often registered with guardianship and guardianship authorities. But a woman still carries her everyday life and holidays, joys and sorrows alone with a double burden: for herself and for her dad, who is not around.
Where are these pitfalls - difficulties? And how do you get around them?
1. How to survive financially?
Be clear about your budget, including benefits, maternity and other stable sources. One-time income does not need to be taken into account. This will help you get away from illusions once and for all, learn to distribute your funds only for what is necessary, relying only on yourself. Plan your child's diet, and then your own. Things can be purchased in a good second-hand store or, at first, taken as a gift from friends whose children have grown up.
2. How to earn? Where to get money?
First you have to live on benefits, and then look for a good one. Kindergarten for the baby and work for yourself. Sitting at home, you can earn extra money on the Internet even without qualifications. Do not refuse the help of relatives if they offer money sincerely and do not put any conditions on you.
3. How to manage everything alone?
Do not be lazy and get a notebook for notes. Organize your day by prioritizing the “most important” over the “important” and “not-so-important” things. Do only the “most important” and some of the “important”, the rest will “fall away” by themselves. If possible, involve relatives: grandmother, mother, sister, if you feel that it is not a burden for them.
4. How to explain to the baby that he does not have a dad?
Of course, you need to explain according to the age at which the child asks this question. At first, learn to distract him from this topic, later this “trick” will no longer work. Reassuring that dad will return from a business trip next month is a stupid and cruel trick. Try to explain to the child that not everyone has dads, and if the child is unlucky with the presence of a dad in the family, he will definitely be lucky in something else. You will begin to invent about your astronaut father, then you will “disentangle” these ridiculous fantasies, wondering why the child is lying to you.
5. How to stop self-flagellation and get rid of feelings of guilt in relation to the baby?
The sages say that the most useless feeling on earth is guilt. Instead of warming up pity for yourself and your child, do everything possible to make your cub feel good with you. There are many families in the world in which children are born, but their fathers leave and do not return. It certainly doesn't make it any easier for you. But your version is more stable, you were ready for your mission, and loneliness did not take you by surprise, unsettling you.
There will be difficulties, no doubt about it. Learn to treat them correctly, without psychosis, resentment for the whole world and prolonged depression. Worthy bear your honorable, the best duty in the world "to be a mother." It costs a lot! Time flies quickly, all fears and doubts will be left behind. And this difficult time will seem to you the most happy years life, when you could always be close to your warm, dear baby!
"The fate of the human psyche is to always have two objects and never one."
Andre Green
The term "Single Mother", although it is well-known and understandable to most, does not really reveal the essence of what is happening.
A mother, left to raise a child without a husband, in most cases is not alone and does not raise a child alone. In the process of education, one way or another, relatives take part from one or both sides. In connection with the foregoing, I personally do not consider this designation correct and reflecting the whole essence of what is happening.
Nowadays, a young mother raising a small child without a husband is a very common occurrence. There are various reasons for this, but the most relevant is divorce.
Today there are many civil marriages, which, like official ones, often break up. As for official statistics, over the past 15 years, the percentage of divorces among young families in Russian Federation ranges from 52 to 80 percent depending on the region.
This suggests that a huge number of children and adolescents live in incomplete families. Despite the fact that both parents, by law, have equal rights to the child, in practice, most often, after the parents divorce, the child remains with the mother.
Realizing that a family can break up at any age stage of a child, specifically for this article I choose, as I see it, the most interesting situation for consideration when a mother is left without a husband with a “preoedipal” (under 3 years old) child in her arms.
This state of affairs is often the most stressful for the mother. In the case when the offspring at the time of the breakup of the family has reached, say, adolescence we are dealing with a relatively adult and independent person who has gone through the main stages of his psychosexual development in a complete family with any but the participation of his father.
When it comes to a single young mother with a small child in her arms, few people in such a situation feel calm and confident enough. Most mothers after a divorce ask themselves the question: “How to raise a child further?”
Should a mother who is left alone panic, and how should she behave?
Let's try to figure it out. As practice shows, most mothers, even without the participation of the father, are able, as they say, to “feed, raise” a child. That is, make sure that the child grows up educated, intelligent and healthy.
Often such mothers have a rather rich idea of how to develop a child physically and intellectually, but when it comes to mental and psychological development / upbringing, it often turns out that there is much less knowledge in this area.
It is worth paying tribute to those few mothers who, feeling insecure in this issue, bring their children to specialists - psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychotherapists.
I note that divorce itself affects the emotional state of all family members, which, in turn, feels the child.
Why can raising a child without a father be called a problem for a child and is it a problem?
To answer these questions, one should say about the main features of each of the parents and about what value these features carry for the development of the child.
For mental development For a child, both parents are very important and each of them has its own important role at different stages of a child’s development. Traditionally, I will start with the mother figure.
The role of the mother in the upbringing of the child
It is generally accepted that women, most often, are superior to men in terms of speech and communication skills, operating with concepts, creative and intuitive thinking. The secrets of these important skills the mother, consciously and unconsciously, will share with her child.If we talk about the role or function of the mother, then it can be denoted by the well-established term "protective and caressing function."
It can be said that the mother is the one who gives tenderness and indulges the child.
Due to her mental characteristics, a woman lags far behind a man in what the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan calls "symbolic limitation", thanks to which she is able to raise a child in the style of "excessive pleasure". What does she usually do as a mother?
That is, according to the observation of the same Lacan, the mother often allows the child excessive pleasure - that is, “what should not be” (I borrowed this wording from a colleague).
In the midst of such permissiveness, the father appears on the "educational scene" with his authoritarian "demanding - prohibitive - educational" function.
« To allow a child everything is to treat him as an adult; and this is the surest way to ensure that he never becomes an adult"(c) Thomas Sas.
The role of the father in raising a child
Men, as a rule, are pragmatists and have pronounced topological, ordinal and technical types thinking. Also, men have better developed spatial thinking than women - all this, of course, is important for the development of the child, but rather from a pedagogical point of view.The main function of the father is different: the father brings law, order and social norms to the family - what is called the “symbolic father”.
This law applies both to the child and to the behavior of the wife towards the child, provided that her own father was not a weak "castrated" father, but was the law in her family.
Otherwise, in the head of the mother there is no symbolic paternal figure, personifying the law, and, therefore, there is no law that would protect a child of any sex from maternal arbitrariness that absorbs the child.
The basic law that the father brings to the family is a ban on the “excessive pleasure” bestowed by the mother on the child. Restriction on "what should not be." That is, the father imposes "a ban on certain types of pleasure," as Freud wrote, referring to the mother's incestuous relationship with the child.
As an illustration, I will cite the famous metaphor of Jacques Lacan. The unconscious desires of the mother, directed at the child, he metaphorically described as follows:
« A mother is like a hungry crocodile, eager to swallow the child, return it to its womb, and only the father's phallus, inserted into this insatiable mouth, can save the child from being swallowed by her!»
As it has already become clear, the figure of the father has importance for the mental development of the child.
The negative impact of a predominantly “female” upbringing
Now that a little has been said about the functions of parents, I propose to reflect on the possible negative consequences of a predominantly female upbringing of a child.After that, we’ll talk a little about how you can minimize these very consequences.
We already know that father and mother have different types of thinking, which means that they can look at the same situation in different ways. Accordingly, when both parents are present in the family, they pass on their talents to the child through communication with him and communication with each other in the presence of the child.
Also, in a complete family, the mother [normally] pays attention not only to the child, but also to her husband. From a certain age and in a certain period of the child's psychosexual development, the fact of the mother's passing attention from the child to the father and back becomes a fundamentally important moment for the child.
This importance is confirmed by the accumulated experience of psychoanalysts dealing with object relations. We are talking about a period that is called the "Oedipal phase", which falls on the age interval from 3 to 5 years (this age interval is average, but in reality the boundaries of this phase are blurred).
Why it matters: In a complete family, the mother is supposed to love her husband and be loved by him. The husband is the third party and this enables the mother to be the mother of her child and not the mistress. That is, the mother shares her maternal aspirations and sexual desires - she realizes the first with her child, and the second with her beloved husband in the bedroom.
The mother periodically leaves her child, alternating her presence and absence. When she is not next to the child, she is with her father. Having put the child to sleep, the mother goes to the father's bedroom and becomes sexy woman for a sexy man.
It is this absence of the mother that contributes to the formation and development of the child's fantasy life. The child gets the opportunity to start fantasizing about what happens between parents for closed door parent bedroom.
“To feel excluded from the special intimacy between parents, envying them, children receive a powerful impetus to the outside world, where only they will find such joy.” Burres Frederick Skinner
This situation gradually helps the child to separate his desires from the desire of the mother, infantile sexuality from adult, genital, sexuality. The child gradually understands that there is a difference between his childhood relationship with his mother and the adult mother-father relationship.
All this gives the child the opportunity to draw the most important conclusions and accept the “word and law of the father”, which says: the father is more important for the mother than the child, the child is not EVERYTHING for the mother and is not the first and only cause of maternal happiness, satisfaction.
“To be an adult is to have exclusive [inaccessible to a child] rights to another adult. For the child, this creates the model of behavior in which he is a student in the family: he is brought up by this couple, but should not pretend to be an adult, even if he is absent from the family.. Francoise Dolto
In the case when the mother does not have in her head the sexual and desired image of a man, a father, then she directs all her inclinations to her child, making him her continuation in every sense of the word.
In this case, instead of the husband, the child spends the night in the mother's bed, becoming for her an unconscious replacement for the man - the father, as the object of sexual attraction. The child is involuntarily forced to “plug” with himself and his love the “holes” in maternal narcissism and thereby alleviate the burden of maternal loneliness (depression).
Incest leads to degeneration, psychosis and death. Incestuousness too. Psychoanalysts examining the sick cancer, found out that in the anamnesis of these patients there is often the fact that the mother lives with her son or daughter in the same room and, often, in the same bed.
The scheme that I call “mother and child is friendship, but we don’t need a man, dad” also takes place in complete families, where the father figure is belittled and “castrated”. But most often the above-mentioned scheme is relevant precisely for the situation when a mother raises a child without the participation of a man, a father.
Stages of growing up a child and the formation of important life skills
Starting from the “oedipal phase” [and until the end of the latent phase], the child is actively developing important skills - the basis of communicative and gender-role behavior.When the child grows up and becomes an adult, the foundation laid during this period will affect his behavior and quality of life.
Of course, for the full formation of these skills, the child needs the participation of both parents.
When a man does not take part in the upbringing of a child, the child faces another significant psychological problem - a violation of gender identity, and, as a result, difficulties in the formation of gender-role behavior.
These problems negatively affect the formation of a person's personality and lead to the so-called "loss of one's own self" and impaired communication skills.
A prominent American psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, wrote: “People who did not have conditions in childhood for self-awareness and self-expression strive for this all their lives. And the first manifestation of their true nature is always accompanied by strong fear..
This applies to all areas of human life. Including gender relations.
The above applies to both boys and girls. But I want to write a little about how the absence of a man in the family can affect the boy and the girl separately.
Raising a boy without a father
What problems can a boy brought up without the participation of his father face? Obviously, such a boy does not have before him a living example of male behavior and social role men.In such a situation, the boy over-identifies with his mother and unconsciously takes on feminine traits, which leads to a distortion of personality traits. Such a distortion of self-perception, according to numerous psychologists and psychoanalysts, often leads to the formation of pronounced homosexual inclinations.
The latter applies not only to boys, but also to girls. Also, a boy who does not see his father in front of him and does not have the experience of communicating with him is deprived of the opportunity to assimilate the features of male thinking, perception, in particular, and the full opportunity to form identification with a man, a father, in general.
In addition, boys often become the object of venting maternal aggression, which is caused by the behavior of a “bad father”. After all, they, son and father, are of the same sex.
Raising girls without a father
As for girls, for them the absence of a father in the family can also cause certain problems.Having before her eyes an example of a normal relationship between matter and father, a feminine mother and a courageous father, the girl forms her own image of a woman, identifying herself with a happy and feminine mother, and not with a depressive phallic woman.
The absence of a father in the family causes difficulties for the girl in identifying her gender role. Since childhood, the lack of experience in communicating with a man, a father, can subsequently cause difficulties, for example, in the form of severe anxiety, when communicating with the opposite sex and, as a result, difficulties in forming a married couple.
Also, the absence of a father can cause girls to need hypercompensation for male attention. That is, an excessive need for male attention.
Often there is a situation that gave rise to the formation of a separate niche in folklore. It's about the relationship of wife - husband - mother-in-law. That is, a situation where a wife and her mother unite against a man, and he, in turn, is forced to be smart so as not to fall victim to this coalition.
Often this union, driven by unconscious desires, actively campaigns against the father. More often, daughters are agitated in order to expand the women's association against men. Quite often this happens and works in complete families. What can we say when a man in the family is absent.
It can be assumed how a girl who grew up in such a family will treat men when she becomes an adult.
Female manipulation against the "bad father"
After divorce, children regularly become the mother's means of revenge on the "bad father" and all sorts of manipulations of him.The mother, under various pretexts, does not give the father the opportunity to see the child, while the child is informed that the father himself does not want to see him, which instills hatred for the father in the child. This is a good example of maternal arbitrariness in the absence of a father, symbolizing the law.
That is, maternal arbitrariness becomes law. The child has no choice but to learn the "mother's law": "lawlessness is the law", which is a good breeding ground for the formation of narcissistic perversion and other personality disorders.
Being a psychoanalyst and knowing the role of unconscious mental processes in the life of any person from birth and even before it, I want to note the importance of family history for a child.
Everything that happened to the parents separately, before they met and after they met, affects the mental life of the parents and is transmitted to the child. This means that the child is initially doomed to consciously and unconsciously absorb and process the products of the mental apparatus of his parents, and even the parents of his parents, grandparents.
And if it so happened that the family broke up, and the child remained in the upbringing of the mother, then a huge responsibility falls on her. Responsibility for the mental state of the child.
A mother will have to make a lot of efforts not to bring up or minimize the “fatherless” complex in her child, giving a chance to build her own full-fledged family in the future and the opportunity to raise her mentally healthy children.
What should a mother do if she does not want to significantly complicate her child's life by making him a victim of maternal narcissism, but wishes her son or daughter a good future?Most often, the separation of parents is a protracted process. Both parents and children suffer. The mother can both exacerbate these sufferings and minimize them. It must be clearly understood that the child is not to blame for the fact that the parents diverge. That's why do not deprive the child of the opportunity to see his father, if such an opportunity exists.
Of course, a woman faces additional everyday and psychological difficulties, but it is worth finding strength in yourself. do not tell the child that the father is to blame. That such-and-such a father abandoned his mother and child. Such statements form complexes in the child and negative attitude not only to the father, but also to the family as such.
Freud, and after him numerous psychologists, psychoanalysts have repeatedly emphasized that " everyone tends to treat others the way they were treated in childhood". This statement can be rephrased and applied to the family, saying: "Everyone tends to feel about starting a family the way his parents did."
Regular meetings between father and child will help the child form a positive image of the family and the father.
I understand that the reasons for divorce may be different and the father may not want to see the child or not be able to for one reason or another. Sooner or later the child will ask: “Why doesn’t daddy come to us and live with us?” Children are much smarter than many people think. How to act in such a situation?
Don't make up stories about space or answer something like "because your father is bad and doesn't like us."
It would be more correct to explain to the child something like this: “In adults, it sometimes happens that they diverge. And your dad and I decided to live separately. I'm sorry we didn't consult you when we made the decision. This is not, neither mine nor my father's, and even more so your fault. It happens."
You can add: "Despite the fact that your father and I are not together, he loves you." Etc. Of course, such an answer is unlikely to fully satisfy the child, but there is no aggression or agitation in such words.
It happens that the father died and then, too, you should not deceive a small child, talking about space. You can honestly tell the child that the father is dead.
Let me explain with a quote from Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams:
The child is unfamiliar with the horrors of decay, grave cold, endless "nothing" and everything that is associated with the word "death" in the mind of an adult and that is present in all myths about the other world. The fear of death is alien to him, which is why he plays with this terrible word and threatens another child: “If you do this again, you will die like Franz died.”. <...> “The fact that dad died, I understand, but why he doesn’t come home for dinner, I can’t understand this in any way” said a ten-year-old boy.
When it comes to death, the wording "he left us, left us" is widely used - which confirms the childish and unconscious interpretation of death as an absence.
In such cases, one should regularly tell the child about how courageous, strong, loving the father was, about what good, courageous, heroic deeds he performed, etc. etc. All this will allow the child to form a positive image of the father, and the boy to successfully identify with him.
Don't forget that an example of courage can serve not only the father of the child, but also the father of the mother or father, grandfather.
A teacher, neighbor, brother, friend of the mother, or a coach in the sports section can partially compensate for the absence of the father in the family and become a positive object for identification.
It has been widely studied and proven that the appearance of a new husband in a mother has a positive effect on the child. However, the appearance of a new man in the family goes most smoothly if at the time of his appearance the child has not reached adolescence, and the newly-made husband does not bring his children into the family. I emphasize: this is not a rule, but averaged data!
If the mother fails to remarry, then it is worth refraining from manipulating her children and deliberately demonstrating her sadness associated with this, reinforcing all this with spells like “men are all bad and unreliable, but only mom will never leave you and will love you forever."
And there is no need to blame the child for the “sins” that the father committed.
Raising a child in the style of "a child is a replacement for her husband" is a big mistake. For example, the child should not help the mother because her husband "left" her. It is necessary to raise a child in such a way that he helps not because "the father abandoned" - this is not the fault of the child, but because the mother objectively needs help in everyday life.
At the same time, the child must understand that he is free to live his personal life and develop as a person, and that he is not the property of his mother until the end of his life.
Why is it not necessary to "love" your children, surrounding them with constant double over-care?
First, the mother can never replace the child's father. The mother should recognize this and direct her efforts not to become a “phallic mother” for the child, try to preserve her femininity, remaining a loving enough mother.
Secondly, the child needs freedom to develop. To do this, he must have free time from maternal love. A child who understands that he is loved can calmly play alone without the participation of his mother or anyone else, and this is an important point.
The “Loved child” is anxious, has problems with self-development, since the mother seems to be developing for him.
In summary, I want to say: when a family breaks up, and the mother is left to raise a child without his father, it is important to know that the child, following the reaction of the mother, is trying to understand whether an irreparable tragedy has occurred or something that can be dealt with.
A mother should clearly understand that in the absence of a father, she must preserve or create a symbolic image of the father in the child's psyche. The phallic father. At the same time, the mother must be aware that she cannot become a man and / or replace him, and, therefore, she must try to be a “good enough mother” for the child, feminine, but not a “phallic mother”.
Find the strength in yourself not to “love” the child and give him the opportunity to develop, including on his own. Do not “plug” with your child the hole that was formed with the departure of a man and do not make a “husband” out of a child with all his male functions.
If a mother feels overwhelmed and is tempted to do something she shouldn't, then I recommend seeking help from an experienced professional to work through what's going on.
Families break up - no one is immune from this. Whether the family is complete or not, there are always traumatic moments that you can deal with if you wish. The presence of a father does not guarantee the ideal mental development of a child, just as the absence of a father does not guarantee the appearance of mental abnormalities. In any case, a child is always the product of two people and never one.
The madness of one or two parents a child can process and transform into creative roots, and in the future use it for the benefit of himself and others. Therefore, if a divorce has already occurred, you should not panic and put an end to yourself and the child. It is worth gathering strength, thinking, armed with certain knowledge, and moving on.