Families: A Fictional Case

Much Russian thinking about the private lives of foreigners seems to be dominated by outdated stereotypes drawn from bad novels and bad films. Either the English live in a world of wonderful 'gentlemen' who are handsome, brave, polite but without emotions - or else we are a race of unloving parents and unloving children who throw our grannies and teenagers out of the house as soon as we are able to do so. More re­cently to these stereotypes has been added the image of us as inhabitants of 'the West' who therefore live in a world of ex­otic nightclubs and sexual promiscuity.

As in Russia and everywhere else, our private relationships are partly dependent on economic conditions, health and social welfare, and expectations about the future for ourselves and our children.

From the parents point of view, they want to bring up their children to behealthy, happy, hard-working, attractive, kind, sociable, good at lessons, good at sport, with other interests as well, and to have in front of them successful careers in which they will earn a good living, get married, have children and live happy lives. These are the popular ambitions of a very high propor­tion of British parents.

But parents also know that children are different from one another, and that they need to develop at their own pace and in their own way. Consequently they are faced with all sorts of dilemmas in the upbringing of their families.

Today, though, nearly half of all families with young children are ending up with two children, another quarter have three or more children, mid only one family in four has a single child. This means that the vast majority of children have at least one brother or sister, so that family relationships are most often 'clusters' of lies between parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters.

The number of single children in Russia astonishes many British visitors, especially the older ones. 'Where are the brothers and sisters?' they ask. 'Isn't that child in danger of being spoiled?' 'Being spoiled' is a very British concept. It refers to the belief that the child develops badly if he or she is indulged, petted, given too much his or her own way. Such a child will be a horrible nuisance to those around him, and will hurt himself by lack of self-discipline and by not knowing how to work co-operatively with others. Not every mother is sus­picious of 'too much indulgence' but it is certainly often mentioned as a worry.

Also, children in families of brothers and sisters are expected to work out some social rules among themselves. Growing up, certainly, in middle-class homes is seen partly as learning to take responsibility.

So how much petting and hugging do small children in Britain have. This varies enormously, depending on the different temperaments of the children, and the wishes of the parents. Physical affection is encouraged. For example, for the last thirty years, fathers have been explicitly urged to help :bring up their children and to begin this by joining their wives in the labour wards of maternity hospitals. Watching the babybeing born used to be forbidden; now it is rare to find father who don't help their wives in hospital and learn to hug then children from the first hours of life. Thereafter, in some families, the children crawl happily all over everyone; in other families they are taught to restrain themselves, to 'behave more like grown-ups'.

Clearly children are different from one another. But they have to learn to work out their own rules for living in a community - while being given the love and support of their parents. (I would say, from what I have seen, that Russian parents arc more protective of their children, British parents are more in­sistent that their children must learn to cope... but of course these are tendencies, not complete attitudes. There is always a dilemma.)

Once the children are at school, most debates are essentially about rules and freedom. Both are necessary, but parents and children are in constant conflict about how much freedom how many rules.

British parents take money seriously. Children from the age of 5 or 6 are normally given weekly 'pocket money' - a few pence at first, increasing as they get older. Pocket money is often related to responsibilities about the house. 'Now you are old enough to help me, you are old enough to have some money of your own.' Pocket money is not considered to be a payment for work, but a right; and rights go with responsi­bilities. (Few parents would use these serious sounding words, but if you ask them to explain why they are giving pocket money to their children, this will usually be the gist of their answer.)

Teenage children are often given a clothing allowance; they must buy their own clothes, and budget accordingly. If they spend too much on a small jacket or a fashionable dress, they will have no money for shoes... They are being taught 'the value of money'. Children from the age of 13 often take part-time jobs to pay for records, electronic gadgets and so forth. Parents usually have mixed feelings. On the one hand, they like to see their children being resourceful and en­terprising. On the other hand, they fear that school work will suffer. Teachers do protest that children are working too hard outside school and falling asleep in lessons, but among the majority of teenagers, having things is important: having the 'right' clothes, the most popular records and tapes, tickets for popular rock concerts. And in Britain they get these things not by influence, contacts, bribery, or other forms of official eva­sion, but by buying them. Things are available if you have money. They are not available if you don't.

Most of the parents are quite prosperous, so children ask their parents for money. And here is another dilemma for prosperous parents of university students: should they insist that their children learn to live on their student grants plus whatever they can earn during the holidays - or do they give them money to buy the clothes and electronic equipment they want? How much should young people in a prosperous society be expected to have! And should they be protected from the recession which is affecting many poorer young people (and poorer old people)? The parents have insisted from an early age on 'responsibility' and 'value for money'.

What about moral attitudes? How do parents in Britain teach their children the difference between 'right' and 'wrong'? Perhaps the question should be: 'How do parents anywhere in the world teach their children to behave morally?' We know that some succeed and others fail; we also know that parents have different views about what is right and what is wrong. So what I have to say here are a few generalisations about the British. Naturally, they will not be true for every­one, but they are common attitudes which sometimes distin­guish us significantly from other western countries.

If you talk to parents of all social groups you will find there If a general agreement that children should be taught to be kind, to be honest and to be fair; and that it is wrong to be cruel, to steal or to destroy the happiness of other people. Children should also (but here the difficulties begin) learn to be loyal to their own group.

The feelings are common to many many English parents. They want to do what is best but they are very very confused.

'Leaving home' is itself a significant 'rite of passage' in Brit­ain. Not everyone leaves their families: especially in working class homes the children will often stay until they themselves marry, and even continue to live with one set of parents after they are married, because there is nowhere to go. But few people stay together in this way for preference, and among the middle classes children generally leave home soon after they have finished their schooling. One of the advantages of choosing a university or polytechnic (if one can get a place) which is a long way from home is that it makes the initial move more natural and straightforward.

It should be obvious that women in Britain have been giving birth later and later. Many middle-class women who are planning a career do not expect to have a baby until they are in their late twenties or early thirties ... or later. But the 'biological clock ticks away leaving these women less and less time to have their families. However, the dangers of late births are diminishing, and doctors can now test for many physical and mental defects which appear more often in babies born to older parents. Most people would agree that to start your family in your late thirties is not an ideal solution. There is no ideal solution.

Young men in Britain are, for possibly the first time in his­tory, at a disadvantage. More boy babies are born who now survive the weaknesses to which they used to succumb. They are not thank God, being killed off in wars. So more boys arc chasing fewer girls, and are suddenly proving to be very enthusiastic about marriage and long-term relationships while the girls hesitate. This is a reversal of traditional attitudes.

One difference between our experience and yours which I have observed seems to be confirmed by the figures. In Brit­ain, marriage has been getting more and more popular as the century has gone on. Until recently, that is. However, the rea­son why marriage does not appear to be so popular in the fig­ures is because more and more stable couples are choosing not to get married. So now we should say that the popularity of the institution of 'living together as a sexual couple' is very popular indeed. Such unmarried couples are also having their children, unmarried, but both taking responsibility for the child who is born, just as in marriage.

The main comic problem is that nobody knows what to call the man or woman who is not a husband or wife but almost a husband or wife. Girl-friend and boy-friend are the traditional terms. Nowadays, except for young schoolchildren, these words almost always imply a sexual relationship. But boy sounds a bit young! Man-friend? It is used, but not very often. My man. Yes, sometimes. My partner - that sounds a bit like a business relationship. The Americans have terms which an fine in America but don't fit Britain. My other half- it sound as though the speaker is a bit embarrassed by the situation. In fact we have no good terms. So a divorced lady of fifty intro­ducing her new partner who is fifty-five can be heard referring to him as my boy-friend.

At least it means that if you want to know the relationship it is quite all right to ask the question 'Are they a couple?' And then you can find out the current terms in use.

Now, about a third of marriages end in divorce, and we can be fairly sure that at least the same proportion of serious couples 'split up'. But there is a strong tendency for such di­vorced and separated individuals to find another partner and settle down to another marriage or similar relationship. Single mothers exist - but not usually for very long.

Whatever the reasons, enthusiasm for marriage or a long-term stable relationship remains very high. It seems that the British are a romantic race, who like, and always have liked, their marriages to be little long-lasting democracies. We have many many divorced people, and I have heard them speak re­gretfully, angrily, with grief or bewilderment, relieved to be free of a partner they no longer loved, or - very often - des­perately, defensively and sadly. And if you ask the British what their 'ideal' of life is, whether or not they themselves have achieved it, the 'ideal' that comes top always is 'a loving and kind marriage between equals'.

Is it true that the British do not care for their elderly people and choose to put them away into old people's homes and forget them?

Grannies and grandpas are actually most likely to be physically active, working married couples living in their own homes a long way away from their children. Gradually, as they get older, these conditions may change. They will retire, husband or wife (usually husband) dies, the remaining elderly person may become frail and ill. These are problems usually of people in their late seventies and eighties.

Most grandparents would be horrified at the idea of giving up their independent lives to move into the, children's homes and look after their grandchildren full-time.

Small children do require a lot of energy, however, and most elderly people seem to prefer to be loving and affectionate but part time grandparents with their own lives and interests.

Also, most adults, however much they may love their par­ents, want lives in which they do not have the daily struggle from escaping from being 'children' to their own fathers and moth­ers.

Grannies and Grandpas can be (or become) not just loved but distant figures; they can become much-loved members of the family. The reality is, however, that they usually join the fam­ily at a point where they are becoming less capable and, in daily terms, less loveable.

These are world-wide problems. I have tried to select the words which incorporate typical British values in this situa­tion: independence, privacy, capable... The chief cultural dif­ference between the British and the Russians, I think is that the elderly person has typically led a life independent of her daughter or son, and would think it wrong to try to run her children's lives. Our families tend to spread outwards (through brothers and sisters, and therefore aunts and uncles and cousins) rather than exclusively up-and-downwards as happens in families where there are single children. So, later in life, there is no obvious role for Granny as chief organiser of her child and grandchild. Nevertheless many families will ac­commodate their elderly relatives with much love and care and humour. It's a human relationship.

'What do we do with our grannies?' is a private matter, but also a public, a social matter, in which grandparents them­selves want to take an active part. For the most important point of this chapter is to stress that however much they love their children and grandchildren, most elderly people think of themselves as adult individuals capable of making their own choices, with their own interests, activities and ideas. They are not first of all, 'grannies and grandpas' - and to push them into such limiting roles is a tyranny of society that most of them, thank goodness, are able and willing to resist.

Family life

A 'typical' British family used to consist of mother, father and two children, but in recent years there have been many changes in family life. Some of these have been caused by new laws and others are the result of changes in society. For example, since the law made it easier to get a divorce, the number of divorces has increased. In fact one marriage in every three now ends in divorce. This means that there are a lot of one-parent families. Society is now more tolerant than it used to be of unmarried people, unmarried couples and single parents.

Another change has been caused by the fact that people are living longer nowadays, and many old people live alone following the death of their partners. As a result of these changes in the pattern of people's lives, there many households which consist of only one person or one person and children.

You might think that marriage and the family arc not so popular as they once were. However, the minority of divorced people marry again, and they sometimes take responsibility for a second family.

Members of a family- grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins - keep in touch, but they see less of each other than they used to. This is because people often move away from their home town to work, and so the family becomes scattered. Christmas is the traditional season for reunions. Although the family group is smaller nowadays than it used to be. relatives often travel many miles in order to spend the holiday together.

In general, each generation is keen to become independent of parents in establishing its own family unit, and this fact can lead to social as well as geographical differences within the larger family group.

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Date: 2015-12-24; view: 2059