Perhaps [preparing for pregnancy] and [raising] are not the topics of your current life, but having a baby is an experience that most families have.
With the opening of the two-child policy, the arrival of the second child and the changes that TA will bring have gradually become matters that young parents need to consider. A few days ago, Dr. Clove and Zhihu jointly held a Zhihu Round Table to discuss the new challenges faced by parents in the process of raising a second child.
Want to know more about raising a second child? Welcome to click to read the original text and go to Zhihu Round Table, Methodology for Raising Two Children.
[One-child Family] is a product of China’s previous family planning policy, and throughout the history of human development, there are countless precedents for families with two or even multiple children. Even if you go back to a few generations in China, if it were not for physiological factors, basically every family has several children:
- Having more children and more labor can ensure the continuation of genes (or clans) to a certain extent. Of course, it is also related to the lack of scientific contraceptive methods and poor night recreation activities at that time.
Influence on parents
Compared with [one-child family], [multi-child family] will undoubtedly take up more energy, time, money and resources of parents.
[Rebirth] is itself a challenge to parents:
- This means that I can’t sleep all over, the house is full of diapers or diapers, the ground is full of food residue, and the days when I am always on tenterhooks have to be repeated. At the same time, it also means that parents (in China, especially female caregivers such as mothers, grandmothers and grandmothers) need to invest more energy and time in family life, as well as more money and resources.
[One-Child Family] In the first few years, it is only necessary to deal with the relationship between parents and children and help children adapt to social life in the future. However, [families with many children] need to deal with the competition and conflicts between children from the beginning to the last moment, so the energy invested has not doubled, but doubled several times.
At the same time, due to the traditional division of labor in the family, the father’s main responsibility is to earn money to support the family and the mother’s main responsibility is to take care of the children, so [families with many children] will have the effects called “father’s bonus” and “mother’s fine” in the labor market [1].
[Families with Many Children] does not mean that parents can provide for the aged more comfortably.
Research shows that the responsibility for caring for parents often falls mainly on the shoulders of one of the children, and this child is easily depressed and helpless if he does not have the support of other brothers and sisters [2, 3].
This kind of negative emotion caused by over-taking on the responsibility of caring for parents sometimes hinders the connection between brothers and sisters and even urges the main caregivers to seek help from the legal level [4].
Influence on Children
Some parents want to have a second child, perhaps because the first child is a daughter, they want a son [to carry on the family line]. This kind of practice with clear intentions will lead to obvious eccentricity and injustice of parents and lead to different degrees of problems for children.
However, there are also many parents who want to have a second child just because they want their children to have a companion.
In fact, a good sibling relationship can really benefit children for life.
A European and American study shows that The time the children spend with their brothers and sisters after school, Much more time is spent with others. Because children will receive the same education style under the same family background and continue the family tradition together, even if they live in different cities as adults, these memories, emotions and responsibilities that were branded in childhood will run through their whole life [5].
After entering adulthood, as children are more exposed to the world other than family life, the companionship between brothers and sisters will obviously decline [6]. However, with the passage of time, the sibling-sister relationship will stabilize in middle age and last for a lifetime [7].
Other studies have shown that hand-foot contact will become one of its important emotional relationships and is related to the health status in old age [8].
Brotherhood will also provide an excellent opportunity for children to develop their social skills.
Because children communicate every day, share the same family rules and have special emotional relationships, they can show different social skills in this environment from other environments.
At the same time, quite a number of studies have shown that children can learn social cognitive skills from their social interaction with their brothers and sisters, showing a pro-social (rather than anti-social) side, including how to resolve conflicts, think in other places, provide emotional support, and regulate emotions [9, 10, 11, 12].
In addition, more impacts are uncertain-it depends on whether parents raise their children properly.
Existing research has clarified the mechanism of the influence of sibling-foot relationship on children’s growth and behavior in all aspects, or confirmed the correlation between them, but it is impossible to say whether the influence is good or bad.
For example, if children show a relationship of mutual disgust, it is very likely that [disgust] will be taken as the emotional keynote of their relationship with others in future social communication. However, children who show a love relationship may also take [love] as the emotional keynote of getting along with others in future social communication [13, 14].
For example, if the discipline of Dabao is already relatively strict, thus making it show all kinds of excellent qualities, then it is positive as an example for Xiao Bao. However, if there is a lack of guidance and education for Dabao, which makes his character relatively negative, then Xiao Bao will also take Dabao as an example and present similar personality characteristics such as [violent temper] [aggressive].
Although the emotional tone of different families will affect the relationship between children, However, one of the root causes of conflicts between children is that these brothers and sisters do not choose to be friends voluntarily and lack adult supervision for most of the time they spend together-this situation is more likely to make children out of control or have radical behaviors.
Cross-cultural research shows that for those cultures that have stricter discipline for elder brothers and sisters, there are significantly fewer conflicts between brothers and sisters [15].
In fact, the brotherhood relationship is more like a double-edged sword: if properly raised, both children may develop well; Improper upbringing may lead to a relatively negative state of both children.
Of course, no expert can tell parents how to raise them properly, because it depends on the environment and conditions within the family, on the different personalities and temperament of the children, and on the interactive relationship between parents and children. Therefore, the key is for parents to pay more attention to the children’s reactions so as to make timely adjustments.
In a word, [families with many children] will obviously increase the pressure on parents and may not necessarily make parents more comfortable in providing for the aged. Although brotherhood will bring unquestionable benefits to children’s companionship and social skills, its influence on children depends more on whether parents raise them properly than on whether they have one or several children.
In the process of raising a second child, all these things you need to know are discussed in the Zhihu Round Table and Methodology of Raising a Second Child:
- Why do you think you should have a second child? What social phenomena will occur when the second child is fully liberalized? How to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of [one-child family] and [multi-child family] from the perspective of psychology?
- What are the risks of preparing for cesarean section of the first child and the second child before pregnancy? How to deal with it? What should I pay attention to during pregnancy? Which foods are good for pregnant women to nourish their bodies and which foods are taboo? Is it easy to cause uterine prolapse to have a second child? It is said that there has been a caesarean section before. If the scar is not recovered well, it cannot be regenerated. What kind of uterine scar will be dangerous? What risks do elderly parturients need to be careful about when giving birth? Need how’s Home Care for Premature Children after Discharge? What should we pay attention to?
- The second child needs to know how to make the eldest son accept having a younger sister. Before the birth of younger brothers and sisters, parents do what in advance to guide older children to accept and take care of newborn babies? After deciding to have two children, how is it more appropriate to explain this matter to the older children? How do parents deal with relatives saying to their children that “your parents don’t want you when they give birth to younger brothers and sisters”? In daily life, how should parents deal with what their children think is [unfair] and [eccentric]? Why [a bowl of water is even]? Is it easier to be a [full-time parent]? What problems and dilemmas do the older generation usually encounter that cannot be guided? What difficulties will full-time parents encounter if they plan to get a second job? How to overcome it?
To learn more about the discussion of second-child rearing, click to view Zhihu Round Table, Methodology of Second-Child Rearing (•)