Family and Children. If Husband Doesn’t Want Children or a Second Child

“How can I explain to my husband that I want a child?”, “What if my husband doesn’t want children or is set against having a second child?” — “Ask him, why he married you!” This article of Mikhail Fomin explains the meaning of a family and contains answers to these perturbing questions that manywomen might ask when they desperately want children.

After my book on a family, love, health and responsibility, entitled “Your Baby” (“Ваш малыш”) had appeared, I received questions, which I did not expect to receive. And that is wonderful, as it goes to prove that the topic is vital, arousing public opinion and should be elaborated upon.

The questions are diverse. The answers to some of them were rather laconic. But also there were questions, which I had to ponder for quite some time. Needless to say, they all were “womanish”. Moreover, these questions gave rise to some thoughts, which I am keen to share with you in this short essay.

I arranged them as a short conversation with the supposed interlocutresses:

- How can I explain to my husbandthat I want a child? - Ask him, why he married you.

This postulate may seem not very obvious at first glance, so I will expand on it.

The meaning of a family

Marriage, that is marriage contract (agreement), is the main, quite literary the BASIC contract for the modern society. It is the first judicial act that came into existence millenniums before the appearance of the world of law. Before marriage, people were not people in the modern sense. The very concepts of identity, belonging to a family and lineage, ownership, heritage and muchmore, which are basic for the modern society, “came” from a family. Before a family was established, a human being was just a member of a tribe. The establishment of a family was the starting point for the formation of the Society.

So, the goal of the conclusion of a marriage agreement is to FORM A FAMILY. Family is the core social unit, that is the minimal social unit, comprising all kinds of social relationships. No wonder, they include interpersonal relationships, relationships between genders and generations. A family is not a family without children. There is no sense in marrying when you live without children.

A crush between two strangers rarely lasts more than several months. There should be a shared responsibility of higher order to establishlong-term, fruitful and mutually rewarding coexistence. There is only one thing that forms such a responsibility – responsibility for the life, health and future happiness of common children and grandchildren.

Conscienceis the derivative ofthe care for the descendants: “How will I look into my grandchildren’s eyes if they face social condemnation due to my faults?” Tolerance, compassion, charity, community commitment, striving to improve the world, scientific and technological achievements and much more – all of this is aimed towards the future, which we do not create for abstract people, but for our descendants.

“So why did you marry me, honey? Just to have a free plate of soup every day and a permanent sexual partner every night?”

When becoming a parent, a person takes a real responsibility. This is the responsibility to yourself, other people and the God for the life, health and happy future of your children. This responsibility forces us to become adults, impose new obligations and the related rules on us. Yet it is also a source of energy, possibilities, and Power –all that which helps us to carry such a responsibility.

The relationships between a man and a woman that do not result in giving birth tochildren are fruitless and have no future. There is no development for thepartners in such relationships, no satisfaction, as we receive satisfaction from visible or otherwise tangible results of our labor and relationships. And there is no love in such relationships.

Love occurs in a family as a result of the process of self-cognition in the relationships and self-observation. The family is an ideal and unique place for this. Observing ourselves and our relationships with a partner and children, we receive experience, inaccessible in any other circumstances. By seeing ourselves in our children and our parents in us, we begin to see many things from our past in a different light.

This is how we can really get rid of our childhood complexes and problems. Neither a psychologist nor analyst or psychiatrist can achieve such a result. Only living in a family reconciles us with the world, enables us to feel the peace of mind. And of course, the people, who helped us to find ourselves, that is to become happy, by devoting their own lives, will always be the most beloved, appreciated and dearest for us.

“Do you want to be the dearest for me, dear?”

 “My husband doesn’t want a second child, but I do. How should I deal with it?”

Are you in the situation that your husband doesn’t want any more children after the birth of your first-born?

Congratulations! You are a super-mother.

To tell the truth, there is nothing really to be happy about. Moreover, unfortunately, this situation is getting more and more common throughout the countries, which are known as “developed” in the modern world. Doubtless, that a technically developed society, producing colossal added value and providing its members with the enormous quantity of social benefits, has the right to identify itself like that. However, it is these factors whichresult in that the majority of the population of these countries stop in their psychic development (not psychological, but in the development of their psyche – soul) on the level of a child, or an adolescent – at best.

This developmental delay occurs both in single and married adults, but it is not so obvious in married adults. However, when a child is born, a couple becomes a family and there could be several variants of its structure. Depending on your variant, it will be necessary to choose the adequate way of overcoming the situation “doesn’t want any more children”.

 “Zero” Variant

It is not uncommon that not one baby but three babies are born in a newly-formed family at once. Roughly speaking, it looks like this.

A new-born baby is occupied with what it actually should do, namely: it sleeps, eats, defecates and communicates its discomfort to everybody loudly crying at any time of day or night.

In most cases, everything is getting along all rightduring the first two months after the child’s birth. There are several reasons for that. The baby sleeps a lot, it is not very active when in a wakeful state and it generally tends to be calm, if the delivery was smooth and without complications.

If there were some complications, the first months are dedicated tothe rehabilitation and the related chores, which, however strange it may be, make the parents’ life easier, as they are understandable and have a conventional form.

Another thing that facilitates the situation is that newbieparents are in the state of postnatal euphoria. This state of relative adequacy and dulled perception of reality, conditioned by total disorientation due to the huge production of endorphins, is aimed at facilitating the deep psychic transformation, which all the participants in the delivery process have to undergo.

Note: A man, who didn’t get involved in the delivery process at least minimally, will surely have problems with realizing that his status has changed and he has become a father.

Colic often comes to be the first invitation to reality. It isrelated to the transformation of the mucous membrane in the infant intestine, which begins in 7 weeks after the birth and normally shall pass unnoticed within the next 13 days. If everything goes naturally, nothing will be remembered later on. But good things never last…

Then the third month of the newborn’sfirst year of life begins. The euphoria of the first two months fades away and the harsh reality takes its place.

Newbie potential Mother finds herself in a new, unknown world with a crying baby in her arms and a total lack of understanding what is going on. She doesn’t know where to start, doesn’t understand, why the baby is crying and what she should do "with all this”. Newbie potential Father is perplexed, frightened (but he won’t confess it for the world) and wrestles against the temptation to disappear from the situation.

My understanding is that all natural mechanisms of human behavior formation shall function as intended and former pubertal adolescents will reach true maturity virtually in no time and consciously undertake parental responsibility.

Lucky people who have the possibility to watch the behavior of mammals, to which we also belong, could see for themselves that the structure of their activities, related tooffspring care, feeding, and upbringingis formedby instinct. Moreover, extraneous interference (from humans) can be harmfulor even deathful for newborns. People are not very different from animals in this regard.

Conscious responsibility imposes certain obligations on parents and grants them with the related rights, necessary abilities,and opportunities. Butnot in this case.

In the situation when neither woman, who gave birth to a child, nor the man, who is his biological father, are ready to undertake responsibility and commit themselves to the roles of Father and Mother we have an average young family. I call it “infantile family”.

The first year of the baby’s life will turn into a continuous quest for overcoming various drawbacks and hardships for such a family: successive infantile sicknesses, and almost endless communication with various experts, who actually serve to replace to some extent Mother and Father for the child, as they are absent in the child’s life. At this time, the couple is lingeringly and painfully sorting things out, as the former kind of relationships doesn’t fit the changed situation, and there is no holistic view of the family relationships in the modern society, despite all the Herculean efforts of numerous experts from various special fields of study.

Not many dare to come through THIS for the second time if they managed to avoid divorce.

What should be done in such situations?

My advice is to confess to yourself that you were not ready for such ordeals, because, ALAS! – modern society doesn’t train its rising generation for that. Accept your parental incompetence and consider those early years spent with your firstborn as the invaluable experience of how you shouldn’t act when becoming parents. Put up with it and forgive. Forgive yourself and everyone, who didn’t help, did harm by trying to help, or helped but offended you. Resentment is also an infantile reaction.

Learn from past mistakes lest you should repeat them in the future. Life is too short to make the same mistakes. Reconcile with yourself, with the world you have to live in and give it a try one more time. Believe me, you will never regret it. The world is so constructed, that if your Family establishes itself after the birth of the second, the third child or subsequent children, its stability will expand not only into the future but into the past as well.

People say, “You cannot change the past”. They lie. The whole world is in the viewer’s eyes. When reaching maturity, we see the present, the past, and the future differently. That is how we (people) change the world.

I apologize if this text triggered negative emotions in some of you, dear readers. I can only excuse myself by honestly confessing, that I deliberately softened some facts or omitted them at all in order not to shock anybody too much.

“One of the family is a parent for the others” variant (for men)

The Father is born, the Mother is not. A woman gives birth to a child and the Father takes on the responsibility for two children at once. Many cannot withstand it and break up with the wife, sending her back to her mother for nursery with progeny. That is wrong, but it is understandable. However, in most cases, a man, who became a real Father, will try to preserve the marriage and provide a nuclear family for his child if it is possible.

The Father is born, the Mother is not. A woman gives birth to a child and the Father takes on the responsibility for two children at once. Many cannot withstand it and break up with the wife, sending her back to her mother for nursery with progeny. That is wrong, but it is understandable. However, in most cases, a man, who became a real Father, will try to preserve the marriage and provide a nuclear family for his child if it is possible.

In this case, your husband doesn’t want any more children, as he already has two and he feels as a single father without hope of relief as he cannot “acquire a real wife". The wish to give birth to one more baby is perceived by him as a whim: “I want another dolly, this one has grown up and I am bored with it”.

What should be done if a woman has already reached maturity and feels the necessity of the second child to establish a nuclear family, if she is ready to become a Mother?

If you feel like you have grown up, I advise you to behave as it was true. An adult differs from a child by the fact that an adult never asks for permission. If your husband deserves a normal family, he will accept your decision to become a Mother in the right spirit. Moreover, your firstborn really needs a Mother too, not a “best friend”.

 “One of the family is a parent for the others” variant (for women)

“A woman gave birth to a child and became a Mother for two (three, four) children at once. One of them is almost 6 feet tall and gets out of hand (he orders everyone about, claims to be the head of the family etc.)”. Many women find a way to live happily ever after and have many children in such situation. However, an infantile husband may be initially spoiled by excessive mother care before the marriage. He even may have a couple of higher education diplomas, authority at work, status, academic titles and so on.

Unfortunately, all that does not guarantee protection against general human infantilism. He also may possess material resources. The presence of all these qualities often influences a woman’s choice when concluding a marriage.

In fairness it must be said that such a husband does not necessarily have all the above-mentioned benefits, but anyway he may claim to have the leading role in a family and demand all the attention of his wife, he may be even jealous for his wife’s love for their child. He doesn’t want to have competitors. He doesn’t want to grow up. He is not ready to part with his childhood friends, mother’s dinners, favorite toys – hobbies and passions. Everything is settled. He has two mothers, child competitor was sent to a “private school with the in-depth study of everything”, where teachers, doctors, psychologists, basically everyone except for the father is answerable for the child. At that, he can be proud of that and boast about it in front of his friends, whose opinion is the most valuable next to the mother’s. He is already good. Stability and prosperity – relax and enjoy your life. There is no place for a second child in this scheme. That is why such a husband doesn’t want a second child.

But.

The seeming stability of such a family may be destroyed by the pregnancy of one of his mistresses. And they (mistresses) will surely be if a man doesn’t become a Father. The reasons for this are irresponsibility and the influence of modern society; he just has no choice – mistresses, extramarital affairs are a part of the modern social standard.

You don’t know anything, but your heart feels it. You just KNOW that your family is not of full value and is in danger of being ruined. You need a second child.

In this case, you have to be a politician, a spy, an intriguer, and a temptress. Discover the depths of your own femininity. Let intuition be your guide, become unpredictable. Win your husband away from his mother, appropriate him and seduce. A man does not obey one’s power, is not afraid of threats, he cannot be caught in a trap. But there is something deep inside you, what can force him to follow you to the ends of the world or even to die for you. Find IT in yourself.

Try to understand, that changing the life, in which there is no place for a second child, means for your infantile husband losing his habitual and cozy little world of a hedonist. Men bear responsibility easily but use any opportunity to avoid it.

Making this step you should realize, that it is not an easy task to be a Mother in a family where there is a Father; this is the responsibility of a completely different level. And there aren’t many examples of such families. But, please, believe me, it is worth it.

A woman comes to this world spiritually developed. All spiritual practices were designated for men.

However, in order to comprehend her sacred nature, a Mother should be by the side of a Father in their Family.

The mission of modern Mothers is not only to give birth to their children but for the Fathers and Families as well.

Common children in a new marriage

”If both husband and wife have a child/children from the previous marriages and the wife wants to have common children in this marriage but her husband doesn’t, what should be done?”

In the previous centuries, a widowed woman or a woman, who otherwise lost her husband, should have married a widower next time. There should have been no problems with children in this situation. All people were already grown up and the necessity of having other children together in order to unite the family was obvious for both spouses.

Nowadays, it is customary when two people marry each other and both have living ex-spouses and common children with them. The situation is rather delicate. It is better not to have such situation at all.

HOWEVER. If it so happened that you are married and you both have children from the previous marriages, THEN, as a woman and a Mother, you might feel that a common child will resolve many problems but do not know how to reason this feeling.

A man, who married you and thus became a father to two children, one of whom is his natural child, is trying to figure out how he should allocate his attention and fatherhood among two children, living in different families. He didn’t even think about one more child. He wants to settle down the present situation. The situation becomes even more difficult by lapse of time, as children grow up and the problems grow together with them. The perspective of having common children gradually slips away.

The common child will arrange everything back to order in this case. When this child comes, a couple “encumbered” with children from the past will become a Family, one of the children of which lives separately and visits his/her relatives (father and brothers-sisters) on his/her own accord.

Explain to your husband that when you establish your Family with him (by giving birth to another child), you will protect his firstborn too in case his/her mother will not be able to establish her own family.

In the event that only you have a child from the previous marriage, your husband will become your second child if he doesn’t become a Father as soon as possible, and I have already described such situations above.

Always yours, Mikhail Fomin

This article is unique. Original text: Семья и дети. Если муж не хочет детей, либо против второго ребёнка 

Pictures are from the family archives of Grigori and Anastasia Nastenko (//www.kupriyanovy.com Photographer Alexey and Irina Kupriyanovs in Odessa), and Denis and Olha Svistunovs ( //mintmilk.com.ua/ ).