Parenting changes and becomes more respectful – 09/08/2023 – Equilíbrio

Sílvia Rosa de Almeida, 67, became a mother at 19, had three children “on a ladder” and raised them with the help of their maternal grandmother. The eldest, Karla Danitza de Almeida, 48, in turn, had two boys – the first at age 20 and the second ten years later – and relied on the two women to raise them.

Danitza’s children are not parents yet, but the eldest, Klaus Almeida, 28, already lives the day-to-day of parenting with stepdaughter Beatriz, 9, who has caregivers for two families, her mother and father.

Despite following the same line of affection in creation, Sílvia, Danitza and Klaus had different family formats and contexts in their journeys as parents. For experts heard by Sheetmany of the disagreements and criticisms in the way of raising children derive from the lack of understanding of the challenges that exist for each generation.

“My grandmother had seven children, three of them died, two disappeared. I needed to work as a laundress, being a semi-illiterate person and not even a family nearby to take care of raising everyone”, recalls Danitza.

Knowledge about child development is another point that has outdated certain practices, such as authoritarianism, lack of dialogue with children and punishment.

“The way I raised my children has a bit of new places and new freedoms. When I look back, I realize initially that my mother and grandmother had less time, because the need to work to take care of the whole family was always the most immediate”, says Danitza, who is a cultural agent.

Diego Silva, father, parental educator and creator of the Parentalidade Preta profile, reinforces that differences do not arise only because of the time between generations, but also due to social and historical aspects.

“Looking at the context of my approach, to parental education (which is racialized), I cannot agree with the concept of universal, as this would end up erasing some structural subjectivities from our social constitution”, says Silva.

The educator points out that the original peoples from here and from other parts of the world have always had the child as the central focus of their culture, since they would be the continuity of the community. Childhood, however, would only be validated as worthy of special care in the West from the 18th century on, with the gentrification of the family and the industrialization of consumption.

For the educator, the recent urbanization process resulted in smaller and more isolated families, reorganizing parenting.

“Yesterday we had our relatives living nearby, together, to take care of the children and, consequently, lightening the load a little and teaching different things”, he highlights.

Understanding that technology advances and what their place in the lives of the next generations is another challenge. “My generation of fathers and mothers (who were children in the 1990s) must be wondering this too: how to guarantee a safe transition from analogue to digital? Because it really needs to happen”, says Silva.

Although they are part of life’s natural processes, these changes demand, for Silva, greater concern from adults with the use of tools to understand the cognitive processes of growth, which also involves understanding the upbringing that parents received.

“Knowledge and acceptance of these processes are the best way to break cycles. I usually use a phrase: ‘I’m going to stay calm so my children explode calmly’. Is it possible to always do this? Obviously not. But we always try. It is possible. about trying,” he says.

Klaus, who is a designer, says that he never received reprimands from his mother or grandmother regarding the way he educates his stepdaughter. However, dealing with so many opinions involved (coming from his mother, father, grandparents, Klaus’ family and himself) was something unprecedented, to which he had to adapt.

“My great-grandmother was the one I spent the most time with and she always gave me a lot of affection and attention. I try to pass on a lot of what I received. Beatriz maintains a great relationship with her paternal family. And since she lives with us for a large part of her life, I advise on good and bad points, always letting them take action, see the consequences and find out through experience”, he reports.

Sílvia’s family, in her time, was also as large as her grandson’s, but in a single nucleus, composed of great-grandmother, grandmother, mother, uncles, grandchildren and nephews. For her, who worked as a nanny and in domestic services with her mother since she was a child, education brought an important transformation.

“I even finished high school. I remember we had very little, but I always liked reading and the first thing I gave them [os filhos] it was a library card so they could do their schoolwork.” Regarding the new generations, Sílvia feels the loss of some customs, such as “asking the elders for a blessing” and calling them “Grandma”, and worries that the new parents might stop giving important limits.

“For some period of our lives, we may have lacked everything material, but the love was great and I think that for the lives of my children and grandchildren it had good consequences. Today I see that parents often outsource this time of education and love, putting cell phones, computers, modern things that we didn’t have in my time or in the one I raised my children in”, he evaluates.

Writer Bete Rodrigues, mother, translator and author of books on parenting and children, is a trainer in positive discipline and says that family relationships and the world have indeed changed, but that this has opened up space for a more respectful education.

Rodrigues points out digital as the great change of this generation, converging several tools to a single screen that fits in the pocket and that before, in addition to requiring different devices, did not accompany us all the time.

“This certainly changes, including our entire relationship with leisure. The same device is an instrument for work, study, communication. Relationships are in the virtual world, it also changes the entire development of social skills”, ponders the author .

At the other end, there would have been an important change in family patterns and roles, allowing men to get closer to their children, as well as the exercise of a less prejudiced and competitive upbringing. In this generation, according to Rodrigues, even fake news demands that we be better parents, teaching our children to have moral values ​​through reflection and not just through religion, as it used to be.

“Adults are equally responsible for the family’s accounts and day-to-day organization. So paternity is exercised not only in that role of just provider. We also have all kinds of families, respected and accepted, same-sex couples who choose to adopt or have children their children. Children grow up with more balanced, more human models,” he says.