Lecture
One of the causes of destructive personality behavior is a destructive upbringing practice within families (physical punishment, scolding, excessive demands, and the like), which generates psychological instability and neuroses in adolescents, caused by an induced inferiority complex, lowered self-esteem (up to self-rejection), often against a background of unrealized high aspirations. The accumulation of negative experiences can create an unfavorable environment for a breakdown in adolescents. The main source of negative experiences is family conflicts. In our studies, conducted in 2005—06 among Moscow schoolchildren, this was pointed to by 51% of boys and 68% of girls in the group of "difficult" adolescents. Among "well-adjusted" adolescents, these figures are 45% and 21% respectively. In turn, family conflicts are provoked by difficult social living conditions, the psychological unreadiness of adults to cope with their own problems and, correspondingly, the transferring of these problems into family relations.
Psychologists identify the following types of upbringing that carry a risk of developing destructive behavior:
The general unfavorable conditions of family upbringing that shape destructive behavior include insufficient parental attention to children and a lack of warmth and attachment. In a number of cases the families are incomplete, and the home environment is marked by frequent quarrels, scandals, and conflicts.
Special attention should be given to the so-called "courtyard socialization" of the child and adolescent. Observations give grounds to suggest the presence of two notable trends in this process.
First, one can speak of a substantial decrease in the age at which children and adolescents become involved in certain manifestations of "adult" subculture. Thus, according to statistics, the age at which the first cigarette is smoked is 6—7 for boys and 9—10 for girls. The first sip of strong alcohol now occurs at 8—10 years of age for boys and 11—12 years for girls, while the first cigarette laced with drugs occurs at 13—14 years for boys and 15—16 years for girls. The age of the first full sexual experience is 12—13 years for boys and 13—14 years for girls.
Second, one can speak of a considerable expansion in the scope of these manifestations. In their accounts of the features of courtyard life, in support of the view that "everyone smokes," "everyone uses drugs," "who doesn't drink these days?," the kids cite many names from their immediate circle. At an older age, these phenomena have acquired an almost mass character. Among younger and middle-school students, substance sniffing — inhaling the vapors of aromatic substances such as glue — has increased sharply.
These phenomena are linked to the neglect of children and adolescents. The cause lies mainly in the shift of adult family members' attention from raising children to earning a living. Neglect is also provoked by the state of school education. Secondary education has ceased to be compulsory, and the many fee-based forms of it have proven unaffordable for the vast majority of parents. Schools try under any pretext to push out so-called problem ("difficult") children and adolescents. The spread of negative phenomena among adolescents is also fostered by peer influence, by the imitation, grouping, and opposition-to-adults reactions characteristic of this age, and by simple curiosity.
The economic crisis has affected the psychological climate of the family. Children have come to feel emotional deprivation more strongly. Parents, burdened with work or occupied with searching for it, grow ever more physically and psychologically exhausted, and have less and less strength and attention to give their children. Obvious signs of the inability to provide a decent existence for themselves and their children severely undermine parents' self-esteem, instilling in their psyche a sense of inadequacy and failure, which in no way fosters positive emotional contact with their children. Emotional tension between the parents themselves also increases on the same grounds of material insecurity.
Adolescents gradually develop a sense of their own unimportance within the family, perceiving themselves as a source of intra-family problems, which has the most unfavorable effect on their psychological state (apathy and indifference to everything). In relations between parents and children, destructive and even ruinous patterns of behavior develop — unrestrained criticism, accusations, reproaches, insults, beatings. More often than not, adolescents report high irritability, anger, constant shouting, indignation, and scolding directed at them by their mother, and even more often by their father. It can be said that a harsh, demanding, authoritarian, directive style now predominates in parents' dealings with adolescents.
The problem of physical punishment of children and adolescents by parents has become urgent. According to socio-psychological research, whereas some 7—10 years ago the peak of such methods of influencing children fell at the age of 7—9 and weakened substantially by 11—13, tapering off to nothing by 14—15, this peak now falls at 9—11 years, gradually declining toward 13—14 years and ending at approximately 15—16 years of age. Moreover, the victims of this practice are not only boys, who as is well known cause parents more trouble, but girls as well. When parents (mostly fathers) were asked, "What makes you resort to a forceful method of solving problems with your son or daughter?," the two most frequent answers were: "Fear" and... "No words."
Family upbringing plays a significant role in shaping and developing the child. The family is in many ways a reflection of society. This problem should therefore be examined at the level of a state approach to preserving the health and safety of the nation.
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