You need to use the right approach; don’t make things difficult for your children.
Today’s article has some plain truths to tell the elders, especially those who are anxious about their unmarried children.
First of all, I understand the elders’ feelings about urging their children to get married. In fact, to put it bluntly, urging marriage is just a more euphemistic way of saying it. The real goal is to hope that their children will have offspring as soon as possible. They say they are worried that their children will be too lonely when they are out working alone, worried that no one will take care of them when they get old, and they also say that they will lose face if their children don’t get married. These are indeed part of the elders’ true thoughts, but they are never the most important reason.
The essence of urging marriage is that people are driven by genes and instincts, hoping to have their own children, and further hoping that their children will continue to have children, passing on their genes from generation to generation.
It is understandable to hope to pass on one’s genes. It is reasonable for elders to have the idea of urging marriage.
But there is one thing that elders should also admit frankly: since urging their children to get married is for parents to achieve their own goal of continuing their genes, then this is a selfish idea, and there is no need to package it as “all for your own good”, nor should they blame their children for not achieving their parents’ wishes to urge marriage and childbirth in a timely manner.
To put it bluntly, it is the children’s willingness to get married and have children, and their willingness to help their parents pass on their genes, which is the children’s kindness. If the children are not ready to get married and have children for the time being, or have not found a suitable partner for the time being, that is also the children’s own business.
Parents who want their children to cooperate in getting married and having children to achieve their own goal of continuing their genes need to adjust their mentality, because in essence, this is the parents asking their children to do them a big favor.
Since they are asking their children for help, the first thing is to respect the children’s wishes, the second is to provide useful help to the children, and the third is to encourage and support them more and criticize and belittle them less.
Then I will talk to the elders about how to do these things properly, so that it will be conducive to achieving the goal of getting their children married and having children.
The first is to respect the children’s wishes
In fact, don’t look at many young people online saying they don’t want to get married or have children. In fact, only a small number of people really think it through, make up their minds, and can follow through. Most unmarried young people have not yet met a suitable partner, or they are not ready to get married and have children due to objective factors such as too much work pressure, too small a social circle, and insufficient economic conditions.
If your child doesn’t like the same sex, parents don’t really need to worry about their children’s willingness to get married and have children. Children are also human beings, and they will also have the instinct to seek partners and reproduce offspring driven by hormones. Most unmarried young people are just not ready for objective conditions, and they are unwilling to settle for an unsuitable person, not that they are determined to go against their parents.
As parents, if you really want what’s best for your children, you should pay more attention to the quality of your children’s marriage life and the quality of parenting, rather than urging your children to rush to find someone to “complete the task”. Marriage and childbirth are such important matters, and long-term happiness is far more important than completing them as soon as possible. After all, it is your own life that you will live after marriage, not for others to see.
Respecting the children’s wishes is also believing that the children are also working hard. Urging is not only useless, but also easily causes a rebellious effect, making young people feel that it is not themselves who want to get married, but their parents who want them to get married.
From a scientific point of view, people rely on self-drive to do something, and the effect is definitely much better than the urging of external pressure. Going to college is the same, and love and marriage are also the same.
It’s a pity that some parents never understand this truth in their lives. When they were in school, they urged their children to do their homework under high pressure. After graduation, they wanted to urge young people to get married and have children under high pressure. As a result, the children were not happy, and the results were often not good enough.
Second, provide useful help to your children
Some parents feel very wronged. They have been working hard to provide help to their children, helping their children arrange their jobs, and helping their children introduce suitable dating partners, but their children never appreciate it, and they have never gotten married or had children.
The problem is, have the parents ever thought:
Is the job you arranged what your children want? Are the dating partners you introduced what unmarried young people really like?
Parents should have a basic awareness, that is, there is a gap of twenty or thirty years between themselves and their children, which is a whole generation. In these twenty or thirty years, the whole society has undergone extremely huge changes, and is still changing rapidly. The jobs that parents think are good may not be good for their children, and the dating partners that parents think are very good may be completely crooked melons and cracked dates in the eyes of their children. It is very normal and reasonable that the things that two generations value are different.
As parents, don’t take your own life experience and aesthetic standards for granted and impose them on your children. Don’t be self-righteous. This is not only useless, but often has the opposite effect.
I know many friends who were originally full of enthusiasm for finding a partner. After experiencing several failed blind dates, they are instead full of resistance to meeting new people of the opposite sex, and no longer have hope of finding a suitable person to get married. Many of these failed blind dates were introduced by parents and elders based on their own standards.
Introducing a 28-year-old unmarried girl from an internet company to a 38-year-old divorced middle-level cadre of a state-owned enterprise with a bald head (which may be considered to have good hardware conditions in the eyes of the elders) will not only have a very low probability of success in the blind date, but will also greatly dampen the girl’s enthusiasm for marriage, and even greatly damage the girl’s self-confidence.
This is not helping the children, but making things difficult.
My mother is very self-aware. Although she has been very anxious to urge me before, she has never tried to introduce me to a dating partner. She has a simple understanding that her son is seeing the world in a big city, and the people she introduces in her circle of friends in her hometown are definitely not suitable for her son.
As parents, if you want to provide useful help to your unmarried children, you must first ask and understand their true thoughts.
Find a private, warm, and relaxed occasion, and ask your children in a respectful tone if they have encountered difficulties in finding a partner, and if they need help, and what kind of person they want to find if they need an introduction. Asking during a New Year’s dinner in front of many relatives is definitely not a suitable occasion, and using a questioning tone like “what kind of person do you want” will definitely not elicit the truth.
When the children really confide in their parents, tell their true thoughts, and tell their requirements for choosing a partner, the parents can then arrange for an introduction. It’s not too late.
At the very least, parents can also support their unmarried children and young people of the right age to travel, exercise, and dance together in terms of time and money, and help their children create opportunities to naturally contact their peers.
Third, encourage your children as much as possible instead of belittling them
If you want your children to find high-quality partners, composure and self-confidence are essential conditions, and the encouragement and support from their own parents are very important to the self-confidence of unmarried young people.
Unmarried children want to hear their parents say:
My son/daughter is great and will definitely find a very good partner.
You are already very good, you don’t necessarily have to find someone with high hardware conditions, we don’t have to rush, find someone who is comfortable to get along with, and the most important thing is to really like them.
Unmarried children are most afraid of hearing their parents say:
You are not young anymore, don’t be picky, find someone who is almost the same and settle down, in a few years you will be even less wanted!
Our family’s conditions are not that good, although that person’s appearance is average, but the job is stable and the benefits are good, I don’t know how many people are rushing to get it, you should seize the opportunity and take the initiative to contact them!
In fact, the evaluations that can really hurt a person often come from their closest and dearest people, especially their parents. Although unmarried children are already adults, they will still feel a strong sense of frustration and still aggravate their inferiority complex when they hear belittling and suppression from their parents.
When people are anxious, they are prone to make mistakes, and when people are inferior, their attractiveness in love and marriage will also plummet.
Therefore, if parents really want their children to get married as soon as possible and hope that their children will find a suitable partner, they need to encourage and support their children more, rather than belittle and suppress them.
Unfortunately, in reality, many parents do the exact opposite of the above few points, thinking that they are working hard to worry about their children’s marriage, but in fact, they are making things difficult for their children and making a mess of their love and marriage.
It is true that parents in the world have a heart of love, but they also need to use the right approach.
I wish everyone a warm and happy Spring Festival and a healthy and happy life.
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