I have a daughter who is now in a "beautiful" adolescence, and it was she who puzzled me with this question.
In one of our conversations, she asked:
Why is it considered not normal in our society if a person wants to live for himself, and not get married / marry, have children?
My first thought was: well, they sailed! 10 years ago, girls dreamed of getting married, but now they are in no hurry. And indeed it is.
This question, addressed to me from my daughter, also made me think that at the present time there is some kind of propaganda of free relations and the destruction of the institution of marriage. But, now is not about that.
After reading and shoveling a lot of research and studying various pathologies, I was able to find out the following.
Let's go back to basics as far as possible.
The fundamental instinct of all living things is the instinct to pass on its genome. It has always been this way, since the beginning of life. If this instinct did not exist, then we would not exist now. That is, every person has a desire to pass on their genes to another generation in the subcortex. Moreover, everything living is built on this, from plants, the animal world and ending with us, people.
The rest of the instincts: self-preservation, maternal instinct and others follow from the fundamental. We live to give birth to our own kind, to create our own commune, a family that will grow, prosper and continue our race, giving birth to people like us, only stronger and more developed. We try to pass on as much of our knowledge as possible to children and grandchildren, so that they are stronger and smarter and give birth to more hardy and high-quality offspring.
What is happening now?
Relationships are work, and working nowadays is even somehow embarrassing. "Tiktokers" and all sorts of "Likers" promote making easy money.
But for some reason I don’t hear and don’t see any propaganda of how great it is to work as a doctor who saves lives, as a military man to protect the people, or as an engineer who builds air and sea vessels. In the words of my daughter - "it's hard," low-paid "and somehow not solid".
We have never discussed these issues, she takes all this information on the Internet and discusses it with her friends and classmates.
Also with relationships. They are told that the relationship, in fact, is not so important and necessary. Live for yourself, develop, study, work. Family is not the main thing!
After reading various information about the relationship, the conclusion begged by itself. Not wanting to have a family and have children is not a pathology - it's just a desire to escape responsibility and potential failure.
This may be a negative experience of parents who lived poorly, tried to preserve the marriage for the sake of their children, but “dogged themselves” from morning to evening. Who, after living in such a family, wants to continue the same way?
Or it may be the propaganda of society, the imposed destruction of the institution of marriage. Why is this needed? Work for the country, we don't need to give birth anymore, the land is already overcrowded.
Further dialogue with the daughter:
Me: we all want to leave something behind. Is not it so?
She: well, I can write a book, discover something new for humanity and thus remain in history.
Me: yes, of course you can. But isn't it great if you pass on your knowledge and skills to the next generation? Wouldn't it be a shame that your family will stop at you and there will no longer be such smart and wonderful people like you?
She thought about it, and I hope that she will make the right decision for herself in the future.
I, in turn, will accept her for who she is, even if she does not want a family and children.
The conclusion is that if you do not want a relationship, family and children, this is not a pathology. With a 90% probability - this is a negative experience, yours or your parents, or propaganda imposed by society - "anti-family".
Do not see it, think with your head and make decisions based on your desires, while there is time. As they say - "it seems to all of us that the time will come, but it is only going away."
