From the author: Why you can/cannot have children. Maybe you have children, maybe you don’t. Doesn't matter. For me personally, as a psychotherapist, there is one important criterion for parents’ readiness to be parents. It is quite simple, but incredibly capacious and difficult to achieve. I will talk about it later, because it is important to understand a little theory before mastering the main idea. I hope many have read Eric Berne and his transactional analysis (hereinafter TA). If not, read it. As Berne himself said, this is a version of “psychoanalysis for housewives.” This is just right for us for ease of explanation. In TA there are 3 main ego states: child, adult, parent. These are some states that replace each other. There are more of them in TA, but the main ones are 3. The inner parent is the totality of our parents and other adults who conveyed to us the rules of upbringing and the norms of society. The inner child is a spontaneous and impulsive manifestation, a state in which you do what you want, in accordance with your desires and needs. And the inner adult is our rational beginning. This entire layer lies on the unconscious level. And most likely you don’t control it. These patterns are enabled automatically. For example, you saw a piece of candy and were eager to buy it. It was your inner child who reacted. Or someone next to you threw a candy wrapper past the trash can, and you silently said to yourself, what a scoundrel, and maybe even reprimanded him out loud. This is your inner parent with its own moral code. You don't control it. Indeed, only a few manage their wealth. This is a level of consciousness from 200. And after going through a couple of trainings, you will not achieve it. This is fruitful and long-term psychotherapeutic work. But not about that now. I want you to understand one simple idea. If you internalize it, if you internalize it deeply, then your life will become much brighter. The idea is simple. You live on automatic machines. You react automatically. You don’t choose the reaction, it chooses you. To simplify it completely, it can be compared to Pavlov’s dog. Stimulus - response. Of course, everything is much more complicated. But in simple terms it is. They gave you an incentive, and you reacted automatically. Like a robot. The reaction is completely unconscious. And when you realize that you are a robot, it will become very funny :) What does parenting and children have to do with it? Everything is very simple. Having children, I believe, is only possible for those who themselves were happy in childhood. If you weren't happy as a child, then you shouldn't have children. This is my purely individual opinion, and if you don’t agree, then don’t drool. I will repeat it again for clarity. If you were happy as a child, then you can have children, if you were not happy, then you cannot. However, if you were not happy, this does not mean that you cannot fix it. Personal history psychotherapy is now working wonders and truly rewriting the past. Even the most terrible childhood can be made quite acceptable with a couple of dozen hours of work. If you were not happy as a child, then this means that your inner child is unhappy. A parent cannot make his child happier than he was in childhood. A person in a family cannot become happier than the happiest person in the family. I'm not saying that nothing can be changed. Can. I'm talking about what happens if you don't change anything and leave everything as it is. The choice is yours. Until you cure your inner child, he will not allow your child to be happier than he is. It is very important. Every inner child is traumatized. Mine, yours, your neighbors, parents. Injured to varying degrees. He can be healed. But this will require deep work. Few people understand this. And of those who understand, few do. On an unconscious level, your inner child will not allow your offspring to be happy. This is true. The degree of well-being of your children depends on the degree of well-being of your inner child. If everything is okay with him, then he will allow your child to be happy. If he is downtrodden, killed,