The decision-makers representations about family raising: a research experience

2. Spaces
3. Limits-Authority
4. Bibliografía

Families share certain norms and expectative in the education of son(s) and daughter(s) in relation to the educative project that should be developed. The patterns of family raising express how these norms and expectative take place in the process of raising of son(s) and daughter(s). The family growth depends highly on the content of such norms and expectative.

In the families are established patters that are related to communication, spaces, limits and authority modeling the behaviors of every family member and regulating their daily interactions.

In 2004 a group of researchers of the Central University Martha Abreu de Las Villas worked on the elaboration of a project that gave continuity to the results which have been obtained from the territorial project CITMA 0804. This project consisted on the development of group spaces for the debate with decision-makers of the Federation of Cuban Women (FCW), the Institutions for Women and Family Orientation and social workers. As a result some important conclusions emerge, they were related to the need to continue with this formative process but in this time it must involve the decision-makers due to their implication in the community tasks and in the process of decision-making in relation to aspects of family life and genre relations.

This motivate that the first action once this project was approved by CITMA (Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment), was precisely a bibliographic analysis of this topic in the Cuban literature, specially related to the role of decision-makers in Cuba. In this sense the experiences of the Management Studies Center of the Central University Martha Abreu de Las Villas contribute a lot and the researches that have been made on the field of governability by the researchers of the Central University Martha Abreu de Las Villas Community Studies Center. The researches of the Center of Studies about Women and CIPS (Psychological and Sociological Researches Center), National Center of Sexual Education, and the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Havana, were also very important to develop our project.

Once the theoretical information was obtained, it was possible to work on the methodological aspects, specifically on the elaboration of the program of intervention and the design of evaluation that will be included in this interventive action. These proposals were tested in some municipalities of Villa Clara and the results were the first technical report that was send to CITMA.

For the implementation of the methodology in the different provinces of Cuba the research group was divided into subgroups of work which were distributed all over the scenarios of implementation. The selected provinces were Villa Clara, Holguin and Sancti Spiritus mostly due to the territorial proximity. In the case of Holguin, it was selected due to the relations of the researchers of the group to the representatives of the Cuban Communist Party and CITMA (Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment) in this territory.

The political decision-makers, specially the ones who are in charge of the Commissions for Prevention and Social Assistance in these provinces share certain representations in relations to the patterns of raising that even when they are consider as family raising patterns they go beyond the limits of family since in the process of socialization they are incorporated as important features of the personality. Therefore they are expressed in all the social relations that are established among the individuals.

Communication

This topic was a great motivation for the participants. This made possible that most of them expressed their experiences relating them to the labor and family life with a particular approach on government activity.

The first representations that tend to emerge in relation to the patterns of family raising, are associated to difficulties or deficiencies in the elemental communicative abilities. The decision-makers are able to identify what is necessary to establish an adequate communication; however, they place in doubt the functional inability to achieve an assertive communication in their family, labor, genre relations and in life in general.

The dramatizations and e3xscercise of real life experiences make possible to notice that the decision-makers in their role of parents, they sometimes do not take into account their children"s opinions, assuming that: "their tasks as decision-makers take most of time they need for their families". This generates problems and a lack of trust and sureness considering that children and parents do not talk to each other about their respective problems and restlessness.

At present the dynamic of the Cuban society in which most of the family members are incorporated to the social life (in the scholar or labor field), reduces the time to share with family. In the case of the families whose members are decision-makers this situation is more critical due to the functions of this role which make them to dedicate more than 8 hours to labor tasks.

It is also known that usually increase at home the misunderstandings and lacks of respect among the members, the repulse, screams and offenses prevailing negatives patterns of communication in the process of socialization that takes place inside the family context.