Family Traumas

The authors of the second part of the study entitled "Social Changes and the Day-to-Day Life in the 90's," Professor Andjelka Milic, Assistant Professors Marina Blagojevic and Smiljka Tomanovic-Mihajlovic of the Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy, warned that the family would come out of the showdown of circumstances of the early 90's - the war, sanctions and personal problems - with serious traumas. The consequences are yet to be seen.

Three studies carried out in Belgrade and throughout Serbia in 1994 confirm that social problems (war, migration, emigration, sanctions, ethnic splits) have "produced" the family under stress, which is becoming a loser even in its basic function: the bio-reproduction - getting married and having children.

The family sticks together in order to survive, but the number of its members drops. In the life of the family: deaths, illnesses, emigration and casualties take up 44.8 percent, while marriages and births take up 29.65 percent. The number of the deceased in Belgrade in the period 1989-1993 has risen by 13 percent. There were deaths in 19.8 percent families in Belgrade and 28.3 percent families throughout Serbia. Serious illnesses existed in 27.5 percent families in Belgrade and 22.7 percent families in Serbia.

Research of family stress and the influence of social disasters on the family have shown that poverty greatly affects even the basic day-to-day needs and is a strong stress factor which might lead to various family disorders, said Prof. Milic. It is hard to imagine what we may expect after five years of living in a destroyed society: seeing shops without goods, banks without money, workers without jobs, owners without capital - without a penny in the wallet. In Belgrade, 20.8 percent of the citizens had to borrow money for their basic needs, while 21.9 percent of the people in Belgrade and 43.2 percent elsewhere in Serbia were temporarily jobless. As many as 27.9 percent of Belgrade families had to pay for medical help.

The province was more affected by the country's economic collapse, while Belgrade has had the trauma of the war conflicts and their consequences. More than 24 percent of the families in the capital were directly exposed to the war, 5 percent of them were wounded and 21.6 percent helped the refugees or relatives from the war-ravaged areas. Although officially there was no war in Serbia, nearly half the population was exposed to various forms of armed conflicts.

Living with crime has also become a feature of the 90's. Belgrade was affected the most. The number of deaths as a result of killing, wounding or suicide culminated in 1992. Crime became an organized activity. In 1992, when crime took on the proportions of an epidemic, the number of those convicted for criminal acts dropped down from 12,852 to 5,793 in 1992, although police reports show that all kinds of crime, especially against life and body, were rising.

Despite emancipation and education, the day-to-day life of family and children in this area are "women's matters". In the times of survival, shortages, misery and re-traditionalisation of the society, women in Vojvodina and central Serbia (Kosovo is a different story) "protest" by not having children. They will have them when times get better. Two-thirds of the women who took part in the survey said their life had deteriorated. As many as three-quarters of women in Belgrade are concerned much more than they used to be with the future of their families.

Analyzing the "male" and "female" day-to-day life, Ass. Prof. Marina Blagojevic said that more women were employed in Belgrade than men, while the situation is opposite in the province where more women than men lost jobs. With the exception of the household chores and care for the home and family which are the charge of women, the organized chaos which has spread throughout Serbia in the early 90's erased the differences in the way day-to-day life is seen by men and women. In the impoverished families, the man's key advantage - making a living - has become insignificant.

Even in 1995, the year of the allegedly stable economic situation, half of the households had difficulty covering food expenses, 40 percent had difficulty covering bills and three-thirds struggled to buy clothing. Half of the households had problems to cover their children's education. Women are living a hard life in the 90's and do not care much about the official warnings which say that Serbia is threatened by the "white plague" and that, according to estimates, it will take over 340 years to double the population. They want children, but in the given circumstances they see both giving birth and not giving birth as something imposed by the society. Of the 800 women surveyed in Serbia (Kosovo excluded), one-third would like to have two children and only 2.4 percent of the women would like to have only one child, while as many as 47 percent would like to have three children. Considering the problems of the day-to-day life, they do not think the circumstances will be ideal any time soon, so they expect they will eventually have one child less than their desired number.

According to the study, women in the devastated society want to guard their family and protect it from any outside influence. They believe this is the way to protect their dearest and ensure survival. They do so even if they have to sacrifice themselves. As many as 43.2 percent women believe that the family conflicts should be resolved without "outside" help. Even in the most difficult family situations, they do not leave their jobs for the sake of the family. Over 45 percent believe that the family and the job are equally important. Most of them do not speak of the job as business or professional success. Their ambitions are reduced to survival and mere existence for themselves and their children. Children, too, are deprived of many things - some of attention while others are literally starving. They are endangered right from the beginning. According to UNICEF reports, the deathrate of newborn babies in Serbia has risen from 20.9 per 1000 babies in 1991, to 22 in 1993. The quality of living and the psychological state of mothers-to-be have led to an increased number of still-born children - from 0.3 per 1000 children in 1990 to as many as 5.5 in 1994. The number of women who die while giving birth has also increased.

What contributes to the dark side of the children's day-to-day life in the 90's is also the increased rate of juvenile crime. In 1994 alone, youngsters committed 4,748 serious thefts, 250 of them being banditry and 15 murders. Children drink and smoke. Medical research in 15 schools in Yugoslavia has shown that 80 percent of elementary school pupils drink beer, while, according to their own statements, 25 percent of eighth-grade pupils (age 14/15) drink spirits. Experts are warning that the children do not have a normal life either in the family, or in school, or in the society. Their emotions are jeopardized by the negativity of grown-ups. Fear, helplessness, worry, anxiety and sorrow dominate. An entire generation is growing up in a society of disturbed relations, accompanied by inter-ethnic, religious, political and even sexual discrimination. Children are expressing aggression, nervousness and anxiety. The war has joined in. Children spontaneously speak about the war, most often motivated by what they see on television. Teachers and psychologists say children are literally obsessed by war: in one of the conducted studies, only six percent of the children's comments and questions did not refer to the war. The scene's of war, destruction and killing dominate their drawings.

Antrfile

Breakdowns Are Yet to Be Felt

"From the situation we have been in over the past years, the population on the levels of the family and the society in general is coming out utterly traumatized," Prof. Andjelka Milic told VREME. She mentioned two consequences which will significantly influence the future of the family: the biological and physical balance of the family shows that reproduction is dropping in Serbia which was not in war. The other trauma is the total poverty of the population.

The war is, supposedly, over. What will encourage the family to resume the restoration of the population in the country in which the mortality rate is far beyond the birth-rate?

Andjelka Milic: It could only be a better quality of life and a clearer future for the generations to come. However, from this perspective, such a future is very hard to see.

All the studies show that most of the population have become very poor. War, inflation, unemployment, loss of income, savings and property abroad - have cut off the normal guarantee for a decent standard of living. Economic traumas have seriously affected the day-to-day life, the rhythm in which the family functions. Regardless of how quickly families recover economically, the traumas will remain. The generations which grew up in the 90's will bear the trace of that terrible blow throughout their lives. The Americans studied the consequences of the crisis of the 20's on the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the people who lost everything overnight. They found that the stress was extended. Entire families did not trust and could not adapt to the new trends. "Scars" will remain here, too, and it is something that we have yet to feel. They don't show yet because the society and the family are still clenched under the pressure.

Still, the family has remained and survived the first blow of the crisis?

It is true that the divorce rate has dropped. Who is going to divorce when he has nothing to eat? Family conflicts leave traumas, but they are set aside because of the struggle for survival. The breakdowns will start when we start living normally, when we start seeking perspectives. Everyone will be against everyone else: parents, children, spouses, grandparents.

Who have been the winners and the losers in Serbia over the past five years?

The absolute losers are the city working-class and parts of the middle class, especially intellectuals. But the winners are not without scars either. They did compensate the negative events with their own manoeuvres, as new businessmen, for example. Only a small part of the population had pure victories. We did not study the sources of their profits, but one can conclude that even they have traumas because they were exposed to direct consequences of the war or participated in it.

Those unaffected by the crisis remained only the peasants from suburban villages. They neither gained nor lost. They remained at the zero, and zero itself is negative.

What is to come to the surface, as a long-range attack on the standard, is total impoverishment and chaos in the institutions of the so-called social consumption. No one was paying attention to education, health care, municipal services. And the population, being totally poor, will rely on the social consumption. This might lead to serious social problems which might even lead to social conflicts. The question is how an inefficient and weak state, which only has the police power, will be able to control things and pull the state out of the crisis. Enormous infrastructures are at issue, whose inefficiency affects the family in crisis.

Women in Figures

Years: The female population in the low-birthrate areas (central Serbia and Vojvodina) is ageing rapidly. While women aged 19 and below made up nearly half of the Kosovo population in 1991, they made up only a quarter of the population in Serbia and Vojvodina. Over 18 percent of the female population are aged 60 and over.

Marriage: Marriage is very popular among the female population in Serbia. Although living was tough in 1991, one quarter of all marriages were related to girls aged 15 to 19. In all parts of Serbia, in most cases (40 percent) girls get married between the ages of 20 and 24. Half of the girls of this age group in Vojvodina and central Serbia were not married in the early 90's. Seventy percent of the women who divorce do it between the ages of 25 and 45.

Education: Although the level of education of women in Serbia is rising, one out of ten women in Serbia is illiterate and one out of five has incomplete education. One-third of Serbian women have completed secondary or higher education and 4.5 percent of the women in central Serbia have university diplomas.

Independence: Only a little over 10 percent of women provide for themselves, while 53.9 are provided for. One million women in central Serbia are housewives and 47 percent of farmers in the entire republic are women. Two-thirds of the employees in various services and 18 percent of the workers are women. The ratio of women to men managers is 1:3.