At a youngster’s party in the city a girl refused the advances of a young man. He retorted by calling her an ‘easy woman’. She retaliated with an abuse. Friends of both took sides, a fight ensued and parents were called. Everyday in the school bus, a girl had her pigtail pulled by a young boy until she took courage to tell her father, who threatened the boy. The harassment ended with that.
These maybe minor incidents, but they indirectly point to gaps in parenting. If the Prime Minister of the country thought it fit to >raise the issue of biased parenting then it is time for all stakeholders—parents, teachers, counsellors—engaged in raising young boys and girls to introspect.
Do we have a different set of rules for raising a son and a daughter? And is the city, with its limited cosmopolitanism, an easier place to raise children?
Shiny Shaju, a homemaker and mother of one boy and two girls says she hasn’t differentiated in the way her son and daughters have been brought up. The rules are the same. Like any mother of a girl in India today she also believes in the Malayalam saying ela vannu mullil veenalum, mullu vannu elayil veenalum kedu ellakku (if a leaf falls on a thorn or vice versa, it is the leaf that is ‘damaged’) and to quote the leader of a national political party, ‘boys will make mistakes.’
As a mother of a son she says she has ensured that he respects women – “I am there, his grandmother, his sisters – he knows he has to.” Has she sat him down and spoken to him about it? “No. How can you do that? It is the values that a family imparts, what his teachers teach him on how he should treat girls or women. I believe that my son knows.”
Molly Cyril, Director Education, Choice Foundation, has dealt with co-education for over two decades. She declares categorically the need to educate boys on situations regarding girls and that the “whole issue of sexuality” has to be addressed at an appropriate age. “It is imperative,” she says. Molly goes to the extent of allowing freedom and exposure to the young and arming them with a sense of responsibility. “But we have to be sensitive to abuse of both genders,” she says.
Special Educator Jayshree Shankar is relieved that she had to raise her children in Kochi as it has plenty of open spaces and gives the young a chance to play outdoors. “Äs a city I think Kochi is a good place to bring up children as against metro cities.”
Jayshree recalls an incident of child abuse that had shaken the city years ago when her daughter was in school. “I remember educating my little daughter about the ‘good touch and the bad touch.” Jayshree believes in having the same set of rules for both boys and girls. “How can morals and value systems be different for a boy and girl?” she asks.
One of the main reasons for Madhavi M.and her husband to relocate from Bangalore to Kochi was for reasons of bringing up her sons better. . “There are not too many distractions here,” Madhavi says.
Dr. C. J. John, Psychiatrist shares the PM’s concern. He says, “parents in Kerala don’t differentiate between the boy and girl child when it comes to opportunities, say education or jobs. But we are still very conventional and are not able to shed our cultural vestiges when it comes to raising boys and girls.”
Although Shiny doesn’t differentiate as a parent, the ‘condition’ where “every girl or woman is, irrespective of her age, seen as a sexual object” forces her to be cautious when it comes to her daughters. Her 16-year-old daughter wanted to go to friend’s birthday party at a hotel and Shiny refused unless the host’s parents or one parent chaperoned the group.
Dr John understands the concerns of a parent but believes that parenting skills meanappropriate involvement. He says, “We have parents who tend to ‘over-involve,’ who don’t listen to the children but only advise.
So, instead of providing children the right freedom, space, and ambience to grow, parents here usually interfere imprudently.” The most skewed aspect of parenting, believes Dr. John, is when girls are taught to avoid offending situations and never to react. “So, even when abused she does not react. The upbringing pattern is to be submissive and not reactive. And in the case of boys parents tend to give them a long rope. They are not taught to respect girls as equals and how to treat them,” he says.
Jeseena Becker, Parenting consultant, words it strongly. She says, “parents of boys should inculcate in them the concept of respecting human beings. They should be made to understand at a young age that they cannot touch somebody without their permission or pass personal comments.
If this idea is cultivated in the boy, he will never ill treat a woman. Just as parents ask their girls to be cautious not to get raped, they should be telling their boys, ‘be cautious, don’t rape’. Usually in movies, when a boy misbehaves with a girl, her response inevitably is “ thanikku ammayum penganmarum ille ?” (Don’t you have a mother and sisters?). This sends a wrong message that only women at home need to be respected. Those outside of one’s family can be misbehaved with. This attitude has to change.”
