Bringing up parents

Back then, raising children was a routine affair and there was no stress

October 02, 2022 12:01 am | Updated 12:01 am IST

The relationship between a parent and child has always been organic.

The relationship between a parent and child has always been organic. | Photo Credit: Getty Images

Parenting was an unknown term to our generation. Raising our children was a routine affair and there was no stress attached to it. And there were no specific guidelines or rules imposed from outside.

The relationship between a parent and child has always been organic and each parent gave the best to the child within his or her capacity based on love and affection and no extraneous factors came in the way either to unsettle the love or care. So, more or less, it was unconditional upbringing of a child that was part of the systemic process.

Education, which is the basis for making of a child, was wholesome in schooling and not scattered as we see today. On the whole, both parent and child enjoyed life, though society then has had much limitation in scope and reach.

We have evolved much since then as the gates of globalisation and reforms were opened up. With mobility, earlier confined to a select fortunate people, becoming a norm in society and Internet opening up new vistas in communication, education of a child took an altogether different character. While one can see the world from the palm now, it also meant that too much of information being thrust into everyone’s brain. This meant that a deep clutter, a kind of a tumour, developed inside all brains. This clutter may be different in character but the size is the same. A kind of a mental block is the result moving further to stagnation of brains and hence society as a whole stands stagnated.

Education which has to make a no-clutter zone of brains has aided this clutter to further grow in a cancerous way. The last two decades have seen this phenomenon accelerating very fast with no one having any clue to decongest the stagnation. It is a strange situation where everyone is caught up in an information explosion and seems to relish it. Where to differentiate, where to scale up and where to sweep away the waste is unknown to anyone including those in the driving seat of controlling the environment.

It is really pitiable to see parents too falling into this whirlpool and seem to be enjoying as though they are in a roller coaster ride without realising that their own children are becoming stale and devoid of human essence.

The situation has more to do with business and commercial establishments which abets the clutter phenomenon for their own narrow ends.

Parenting, therefore, is a term that has been specifically coined to see that the parents form part of a system where their children are brought up as a herd without them bothering to question the rationale of such a frenetic pace with which their minds are getting clogged.

When will we see the return of sanity in society and when will parenting be a personal affair?

baskar6052@gmail.com

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