PARENTING
FROM VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES- with the onus
of imparting values to children.
As
I see it this article throws up many issues than one from a larger perspective.
1.
When we become parents
we notice and observe more deeply and keenly, involve in everything with
greater commitment, think profoundly, turn more possessive, act carefully and
more importantly become too conscious of the chronology of our life etc. In a
way we grow into a new human being mostly for the better. So, in a way
parenting is one of the great metamorphoses of human life. [A]
2.
We teach many
things to children as moral correctness and morally wrong as if they are static
and everlasting axiomatic certitudes. We fail to realize that morality is
mostly, and rightly so, contextual rather than a set of static rules written down
by scriptures, religions, cultures, society etc. There are no perennial taboos or trends. [B]
3.
Any relationship
and the most important aspect of life itself is spontaneous psychological reciprocation
or reaction. Deal with children with love and they will reciprocate with love
and love a universal and reusable syringe through which one can inject any good
value or many nice values for life. [C]
4.
Parenting is an opportunity
to enjoy life with a new relationship by making a matured and pleasant journey
with a less aged and less matured person understanding, adjusting to his/her whims
and fancies with all the parental concerns and pampering and also assuaging his/her
unhappy moments without preventing
him/her from realizing that unhappiness
is also an inevitable part of life, do our best to minimize it by many means
but at the same time not totally masking a factual situation or stark reality
with our overbearing emotional or sentimental affection, sometimes at the cost
of inconvenience to others. [D]
5.
Parenting never
stops in the mind of the parent: - initially it is an obsessive occupation with
a combination of irritations and interesting things, and then it becomes a
routine responsibility, slowly recedes into receptive spectatorship but always
remains a relationship working with renewed vigor at every juncture. [E]
6.
All good values
like kindness, humaneness, sharing and caring etc must be made to percolate
through our actions and interactions with others because the first best means
of learning for any child either verbal or action is through imitation and not
through preaching or teaching, though they can be used later on. I think practicing
these values are more important than exposing children to any religion or
ritual because living requires good qualities and values which contribute to
good natural habits not necessarily socially accepted practices. This is both
psychological process and sociological outcome as very well explained in Micromotives
and Macrobehavior by THOMAS C. SCHELLING. He explains how most adults and the whole
society actually make imitation into an almost a collective behavior.
“That kind of analysis explores the
relation between the behavior characteristics of the individuals who comprise
some social aggregate, and the characteristics of the aggregate…. This analysis
sometimes uses what is known about individual intentions to predict the
aggregates:…. People are responding to an environment that consists of other
people responding to their environment, which consists of people responding to
an environment of people's responses……. To make that connection we usually have
to look at the system of interaction between individuals and their environment,
that is, between individuals and other individuals or between individuals and
the collectivity.”
7.
Very often parental
expectations, enthusiasm, emotions etc coupled with social pressures, approvals
and appreciations may end up parents not noticing the inherent attributes i.e. strengths
and weaknesses of children and therefore not doing anything to promote or
prevent them from manifesting as they ought to in natural course.
8.
Of course, no
parent would like to promote or parade a child’s weakness; they may at best
minimize or mitigate it. If it is physical attend to it medically and if it is
psychological or emotional then at least one parent must spend time and
communicate verbally/emotionally/psychologically etc with the child to
gradually improve its attitude to minimize such weaknesses. For strengths expose
the child to the opportunities that a parent can afford.
So knowing
the innate attributes and keying in the important attitudes are vital aspects
of parenthood.
9.
Values of life are
initially imitated then gradually get inculcated and remain inside the self and
it is better that way rather than through indoctrination injected to keep intact
any specific cultural, social or religious identity. Ultimately the values that
are inherited through imitation initially manifest in or as habits in later
years rather than whatever one learns through instruction. As Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina states, “Happy families are all alike;
every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. I would like to state
that:- All nice parents have children with nice habits; every child with a
nasty habit has a nasty parent invariably.
10.As
they grow into adults, of course, if personal responsibility, independence,
confidence, clarity of perception etc have also been aspects of value system
that as parents we have followed they would know, learn or at least struggle
and strive to learn to lead a life.
So as adults
our children emerge hatched once again with capabilities to lead a life and
also live a life. [F]
Most parents are keener on equipping and therefore
preoccupied with the child to lead a good life in terms of the survival aspect
of life, they hardly pay attention to the living aspect of living a life
happily.
[B] MORALITY
