Parental advisory
The recent release of two books, Amy Chua’s Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mom and Wendy Mogel’s The Blessing of a B-Minus, has generated a lot of interest in parenting styles of late. While one group of parents have firmly supported Chua’s militant, pushy approach (she once threatened to burn her daughter’s stuffed animals if she didn’t
practice the piano), others lean towards Mogel’s low-stress, plenty-of-space style (she asks parents to celebrate even if kids bring home a B-minus grade, as the title suggests). But amid all the brouhaha, not much has been heard from the people most concerned: The kids.
While teens certainly do not want their parents to adopt Chua’s style, surprisingly, they’re not so supportive of Mogel’s philosophy either. What they expect from their parents they say, lies somewhere in between these two extremes. Anuj Pepre, a class 11 student says, “I would like my parents to be my friends and guides, because that would really help me communicate and share better with them. That said, I want them to be a little strict so that I don’t go the wrong way. For instance, I’d like it if my mother asked me about how I spend my pocket money, as it will prompt me to be more careful with it. But she never does. I like the equation we have now, but there’s always room to improve, right?”
Nineteen-year-old Maggie Silveira agrees, saying some ground rules are necessary in the parent-child relationship. “Every family has a set of its own rules, and it is these that mould the child’s future,” she says, adding, “At the same time, parents should ensure that they are their child’s friends.”
But not everyone believes in parents asserting their stance as authority figures. TYBMM student Ruchi Malviya says she revels in the freedom her liberal parents have allowed her. “My parents are not at all conservative,” she says. “They have always given me all the liberty and freedom I wanted. Rather than lead me astray, their attitude enabled me to understand my responsibilities towards them. I find that whenever parents impose strict norms on their kids, it just makes them rebellious.”
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