I believe that parenting is the toughest occupation. And a multitude of parents will endorse it when I add that it is sometimes the most thankless occupation too! Every generation believes that the next one is terrible and has breached
all limits. My parents too wondered what would become of my generation, just as my wife sometimes does over son Sikander’s generation. Yet no one can deny that this is the toughest time for parenting ever.
That is because the authority of parents has been eroded by an assault of alternatives. Television, the net and the cellphone have all become instant lines of communication with the outside world, marginalising parental authority. Everything that a parent says, which would be treated with concurrence, if not respect in my generation, is today questioned if not challenged. Every tradition is upturned, if not ridiculed, as old-fashioned ideas. Perhaps the most recent remorse, was over the liberal belief that gained ground globally in the past decade that children must not be spanked either at school or at home. However, faced with last month’s stupefying violence of teenaged gangs in London, whose parents had abdicated all authority, British Parliamentarians and educationists are now questioning the wisdom of sparing the rod...
In the onslaught of having their authority challenged frequently, many parents I know have given up parenting altogether. Instead, they have turned to a new mantra: they have become their children’s buddies. “I am my daughter’s buddy,” said a mother of a 17-year-old to me recently. I certainly am all for vibing and communicating with children. But if being a buddy means acquiescing with everything your child says, in the belief of being able to forge a bond, then that is perhaps not the right thing to do. At that age, they need a parent who ought to guide them and not indulge them.
All this is not to say that our children are going wild. They are focused and more aware of their potential than many of my generation, and they are not ashamed to be clear about their goals. Whether it means coming out of the closet sexually or believing that their future lies in becoming a hair stylist or a DJ, they are more emphatic in communicating their choices to their parents than we were a generation earlier.
And that brings me to what I am increasingly coming to believe — that sometimes the parents need parenting. Rather than straitjacket our children, we should listen to them and give them the chance to commit the errors of youth. Let them make their mistakes, but let them learn from these setbacks.
We should be around to guide them and not force our choices on them. Rather than always talk, today’s parents must also learn to listen. Whatever be the mantra you wish to follow, remember that if the children of today have changed, parenting too must change...