Sometime back, I saw this relatively unknown Malayalam movie called ‘Calendar’, starring Zareena Wahab, playing mother to Navya Nair. Zareena’s character is widowed at 21 and she refuses to remarry since she wants to give all her attention to her child. The movie worked for me, despite it being built on the cliched “kid grows up, and gives more importance to her own life than her parent’s feelings”, thanks to a tight script and some neat casting.
On the day I’m writing this, 3 works – one news item, one article, and one short story – appeared in my reading stream. The news was about a 107 year old woman left by her children, one of whom stays nearby, to fend for herself in a cowshed, the article centred around the topic of divorce and its impact on children, and the fiction work had to do more with marriage and infidelity, but with a neat twist in the end. Speaking of the end, I will link to them there, so you don’t escape this early. 😉
I really didn’t need these prompts to write on the subject, since parenthood has been a source of constant debate recently, thanks to our parents aging and showing the first signs of serious aches and pains, even as we grow older and realise that the body also believes in keeping a low temperature of revenge for sins committed on it during the last three decades. 🙂
Parenthood is one of those things that seriously lacks an undo feature, just like death, and is hence treated as a decision that merits serious thought. In general, the parents want the child to have a happy life and make choices on its behalf. Choices the child may not like/appreciate, but the parents believe to be the right one. They also make sacrifices for the child, in terms of time, money, and so on.
But at least for debate’s sake, do you think these acts are always completely selfless? Isn’t brewing underneath it all a set of expectations? Sometimes parents see children as a way of fulfilling their own aspirations, sometimes they see them as support mechanisms in old age. Even if it’s none of these, or others you can think of, they at least get some pleasure out of seeing their child do well in life.
But what blows me has always been that the parents get to make this considered choice of having a child and the child who is brought into the world and is the recipient of this and later choices, has zero say in the matter. It’s a serious product design flaw, and the only non-utopian remedy is for everyone concerned not to take each other for granted.
As promised, the news, the article and the story.
until next time, apparent traps
“It’s a serious product design flaw”
🙂 ha ha ha. Maybe because it is not a product in the first place.
🙂 life is a product/service. debatable. or can it be split – the human is a product and life is a service. or a hardware/operating system analogy 🙂
or maybe life is beyond analogies. 🙂
You’re 100% right. It is a serious product design flaw. I’ve figured out a hack that is unpalatable to most, and am sticking to that. I hate how it gets most people riled up, but at least it sounds nicer coming from Philip Larkin http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htmÂ
I don’t agree when you say the child does not have an option. A kid does not know what the options are and that’s the reason a lot of kids (me included) try the opposite method, become rebels in short.Â
Sure, parents will always have expectations, but don’t we all expect something from everyone else? I follow you on reader because I expect you to come up with punny stuff which will crack me up; I follow you on reader because you share interesting stuff and so on and so on.
i was referring to the option of being born. and in later stages, very few parents would actually ask a kid which school he/she would like to go to. Because the child usually doesn’t have the perspective to make a considered choice. This goes for many other choices too, except for minor stuff like say, ice cream flavour. at least till a certain age, parents make the choices for children. choices they believe to be the best in their judgment.
but look at the ‘frowning’ associated with parents having to stay at say, old age homes, a choice the ‘child’ things is right given the options.
i completely agree on what you have said about expectations. but to use your example, i am given to know that you expect it out of me. also, if i don’t deliver you throw me out of your list.
the difference with what I was talking about is that by the time the child is a conscious adult, he already has an expectations tab which he had no hand in setting or saying no to. And he can’t even throw it out of the list. THAT is my concern/question.
Ha ha in such scenarios I casually bring up something that person never did for me despite repeated request =D We can expect stuff too, can’t we?