Tag: Parenting

  • Work, Parenting & the Monoculture

    Sunday morning gave me a fantastic read, via  multiple shares on my timeline – “Why do we work so hard?“, in which Ryan Avent traces the evolution of work (hours) from the time after the second world war, and wonders why a trend was reversed and we started working more hours. She considers her own as well as her father’s experiences, and explores whether it is the treadmill effect, the satisfaction of work, or a combination of both. She sums up one of her answers thus –

    It is a cognitive and emotional relief to immerse oneself in something all-consuming while other difficulties float by. The complexities of intellectual puzzles are nothing to those of emotional ones. Work is a wonderful refuge.

    Something about it gave me a sense of deja vu. I realised that this has also been my hypothesis about parenting! Back to that in a bit. Meanwhile, she ends the article with

    ..precisely why what I’m doing appeals to me. They are asking about a job. I am thinking about identity, community, purpose – the things that provide meaning and motivation. I am talking about my life.

    It reminded me of a short conversation with S recently, where we agreed about how (many) people follow up their introductory “Hi, I am XYZ” with their designation and/or place of work, irrespective of the meeting context.  (more…)

  • No kidding

    The debate on twitter, some time back, on the subject of kids on Junior MasterChef Australia was an interesting one to watch. I have no definitive opinion on it, and I understand that it can be debated both ways. So, just a few perspectives.

    I watched the show for a few days, and was amazed by the skill displayed by the kids. I also found the judges being very careful with their words. (they can be scathing as the ‘regular’ MasterChef show would prove) The kids seemed to be having fun. I don’t know if the elimination grind got to them. I don’t know how the entire experience would affect them – irrespective of them being winners or losers.

    What I do think is that in many ways, the show is preparing these kids for the world – for making choices, (I’m reasonably sure none of them have been forced to come here) chasing a passion, the consequences – winning and losing, fame and despair, public scrutiny and the loss of privacy, dealing with judgments passed by others and so on. And that goes for all sorts of reality shows – dance shows with scantily clad kids included. Any opinion I have against dance shows is a judgment based on my baggage, and objectively, I can’t be sure that dancing (of any kind in any attire) < cooking. I could be flawed in my rationale, but that’s like saying Vidya Balan’s performance in The Dirty Picture is somehow lesser than Sanjeev Kapoor’s erm, Dal Makhani.

    I am not a parent, so I can only talk from the perspective of a child that I once was. 🙂 We didn’t have reality television then, but we had non televised competitions, and I have been a participant. Music, debate, hockey, quizzing, cricket, dumb charades – I’ve represented  my school/college in all of these. I was lucky enough to be encouraged in most of these (very few got the point of Dumb C 🙂 ) by my parents and teachers. I can only dimly imagine the sacrifices my parents might have made for letting me pursue these and my other indulgences – voracious reading, for example. 🙂

    I do believe that most parents want the best for their children, though the way they show it could be seen and judged in different ways. Parents have no inkling of what the world will become, though they pretend to. They make choices based on their experiences, their perspectives of the future, and their desires for their children. I have a choice to make now too – I could blame my parents for not making me focus completely on studies. (for example) Who knows, I might have gotten in and out of an IIT/M and might have finally written a book. 😉 Or I could be thankful for the choices they made for me, and for the experiences that gave me. I, for one,  am indeed thankful, and think that these paths gave me valuable perspectives – with regards to all the ‘preparation for the world’ points I had listed earlier. There can be no A/B testing for all this, you realise. 🙂

    The fun part is that somewhere along the way, I started writing a bit. This blog has been around for more than 9 years, I write 2 newspaper columns. I haven’t been trained for any of this. Whether the story has a fairy tale ending is completely subjective and dependent on many factors that are beyond the parents’ or the child’s control, or imagination. The parents and the children are living some great moments. Perhaps that’s all there is to it.

    until next time, show stopper

  • Parent Traps

    And Abhinav Bindra got India an individual gold in the Olympics. Old story already, but what made me mention him was his simple yet profound act of thanking his parents. What about that? Well, good parenting. His dad knew that shooting was not exactly on the same level as cricket, Bollywood or politics, but spent a crore on an Olympic standard-fully air conditioned shooting range for his son. How many would do that, even if they were millionaires?

    Most parents (let’s forget unborn children and abortion for the moment) want the best for their children, and put in a lot of effort in getting it for them. But I think that in most cases, the good intentions are misplaced. After all, parents are just human beings whose objectivity might be clouded not just by the societal pressure that they have to handle as individuals, but also because of their own inner demons.

    Which perhaps is why I see a lot of kids around who, move around groggily from karate classes to music lessons to tuition classes, and simultaneously use pester power to get what they want, but sometimes, reveal their childhood innocence too. It makes me realise that there is perhaps a huge difference between doing the best for your child and doing what’s best for the child.

    The difference is Abhinav Bindra winning the gold and thanking his parents, and Abhinav Bindra winning the gold, but saying that was never what he wanted to do in life.

    until next time, not child’s play

  • Parental Outsourcing

    Since our man has the annoying habit of deleting posts, i havent been able to yet locate his take on it, but i have read her take on it.
    The subject in question is that the young parents of today outsource the job of parenting to their parents and treat them worse than housemaids… Now, i think a lot of grandparents love being with their grandchildren, perhaps for the simple reason that their children dont have the time anyway. Its an arrangement that works for everyone concerned. Does that make it right? no, but that doesnt make it wrong either.
    We happen to be in a generation that is bearing the brunt of a drastic change in lifestyles and therefore mindsets. Being 30 year old parents is a bit like being between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea – feeling guilty of not doing much for the parents and knowing that the chances of their kid looking after them are very slim…So perhaps it is a good thing to put the two stakeholders of their time together, and meanwhile working their butt off to ensure that they themselves have a good tomorrow.. now, can they be really blamed for trying to a get a bit of happiness out of today also… maybe not, because they are paying for it in their own way..
    Meanwhile, taking a leaf out of the aforementioned annoying man’s book ;), this sums it up
    until next time, not just kidding