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THE SHRINKING UNIVERSE

The child is the father of man

Photo: Shaju John

Exploring life together…

Time was when you had a child because you were not quite sure what else to do with your spouse and/or your marriage, or to give your parents a grandchild, or because it was the most natural thing to do or because of one enchanted though unprotected e vening. Whatever the reason, you had children, you did not worry too much about bringing them up. Children in “those days” just grew up. Until the Spocks and the Stoppards exploded on the scene informing and reminding parents that there was more to parenting than “spare the rod and spoil the child”. And then the doubts started creeping in. Should we have a child? Are we ready for this? Can we be good parents? Are children really necessary? Who’ll look after the child? And when finally, despite all the doubts, the child actually came along: I’m a lousy parent. How do other parents manage? What’s wrong with me? Am I giving the best to my child? I hope my child doesn’t end up hating me. And other variations on this theme.

So, why is it so difficult bringing up a child nowadays? The common assumption is that this can be attributed to the breakup of the joint family and the three punching bags of modern urban life: Globalisation, the Internet and Television. There is of course a kernel of truth to this argument. But, only a kernel. As I see it, parenting is becoming more difficult in the present age, simply because of the higher prevailing levels of awareness, sensitivity and psychological sophistication than ever before to which Globalisation, the Internet and Television have contributed. The need on the part of the modern parent is to get it “just right” or at the very least, not to perpetuate any imperfect parental patterns that s/he was subject to in childhood. As a result, today’s parent tends to go tight-rope walking on a daily basis and does go a little off the deep end every now and again, confronted repeatedly with child-rearing dilemmas that they had no clue of when conceiving the child.

The only way to find solutions to child rearing problems is to seek them from established authorities on the subject. But for this to happen, the parent has to be in a state of relative calm. And given the barrage of information, advice and input that parents today are subject to, they end up experiencing greater self-doubt and apprehension than confidence and comfort. How then do some parents get to a zone of tranquillity and think of parenting as a joy rather than as a confusing and onerous journey? Largely because they realise that children can actually make parents better human beings if indeed they want to do so. Many contemporary parents fear that when a child comes, everything else, including their own growth and development, goes on the backburner and all life centres around the child. This does not really have to happen if you respond to some of the cues that your child provides you and realise that parenting, aside of being a joyful experience can also be a growth experience.

First off, children force you to stay in touch with your emotions. In a madly busy world, we tend to lead fragmented lives, distributing our emotions along a continuum of relationships and often seek more intellectual stimulation than emotional responsiveness. Both partners are badly in need of recharging their emotional batteries, but are too drained. In the face of such emotional barrenness, your child can offer you that enriching emotional anchoring, so vital for balanced growth. Caveat: If your child is your only source of emotional recharging, the burden is going to be too much for the child to handle. A jump-start is about the best you should expect.

Children can, often, increase intimacy between partners. Everything else can be his or hers, but the child is truly theirs and nobody can ever take that away from them. This creates a new bond, a new closeness and a new sharing. However, if a couple plans to have a child with the express purpose of enhancing their closeness and intimacy, they are asking for trouble. This never happens, for, a child can only enhance intimacy, not create it. Children can also keep the parents’ inner child alive and healthy. For most people, the “inner child” often gets submerged in the hurly burly of urban living; your child can stimulate and often force the expression of the child in you, keeping you in touch with parts of your psyche that you either suppressed or denied. But even as you enjoy your inner child, do remember, every now and again, to parent your outer child.

Children force the parent to explore basic values and to confront and deal with their own prejudices. As the child grows and begins to ask those awkward questions that make invention the necessity of mother, both partners are presented a wonderful opportunity to explore the basic values that they grew up with, identify the gaps that exist in the way they practise them and examine ways in which these could be bridged. A good bit of our identity is made up of the prejudices we have accumulated over the years. The naiveté with which children approach things and people will force parents to address if not come to terms with these. And this is also true when the children get older. The easiest thing to do when confronted with a prejudice is to shush your child and ignore the issue. A piece of unsolicited advice: desist from doing this.

Children force parents to be intellectually more aware. Any parent who has helped a child with homework or been humbled by a child’s felicity with the computer will understand when I say that parents have no alternative but to enhance their intellectual capabilities if only to keep a step ahead of the child. To respond to the child’s questions requires not just knowledge, but also adroitness and presence of mind that no school can ever hope to teach. The easiest thing to do, and many parents do this, is to consider the child’s intellectual needs a dreadful chore, and delegate it to tuition teachers and the like. This would be a missed opportunity. While I am not implying that we dispense with the tuition teacher, what I am saying is that we use the child’s curiosity and thirst for knowledge to refresh our own.

I am not suggesting that the only way one can enhance intimacy, be in touch with emotions and the inner child, explore basic values, confront prejudices and enhance intellectual awareness is by having a child. Couples who do not have children are still able to do all these things. However, they have to do so much more consciously. Whereas those couples who have children, have to just tune into their children and all of these will stare them in the face. Of course, they can still ignore them, which sadly they often do, but they would be doing themselves great injustice if they did. It is quite conceivable that when you think seriously about it, you could come up with many more aspects of your own growth and development that your child may have inadvertently helped you with. And to think, you believed that you were your child’s care-giver!

The writer is a psychiatrist, columnist and author of The 24x7 Marriage. He can be contacted at vijay.nagaswami@gmail.com

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