Are our kids growing up the right way?

Are our kids being brought up the right way? Are they learning whatever is required to equip them to succeed when they grow up? I have tried to find answers to these questions but what found should not surprise many of you, I suppose.

In order to put things in perspective I need to delve into history a little bit. Soon after independence, the focus was on building the nation using mostly government-funded initiatives. Hence most of the employment was in public sector, which essentially meant job-of-a-lifetime. Folks generally led balanced lives; the kids grew up mostly in joint-families. The family decided the career that the kid pursued and kids did not have too many options either.

In the post-liberalization era, things changed very dramatically very quickly. Most of the people found employment in the private sector, which essentially meant more stress and usually more money. Suddenly, folks were able to buy homes, cars, etc in the initial 5 years of employment, which most of their parents would have slogged their whole life to achieve. The unintended consequence of this development was broken families. Nuclear families became the order of the day, especially in the towns & cities.

Suddenly, people had found all the material benefits they wanted, but the most essential of all, the social support was suddenly missing. Sons & daughters had no time for their parents and parents also did not find it easy to stay with their kids either. In this confusion, the newborns ended up missing the care, which was available by default, in the earlier joint family system. The parents did not have time for the kids either, but they made sure that the kids had all the material benefits.

This resulted in a set of kids who were pretty much left to shape themselves up with minimal oversight. Earlier “bigade huey baap ka bigada hua bachha” meaning 'spoilt kid of a spoilt father' was an exception. Now this became a rule. It has become very difficult to see well-behaved kids, at-least in the cities. To make things worse, we have some kids who were born to parents who have returned from abroad. These kids seem to have picked up all the wrong things from there. In our apartment complex we have a few kids who have formed a group and if someone new wants to join that group, that person will have to go through a couple of ragging sessions and if successful, he/she will be admitted to the group. These kids are in the 6 to 8 age group!

Is there any solution to the problems mentioned above? Yes there are. But first we have to accept the hard realities of the modern life-style. Because of the exposure the kids get these days because of television, they are no doubt very well informed than the kids of earlier generations. In their endeavor to make sure their kids get everything they need, the parents fail to inculcate a sense of responsibility in the minds of their kids. In addition, most parents, busy as they are with their work, fail to spend enough time with their kids to help them understand what is good and what is bad. Hence, kids tend to learn more from other sources than the ideal source.