The murder of fourteen year-old Arushi Talwar which sent shock waves through the nation four years ago, is said to have been solved. But despite the court’s verdict finding her father guilty, the air continues to be thick with claims, counter-claims, allegations and charges. Without presuming to pass judgement on who killed Arushi, we, today’s parents, nevertheless, need to take a good look at how we are bringing up our children.
What is, to most of us, a sensational newspaper case, or a shocking tragedy, is a living nightmare for the family of the child who was found brutally murdered in her bed a day before her fourteenth birthday. Whether, as the courts believe, it was her father, who murdered her in a fit of rage, having found her in an objectionable state with the family’s live-in male servant, or whether, as the family claims, it was someone else who has not been found, some aspects of the case are indisputable.
First, Adolescent Arushi was frequently left alone in the house with Hemant, the forty five year old live-in servant for extended periods of time.
Second, her parents’ high profile professional and social lives usually kept them out of the home till very late at night.
Third, however much the Talwars may have loved and materially pampered their daughter, their chosen lifestyle left them little time to be with their only child.
The Talwars are, by no means, the only parents in our society today who have almost no face time with their children, largely due to the compulsions of their busy professional and social lives. The numbers and proportions of such ‘absentee’ parents are rising exponentially and throwing up undesirable consequences for both, their children and for society.
Ultimate benefits to children?
One of the standard arguments in such cases is that the high incomes resulting from the parents’ high profile lifestyles ultimately benefit the children—in the form of more luxury and facilities, higher levels of material gratification, access to better opportunities, etc. What is left out of account in this kind of justifications is, ‘What is the cost borne by the children of parents with such lifestyles?’
Children left largely to their own devices as a result of their parents’ busy lives and with no responsible family member to supervise their day-to-day upbringing, are exposed to numerous destructive influences. These may come from various avenues such as objectionable content on audio-visual and print media, and undesirable company, and find fertile ground in the minds of unsupervised children of affluent parents, who have access to such material and people, but no one to guide or shape their thoughts.
The infamous ‘DPS MMS Scandal’ that painted the pages of tabloids red in December 2004, and which formed the basis of the famous movie ‘Raagini MMS’, is a case in point. Although the details of the youngsters involved were later carefully concealed in view of their age, the seventeen year old girl from one of the most prestigious schools of the capital who participated in creating a sexually explicit video clip that went viral on mobile phones, was found to be the only child of high-profile parents, who was left unsupervised at home after school, till the time her parents came home, usually late at night. Surrounded with all the luxury of material possessions, a five-star lifestyle and servants, the youngster was yet insecure enough to seek importance and attention in such an objectionable and damaging form.
It might be argued in this context that even ‘supervised’ children go wrong all the time. They do, of course, but the point here is that of the right kind of supervision, that gives a child the security of being cared for, the check of being supervised as well as the nurturing that inculcates values—a tightrope to walk, but one that comes with the territory.
What of my own life?
The other argument often adduced in the case of unsupervised children is, ‘Don’t parents have a right to a life of their own too?’
Of course, they do. However, once having exercised the choice of parenthood, it is also imperative to strike a balance between the professional, social and recreational requirements of the parents on one hand and the physical, emotional and psychological needs of the children on the other. There are numberless instances of families where both parents are working and where the children are supervised by grandparents or other loving, responsible caregivers—usually trusted family members. In such cases, the oft-quoted concept of ‘quality time’ from parents becomes an enriching experience for the children.
Smita Shivli, a young professional mother of two (eight and ten year olds) in East Delhi, drops her children at her parents’ place while going to work and picks them up on her way back. She also drops off a young maid servant to help her parents with the ‘active’ part of looking after her children. Although this entails additional demands on her time and resources, as well as putting up with periodic bouts of unreasonable behaviour from her parents or the children, she does it willingly as part of bringing her children up in a secure environment while she is away.
The catch in such arrangements, however, is that it often requires the parents to adjust to the requirements, and sometimes, demands, of the caregivers, which they are often disinclined to do. The children then end up as collateral damage in such situations.
Rekha and Naveen Bakshi prefer to drop their five and six year old children off at the most economical crèche available near their South Delhi residence, so that they can save as much money as they can. “My parents are willing to relocate to Delhi and look after the children,” says Naveen, “but we don’t want to avail that option. It will hamper our lives to have them constantly on our backs, making demands and interfering in our lives. The cost of having them here will also be much more than what we are paying to keep the children at the crèche.”
Parenting as a choice
Sometime back a cousin visited Singapore on a work related tour. Having managed to throw in a weekend, he took along his wife and two children. This was just before the era of the ‘foreign travel boom’ in India. The couple came home highly amused because the husband’s Singaporean colleagues had assumed that the couple must be millionaires several times over since they could actually ‘afford’ two kids! It was unthinkable for them that anyone would ‘opt’ for parenthood unless they were in a position to provide their children with everything their society had to offer by way of living standards and everything they had to offer by way of personal inputs.
By contrast, in Indian society, married people are ‘required’ to have children, just like owning a television set—something you do, whether or not you have the time, space or inclination for it, just so that your family and friends don’t regard you as freaks. Result?
First: innumerable kids whose parents have no time for them and no inclination to spend any thought on raising them well or providing for any except their physical and material needs.
Second: innumerable couples forced into parenthood that doesn’t come naturally to them—forced to make sacrifices they have no inclination to make, just for the sake of ‘duty towards their kids’, in turn resulting in an army of frustrated, escapist adults.
Third: needless population explosion on the planet—an ominous proportion of frustrated individuals in society.
Fourth: the most tragic—the demeaning of parenthood, one of the purest, most exalted expressions of love in the world.
Destructive social attitudes
Unfortunately, in our society, it has become the ‘done thing’ today to be dismissive of children’s emotional and psychological needs. How often has one heard callous words like: “Oh! The kid will adjust: kids are very resilient”, or, “what’s the big deal about raising the kid? It has all the facilities it needs. Get on with ‘more important stuff’”!
This destructive mindset is often manifested in workplaces too, in the form of ridicule for professional women who demonstrate caring for their children. Ashlesha Sharma, a Senior Accounts Officer in a multinational company, consistently faces barbed comments from her colleagues (usually male) because she regularly calls up her daughter –from her own mobile phone, in her lunch break—to reassure herself and give the child a feeling of being connected to her mother. This has translated into a perception that even while at work, her mind is preoccupied with her child, and so, her professional worth comes under question. Ironically, it is okay for other colleagues to blatantly use the office phones to make personal calls at all hours of the day!
Not only mothers, but caring fathers too, often come in for their share of flak. Arun and Meera Bansal (names changed), both senior economists in prestigious government institutes, have never made it to the ‘high society’ crowd, simply because returning home to their only daughter (now twenty four, and supervised by Arun’s mother during her student years) was always their priority. Having passed by all the opportunities of cosy weekend get-togethers and evenings out with colleagues, they have yet risen in their professional lives through their diligence and obvious capability, but are regarded as ‘weird’ by their co-workers who have no doubt that their professional ambitions come first and that the rest should take care of itself. “We give a damn,” says Meera happily. “We chose to become parents, and our daughter has always been our first priority.”
The latest in this saga of Indian society’s destructive mindset towards the well-being of our youngsters is the trend for ‘day-and-night creches’ in urban areas, where children of working parents can be fostered out at as young as four months, for months, and even years on end, usually to let their parents ‘get on with their lives’.
Aping the West
In childrearing perceptions, as in other things, our society has, most unfortunately, fallen prey to blindly aping trends from western countries, without first putting in place the safeguards that exist there. In western countries there exist stringently enforced laws that require parents to provide for the physical, mental and emotional needs of their children, or else, surrender them to the care of the State. Parents who party late have responsible and trusted babysitters taking care of their children. Childcare centres too are regularly monitored by the authorities. It is the state’s ultimate responsibility to take care of the children and it puts in place and enforces stringent rules where children are encouraged to report parental infringements to the authorities.
No such measures are enforced—or indeed, exist—in Indian society to protect children from parental negligence. In such a scenario, it becomes all the more important, to propagate the concept of parenthood as a conscious choice by people who are willing and prepared to nurture and care for the children they have brought into the world till such time that they are physically as well as mentally mature enough to fend for themselves. We really don’t need any more Arushis or Ragini MMSes to shame us!
Tagged: destructive influences, high profile lifestyles, parental negligence, undesirable company, unsupervised.
Being a Parent 
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