Disappointing the future

In childhood, the future holds great promise. Images of things perceived novel around us crowd our brains. At one time or other, and with the discovery of new, exciting roles in life, we emulate train-drivers, firemen, stuntmen, superheroes, writers, musicians, dancers, and so on, as our models for life. The want to be is fleeting, to vanish when some other novelty grabs attention. But adults often are impatient with these daydreams taking away from actual goals. With intent to protect them from themselves, they assume control of and direct their children’s lives, in their own image.

It seems to me that the modern habit of sticking children in walkers to ‘protect’ them from injury contributes to dependency - and the fear of falling. Many sheltered young people I hear about voluntarily transfer their life-choice decision-making, almost in throwback to the joint family process of yesteryears wherein the head of the family ruled over all aspects of the extended family members lives. Although families in India had since transformed to nuclear, becoming smaller and independent of traditions, in some areas, the social dynamic appears unchanging.

For instance, the allure of ‘love marriages’ (choosing one's own partner) diminishes, perhaps because divorce rates have climbed four thousand percent in India in recent times. In a growing trend, these children look to having their life-partners secured for them by parents instead. Technology has become a hugely useful tool in the burgeoning market of marriage ads. There are specific websites to meet the demands for community, caste, status, looks, ad infinitum. I see the parents of grown sons and daughters avidly trawl Internet to find suitable matches from around the world. As in the corporate industry, SWOT analyses are conducted of individual and family and, in concessions to democracy, a final ‘shortlist’ of candidates made and presented to generation next.

Following the parental spadework, the prospective brides and grooms then venture out dating down the list to discover mutual chemistry. When The One is found, the parents from both sides then meet to hammer out the nitty-gritty between them - including the covert gives-and-takes of dowry - so that marriage along traditional lines might occur with full pomp and pageantry. In the process, the parents and other authority figures find relevance in their own existence.  Otherwise smart and intelligent young people also cultivate the expedience of this generational symbiosis extending continuity with the past. It is perceived a useful allocation of family resources, to collectively prevent mistakes from happening.

My question is whether the continual spoon-feeding allows the children to grow up at all capable of assuming their adult responsibilities, especially to think outside the box in situations unexpected. The children are taught to avoid making mistakes in life, and learn to have little faith in their own choices. The point missing in the remote control is the practice of falling and getting up again. Neither as parents nor as teachers do the elders pass on this crucial art to those in their charge.

An opinion I found on the ’Net says:

To gain admission or be hired at top-tier universities, we have been on a winning streak, earning awards and top grades with ease. We follow the rules to get ahead. We have often forgotten how to fall, much less how to teach others to fall. If we do fall, we carefully hide those failures from students and colleagues to preserve our reputations. As classroom experts, we rarely venture afield to remember what learning by trial and error feels like. …Much of the time we have become entranced with being experts rather than learners—and thus have distanced ourselves from the students we hope to teach.

 

We assume that disappointments with the adult world were more rife in our time, because in those decades, technology did not wipe away boundaries between people or open global avenues of opportunity. I remember that as the youngest member of a joint family, my reality was constantly looking up to others, wanting to follow in their footsteps. For instance, the dance school where older girls went became my goal in life. I dreamed of becoming light as a fairy, graceful as a swan, just like them. The family elders, on the other hand, were obviously counting the monies; their resources stretching thin. They had no incentive to invest in further training that would probably lead nowhere, since, at that time, there were no reality shows to play out competitions on television, hawking lucrative deals to motivate contestants’ guardians. Education, and only education was then the thing, especially for girls! It was left to my mother to break the news to me. Rather than admit the truth, she opted instead to say that it (dance) would lead to ugly fat in later life! That crashing comedown for me, probably affected my perceptions of self and elders thereafter. I always wanted to be a dancer, but somehow felt constrained. 

The mindsets of parental control have changed little even today, and parental aspirations may replace the children’s aptitudes. Because the social environment continues to support total obedience and respect for elders, the younger members feel powerless to rebel against the family authority. They begin to believe it too much to combat attitudes and customs to charter the new course they want in life. Those that cannot conform, learn to be disappointed with the adult world, and suffer low self-esteem on pathways that little interest them. 

In a bus the other day, sudden raised voices attracted attention. I looked over at the commotion to see a young girl, obviously on her way home from school with school-bag and wearing school uniform, standing quietly by an empty seat while a couple of women on either side of her screamed at each other over her. Because both women wanted the seat for themselves, they were each bent on preventing the other from taking it. The teenager caught in between was clearly unimpressed by their antics, and ignored all calls for ‘the poor child’ to take the seat and settle the matter! I found her impassivity curious and got talking to her. She was sixteen and already believed adults, including parents and teachers, were hypocritical. Here was a person in a hurry to grow up and out of their control. 

In real life, she was a high school student living out her parents’ desires of a doctor or engineer in the family, struggling with physics and math, while her heart was in literature and she dreamed of being a writer. She was the budding poet that nobody around her knew about, and sometimes she wrote under a pseudonym to preserve her identity. Her parents, she said, neither knew nor cared about her aspirations. I asked why she didn’t sit down with the adults and talk out what she really wanted to do. No point, she said, they never listen. My father only gets angry and starts shouting.The strain showing on her face expressed far more of her isolation than her words did. She told me she hated going to school, because the teachers spent more time promoting their after-hours tutorials than disseminating knowledge in school. She felt she would probably learn far more from the ’Net than she did by attending their classes. 

Many students say their school counselors are uninterested in their growing pains and merely advise focus on studies, avoiding distractions. It is a sad commentary of our times that despite the new global openness, the choices open to new generations is to either live in dependent relationships or in alienation. Any psychology-based outside help carries social stigma that families avoid like the plague, thus perpetuating the disappointments. The children of today need astute guidance to growing up as levelheaded adults capable of independent decision-making in a rapidly changing world. More than them, it is the parents and teachers that urgently require counseling on the necessity to adapt to the environment. 

The elder generations need to remember their own ordeals of the earlier times, and enable youth of today to negotiate the travails and crises they must encounter in life. Young people must be allowed to explore the environment around them, to make mistakes and to learn from them. They are entitled to truth from the elders, sharing of experience, and independence. It would help them interact freely, and without misconceptions, with the changing global scenario and demographics of diverse groups. Else, they harbour in the corners of their minds unprocessed fears, angers and disappointments that poison perceptions, stunting their development as the people of our future.