How uninvolved parenting is ruining your kids

PUBLISHED April 30, 2023

KARACHI:

However, experts in the field of psychology are forever trying to sort this out for the rest of us (and for the sake of children everywhere) and have identified four basic parenting styles – authoritarian, bossy, permissive and uninvolved. For the sake of this article, we will focus heavily on one: uninvolved or neglectful parenting.

Changing social dynamics

Under the deceptive guise and garb of modernism, coupled with advances in science and technology, societies around the world are witnessing major cultural and social changes that are irrevocably damaging traditional and long-standing values. Teamwork between different communities is rapidly disappearing, moral standards are constantly being revised for the worse, and in general there is a growing acceptance of everything that until the last decades of the 90s was considered illegitimate. Corruption and corrupt practices gain status and the feeling of guilt no longer exists.

On popular talk shows, the rich, the famous, and the unholy, proudly state that to get their job done, they put “pennies of dollars” under the file to ensure it gets approved as soon as possible. He felt no shame in either giving or receiving bribes. Children, however innocent, until they are corrupted by the environment, see these events as devilishly contradictory behavior, while the morals taught and imparted in the lap of life are violated without remorse. In this pursuit of both the honest way of acquisition and the illicit acquisition of wealth, parents have become susceptible to the needs of their children.

The search for more is the removal of parents from their role, duty, responsibility and obligations towards their children. They don’t have time. They dont care.

What happened to parenting?

The Urdu word, ‘tarbiyat’ or upbringing, perhaps the closest word in the English language, does not match the impact of the Urdu word. In our society, children were groomed, trained and prepared for the first five years by the mother especially, and some more fortunate children had grandparents, uncles and aunts to add to the efforts of instilling, instilling, encouraging and instilling morals and values. The child was then handed over to the schoolmasters, who would continue further from where the family had left off with the task of turning sails in the right direction.

Even the teachers were aware of this role they had to play for the general good of the emerging society of the future. By successively abandoning this process, we have collectively destroyed ourselves. Both parents and teachers have been disengaged from their responsibilities. There is a strong dereliction of duty to create good citizens of the future.

Financial challenges are used as an excuse for this disclaimer. Although both parents are working professionals, even then, they have to find time to reach out to their children. There is no escape from this honorable work. My parents did, as would the parents of many readers, so why have today’s new parents lost interest in their offspring?

This is alarming considering that 65% of our population is under the age of thirty or so. Some of them may already be parents, others have to be in line to achieve that royal status. So, shouldn’t society be concerned about how our twenty-year-old would look and behave in 2047, the centenary of Pakistan’s founding?

Some new students from the university contacted me a few months ago. They wanted me to be a guest speaker at one of their shows. I agreed to do so, only after I had met the members of the organizing committee. So I invited them to my residence for a cup of coffee. Six students came down in the late afternoon. Three boys and the same number of girls. To make it easier for them, I dare to ask them about their favorite subjects, hobbies, common things, etc. During this impromptu contrived agenda, the conversation came up to the parents and the ensuing discussion left me stunned. I asked each of them who they were friendly with, their father or their mother? To my shock and dismay, four of them said mother and only two said they were friendlier with their father. The results surprised me, because it’s only natural to be friendly with the mother, but these four admitted that they hardly ever talk to their respective fathers.

Scary dad

What was the cause of this distant relationship with the fathers? The reasons that emerged were fear, incompatible times, lack of a common place to talk and the mother being more willing to listen. A child who fears his father will obviously fear the world in general and be a coward throughout his life. The economy has destroyed and destroyed the family unit.

Misplaced values

Last week an article was published by a leading newspaper by a possibly young girl, who was recently married, urging young girls to ensure that they have separate living quarters after marriage. The author emphasized that asking for physical space should remain a prerequisite for saying yes to any suitor. “It’s heavenly to be away from in-laws,” she wrote. Indeed society has changed. I was wondering how the author would manage when they have children, and then they would be in desperate need of help, which would not be without cost. I contacted the publisher to write a response to help the young lady and other readers highlight the many advantages of a family unit. The editor agreed, adding that there is no need for a lecture on sense of duty, religious obligations, etc. I decided not to write.

The modern family

The change has been made. It is good, possibly yes, but in the long term, in terms of the impact on society, I remain uncertain. Efforts should be made to develop a strategy where economic well-being is embedded in emerging social patterns that ensure that the composite exhibiting unbreakable bonding remains intact and unchallenged. The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to each other, maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and everyone lives in an atmosphere of bad feeling.” (Walter Bagehot).

Only when we become parents do we understand what our parents meant when they expressed concern, felt the pangs of anxiety and fears, for example, when they were late coming home. Currently, parents who do not accept sadness and disappointment at the hands of children are the most fortunate. Parents must change and meet the needs of today’s times. Undoubtedly, it is much easier to get a mother’s unconditional love, but getting it from a father can be a challenge, especially if the father is unaware of the power of his love for his child.

Friends forever

My dad was my best friend despite the age gap of a few decades between us. Admittedly there is a requirement for parents to stay abreast of all kinds of new developments so that they can engage with children. Our table talk with my father would vary from religion to politics, literature to history, humor to political wit and sarcasm, and from movies to actor trivia. His favorite narratives were the wit of Churchill, the exchanges between George Bernard Shaw, Rabindranath Tagore and the reminiscences between Gladstone and Disraeli. The dining table was the focus of socializing, no one was allowed to have meals in their respective rooms.

Do families today eat dinner or eat with father at the table? And no cell phones to look at!

If not, let’s restore cohesion where the child should be encouraged to share their daily activities, aspirations, fears, concerns, etc. good source of guidance and advice.

Kind but firm

Like a child going to school, he digs through his old subjects The Reader’s Digest in my father’s study during the summer vacation, I read the following conversation, “The best combination of parents is, where the mother is extremely strict under her apparent kindness, and where the father is extremely kind, under her apparent stability of”. I have no idea if my parents read this, but they sure were both kind and firm.

How can there be an advantage in a parent-child relationship? Parents love unconditionally, children may not. This is a Greek tragedy. There is hardly a child today who does not see their father as a perpetual banker to their needs, an ATM full of cash, at least my children.

Parents who are disengaged from their children have actually opened floodgates for them to fall into the deep abyss of decadence. Recently, my wife confronted both the pharmacist and the young 16-year-old girl, buying strong anti-depressant drugs without a prescription. She lied about buying them for her grandma, but was actually going to take them with her friends for ‘kicks’! The pharmacist explained how he is threatened by these children from influential families if he refuses to sell them the drugs. Ice, marijuana, etc. they are easily accessible and once they become addicted, they have full potential to end up in criminality. Therefore, it is not uncommon to find groups of young boys and girls discussing mental health issues, suicidal tendencies, euthanasia, mercy killings, etc.

Spare the rod and spoil the child is a saying of old, but now it is redundant. Parents should spare the rod and instead befriend the child. The fear factor can be eliminated by developing friendship with your children. They need to express themselves and only parents should be their audience. Friendly parents have happy and confident children. Closeness gives them strength and confidence.

Standards

Children always imitate parents, hence the need to create a role model. No child needs a sarcastic critic who is a father. An angry and distant father is actually extremely hard on himself. Influence behavior by cultivating good thoughts in children’s minds, this can only happen if the lines of communication are open and strong.

Avoid making the child understand you as a parent, instead spend quality time learning and understanding the child. Everything that is seen and heard at home sooner or later flies out. Parents can destroy their children by using scolding and wrong words.

Parents are patterns. The apple under the apple tree? Mother by daughter. There is only one beautiful child in the world and every mother has it. In the guise of children alone, men and women experience the aspirations of life. Let the parent-child relationship be the strongest, unbreakable, indelible and indestructible.

Parents must have the maturity to allow children the independence to imagine and process thoughts that are useful for a respectable, virtuous and meaningful life. To rule a family as you would cook a small and tender fish is a Chinese proverb that parents should adopt to raise children. The human race exhibits complete equality, for every child is loved by its parents. The sorrow will be deeper, if some misbehaving child steals the smile that lights up the parents’ faces.

Let us arrest the progressive cultivation of the decline of social standards by friendship with our children.

Sirajuddin Aziz is a senior banker and freelance writer. All information and facts are the sole responsibility of the author