22 Dec, 2024 07:30 IST
First published: 22 December 2024 07:30 IST
A friend recently asked me how, after having one child, I thought about going for another child. It’s too late today to think about it with the kids flying the nest (one foot in, always one foot in), but still I tried to answer correctly. Finally, I can truly say, I really want a second child and a girl.
Will I make the same decision now? Maybe yes, always feeling the comfort of giving my kids someone they can trust, and leaving two souls who can remember me fondly when I’m gone. Also, it’s a great social experiment and it’s amazing how different two kids who grew up in the same home, go to the same school and share the same social environment can be. Nature or nurture? Most parents know the answer.
However, I might think twice. As leaders across the political spectrum urge Indians to have “more children”, I can understand those who increasingly don’t want to.
First there is the sheer cost of raising a child, an expense that starts in preschool and increases over time. Parents can feel like hamsters in a wheel, with no end to the rat race, and worst of all, as resources and opportunities shrink, leading their children into the same future.
From one day to the next, change is sweeping our schools and institutions of higher learning — sometimes in curriculum, sometimes in format. I send up a prayer that I don’t have to worry about it anymore, shuddering at the thought of being in the shoes of young parents who don’t know, for one, whether their child will take a board exam or not. Two in one school year.
If it’s not school, it’s air. The first time we bought N95 masks, after extensive research, and had our son and daughter wear the same to school, my heart broke. I wondered if they blamed us for leading us here, or not finding a better place to live. To our surprise as always, the kids took the masks to their stride. Which was his own heart attack. Over the years, it has only gotten worse.
If it’s not the air, it’s the roads, the infrastructure. Driving through potholes, slogging through public transport, getting frustrated with our garbage situation, struggling for basic needs — we have stopped even getting angry or fighting for it, hoping that the situation will change.
And yet, I want my children to read newspapers, learn about our “leaders”, how the system works in “the world’s largest democracy”, and get to know their country better. Would it be better for them if they were more interested?
If it’s not infrastructure, it’s debate. We are a country that has spent the last two weeks talking, at the very top, about demolishing mosques, finding temples; A show saw dust pelted at Teflon-lined billionaires and dirt hurled at the least well-qualified leaders; And also Eklavya, Mahabharata, Ramayana. Where will the world of our children go from here?
Another friend once told me that children should not live abroad, parents are lonely and children are rootless. Of course, given the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the West, they may even get there.
So, Shri Mohan Bhagwat, don’t hesitate to have children as “extreme individualism” among people who don’t care much for God or country. And Mr. Chandrababu Naidu, don’t burden us with demographics.
It takes a village to raise a child. First, set up at least one where the child wants to sit.
National Editor Shalini Langer curates the fortnightly ‘She Said’ column
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