Dec 22, 2024 07:30 IST
First published on: Dec 22, 2024 at 07:30 IST
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A FRIEND recently asked me that after I had one child, how did I even think of going for another. It’s rather late in the day for me to be pondering this, with kids having flown the nest (with one foot in, always one foot in), but still I tried to come up with a cogent answer. Finally, all I could say, sincerely, was that I really wanted a second child, and a girl.
Would I make the same decision now? Maybe yes, having always felt a sense of comfort in giving my children someone they can count on, and leaving behind two souls who can together remember me fondly when I have passed on. Plus, it is a great social experiment and everyday marvel how two kids growing up in the same household, going to the same school and sharing the same social milieu can turn out so different. Nature or nurture? Most parents know the answer to that.
However, I may think twice. As leaders across the political spectrum ask Indians to have “more children”, I can understand those who increasingly don’t want any.
First there is the sheer cost of raising children, an expense that starts from playschool and increases exponentially with time. Parents can feel like hamsters on a wheel, with no end to the rat race, and worse, feel they are leading their children to the same future, as resources and opportunities shrink.
From one day to the next, change is sweeping our schools and higher institutes — sometimes in the course, sometimes in the format. I send up a prayer that I don’t have to really worry about it anymore, shuddering at the thought of being in the shoes of younger parents who don’t know, for one, whether their kid will end up giving one board exam or two in a school year.
If it is not school, it is the air. The first time we bought N95 masks, after extensive research, and made the son and daughter wear the same to school, my heart broke. I wondered whether they blamed us for leading us here, or not finding a better place to live. Surprising us like they always do, the kids took the masks in their stride. Which was a heartbreak of its own. Many years down the line, it has only got worse.
If it is not the air, it is the roads, the infrastructure. Driving over potholes, crowding onto public transport, despairing over the state of even our waste, struggling for basic needs — we have even stopped being angry or hoping things will change, forget fighting for that to happen.
And yet, I want my kids to read the newspaper, learn about our “leaders”, about how the system works in “the world’s largest democracy”, and know their country better. Would it really be better for them if they were more interested?
If it’s not the infrastructure, it is the discourse. We are a country that spent the past two weeks talking, at the very top, about mosques to be razed, temples to be found; saw a show where specks of dust were thrown at teflon-lined billionaires, and mud was slung at leaders who at the very least deserve better; and even Eklavya, Mahabharata, Ramayana figured. Where does the world our children inhabit go from here?
Another friend once told me that kids should not settle abroad, that parents are left lonely and the children rootless. Of course, that is provided they can even get there given the growing anti-immigrant sentiment in the West.
So, Mr Mohan Bhagwat, don’t couch the reluctance to have children as “extreme individualism” among people, not caring much for God or the country. And Mr Chandrababu Naidu, don’t pass on the burden of demographics to us.
It takes a village to raise a child. First, set up at least one where a child would want to stay.
National Editor Shalini Langer curates the fortnightly ‘She Said’ column
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