Parenting crisis

Despite runaway population growth, parents in Pakistan seem entirely clueless when it comes to raising their children and inculcating the skills, values, attitudes and philosophies that might help them thrive in a cutthroat and increasingly complex world. Young adults undergo an immense level of difficulty in identifying their passions, exploring their curiosities, taking calculated risks, engaging with their gender counterparts and developing their emotional quotients. This holds true regardless of class: in fact, there seems to be an inverse relationship between one’s position in the socioeconomic stratum and the quality of parenting they receive. A large reason for it is childhood neglect.

Parents are, in general, hell-bent on generating clones of themselves. Rather than allowing their child to experiment with a variety of activities to identify their interests and aptitudes in an organic manner, mothers are adamant on seeing their daughters achieve what they never could (but desired to) while fathers wish to see their sons accomplish their unfulfilled dreams. They thus box them into rigid categories, deciding — on their behalf — what path to take and strategically rationing their love based on the extent to which their wishes are adhered to. By snatching from them the freedom to fail, parents obstruct their children from embarking upon a journey of self-discovery: instead forcing them to play a character that never truly feels genuine.

The result is a perverse form of hyper-dependency on the parents, who at some abstract level realise the fragility of this arrangement but simply refuse to accept it. Preserving this house of cards becomes the next task. This is achieved by adopting the ‘helicopter parent’ role: which involves micromonitoring the child, sheltering them from any and all danger, and refusing to allow for any risk-taking behaviours. All forms of trust are shattered in the process and the child never gets to experience any adversity (figuring out how to deal with uncertainty) or adventure (pursuing an inclination without any guarantee of returns) that would otherwise foster important character development.

This coddling tends to spill over into social relations as well, particularly in interaction with the other gender. Parents in Pakistan overwhelmingly tend to corner their children into marrying ‘within the family’ — leading to high rates of inbreeding which adversely impacts cognitive ability and results in birth defects and genetic disorders in their grandchildren. Indeed, approximately 50% of marriages in Pakistan today are consanguineous. Most children are also brought up with this knowledge, along with notions of immorality attached to premarital intermingling, and therefore never experience the dating market — a highly competitive arena in which one is forced to work on themselves (in terms of hygiene, social calibration, emotional maturity, career growth, general knowledge, etc) to improve their chances of success.

In order to ensure compliance with all this, a culture of obedience and strict discipline takes centre stage within the household. Harsh penalties are meted out — frequently involving vicious kinds of corporal punishment — to instil a sense of fear and apprehension in the child for failing to follow orders. Questions are shunned and associated with ‘deviance’ and the child is made to internalise a variety of outmoded ideologies, mythologies and theologies before it has even developed the ability to adequately process complex thought. Reading habits are not encouraged, meaning exposure to ideas remains minimal to non-existent: inevitably leading to irrationality, narrow mindedness and an acute vulnerability to extremism.

Children grow up in a virtually insulated environment, with little to no information about the outside world, its historical evolution or their place in it — particularly in terms of the global division of labour. This disorientation continues into adulthood, and the general approach of most is to mindlessly jump from one job to the next (assuming they are able to land them) with no overarching goal or mission in terms of the impact they would like to make.

Parents must do better.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 27^th, 2023.

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