Sitting across the dining table my mom expressed in sheer disgust, “We did not think and read so much about parenting as this generation is doing, we just went about being parents.”
This was in response to scolding my husband for using negative sentences to my 13-year-old. I have been reading the Charter of Gentle Parenting which of course is not a book or any consolidated material but my bringing together of all the new-age parenting techniques.
My parents brought up 4 kids with ease. I wonder why are we parents so conscious about getting it right. We want our parenting to be successful and therefore we spend a lot of time trying to understand and execute new and different parenting styles. Many of us are also unknowingly enlightened about parenting and the mistakes we are making through social media, short Instagram reels that tell you what is wrong within a minute and other literature.
The internet is the fuel for parents in search of the correct parenting style, blogs, videos, reels, talks, chat counselling, instant answers and analysis to why their child is behaving in a certain way.
So, were our parents’ bad parents? No! parenting needs to be seen as individual cases. And the fact is there are no bad parents. Just adults who have been suffering from generational trauma, or present stress and are unable to regulate their own emotions and behaviour. Their wounds are not healed which leads to depression, hyperventilating, anger issues and many other behaviour problems.
When adults with this baggage become parents, or parents who face midlife crises and can’t deal with the situation tend to pass on their suffering to their children.
There has also been a major shift in society where we have become a more ‘child-centred’ society. The average fertility rate and couples having kids has dropped, and the stress on fewer kids to provide quality childhood, education and living has risen tremendously among societies across all classes, castes and religions.
This has put stress on parenting unlike somewhere in the 1990s and 2000s when kids were just left to play for hours, spontaneously and parents hardly kept a watch. Conversations were limited to food and basic needs while the mother took on the role of active parenting while the father earned the money.
So, the hype around parenting isn’t false but this has also put an end to many of the past parenting miseries.
Today the importance of active parenting from both mother and father is known to most thanks to so much being spoken and preached about it. Taking care of yourself in order to execute correct parenting. Generational trauma- parents are more aware of how their stress is affecting their ability to calmly deal with their kids, the effects of violent behaviour and anger expressed at home, drawbacks of children who grow up in a home with unreal expectations is like the feeling of constantly walking on eggshells, the need to have deeper and meaningful conversation and how model parenting does work which means sharing a good interpersonal relationship with your spouse and following the rules enables your kids inculcate the same without having to teach them.
The hype is much needed because of course parenting style needs to evolve with changing times. We are now a world with instant connectivity, nothing is unknown because of the internet and gender roles are constantly changing. In times like this, we need a deeper understanding of human behaviour and how parents the first nurturers of human life need to play their roles.
We will speak and understand more about this…