Good parenting is not cultivated dependency. (Representational Photo/ Wikimedia commons)
Raising a young man today is like writing the great novel of our age. You want the protagonist to be his own voice in the world. It soars, dips, is aware and loving, full of rage and despair. His journey is violence and struggle, upliftment and triumph. You recognise him and his epic journey to be inherently valuable, and distinct from your own.
This question, of how to bring up a boy today, has besieged me ever since I was a single mom at the age of 26. My greatest fear was that I would die leaving to the elements of depravity this brilliant, precious child I’d been tasked to raise. That he would then be shaped by forces that I knew to be misogynistic, unseeing, unempathetic. That they would define him by profit, class, status and caste. It was why I made my primary task his absolute independence. It was why when we hit the rough teenage years and I had some hard lessons to teach, I feared I had failed. And it is why now that he is a young NLSIU-trained lawyer with a more refined sense of social justice, rationalism, and the rights of the oppressed than I will ever have, I know my work is done.
Self-direction is first physical. It begins with potty training, a Freudian psychosexual modality of self-control. A year old, he was eating a roti wrap by himself. With a small radio droning music and commentary in the background, he began listening, being read to and reading, sitting through concerts and matches. Between 1 and 12 years old, Erik Erikson’s developmental stages of establishing trust, hope, will, purpose and competence arrive through dressing oneself, accessing the front door, navigating the neighbourhood, buying groceries, holding conversations with peers and adults, handling an emergency, packing and carrying one’s own school bag, and cooking something small. Last night, now 23, he made Maunika Gowardhan’s saag chicken for dinner as we watched Navalny and debated war. He has inherited neither my loves, enmities, tastes, nor my socio-political or religious choices, not even my name. This is who he is now: A whole person. With individualised ideals that I will have to get to know.
The seed must fall far from the tree to establish its own forest and ensure the survival of the species. You cannot establish mental liberty without a physical one. Good parenting is not cultivated dependency. Parents who pick out their children’s clothes for them will tell them their loyalties, when to study, whom to associate with, and what they can’t eat. The obedience of the compliant child is mistaken for the accomplishment of the parent. Then, it’s financial decisions, work, marriage. When all major life decisions have been made for them, “ladka haath mein hain”. “The boy is in hand”. Fait accompli.
As a therapist, let me assure you the boy is not in hand. The boy is repressed and confused. Gradually, he sees himself as a mule for the expectations of others. Men collapse into rage under anxiety, depression, and financial burdens. From never having had the option to say, “No, this is not who I want to be.” An independent young man is not a man without a sense of morality, or responsibility but one who wants to contribute, participate, and commit. Controlling their thinking is an act of insecurity. Self-direction is an act of trusting oneself in the world and this is modelled by first acting with trust.
A confident young man is built by repeated micro decisions. He needs to taste the success of a good outcome, and how to recalibrate when his choice meets with failure. Confidence is absent in those whose decisions are made for them. Self-directed decision-making is how a young man questions for himself whether he wants to participate in what happens around him. Without it, the crowd will sweep him along.
Thus, you have young men not calling out misogyny and rape culture, self-numbing, making excuses for and participating in injustice. From Gisele Pelicot to the Malayalam film industry, in all the emerging chaos of a society in fragment, we have seen that we need young men who are willing to stand alone. And they often will be called to.
The male peer group today is on notice for misogyny. Your child sees the impacts of porn, alcohol, drugs, and the internet’s darkness. When parents are restrictive, my son tells me, they do not realise their children will be confronted by sex, violence, drugs and darkness one way or another. If they are not the ones talking to their children about it, someone else is. Teaching them how to make pivotal decisions is more crucial than what decisions to make. The ground beneath us is shifting and the greatest strength in the ideological swirl is the freedom and agility of your child’s mind.
Das is a Mysuru-based author, mind-body-spirit therapist and a yoga practitioner.
