Withering away of the family — Parents, children and meeting halfway

On a recent train journey from Bangalore to Delhi, I had a conversation with a fellow passenger, a young chap in his first year of college who was returning home for Diwali. A few exchange of words later, when I asked him if he intended to stay longer at home, his tone went a note higher as he responded in a startled manner, “No! No! It’s a short visit. I hate going back home. It’s far better in Bangalore.” I wasn’t taken aback by his response, but by the tone of it. The reason I wasn’t surprised by the response was that I had heard it from people of his age quite often, including the friend I was travelling with, who was sitting opposite to us. There began my habit of asking every student I met, if they liked visiting home or not, followed by a few more questions based on their response.

This article revolves around the observations I made through these conversations while researching the deteriorating bond between parents and their children during/after adolescence.

Identifying the issue

Less than a decade ago, eight years to be precise, I could recall the last few exam days before the semester break. One could sense the excitement in the air. People spoke about booking tickets, their plans for the holiday and their excitement of meeting their parents after a long period of time. Fast forward to today, a huge majority of people between the ages of 17 and 25 dislike going home to their parents. It’s not that we didn’t see this coming; even eight years ago, there were those who didn’t want to go home, but the numbers were significantly less, and the reasons were completely different.

So, what happened over these years that caused the drastic increase in number? What are the consequences of this pattern prolonging for the years to come? Are there ways in which we could solve this problem? I’m as curious as you are, but this article can give you a good start to begin pondering upon the issue.

Rise of the Gap

Evolution of technology over the past three decades has been revolving around communication and accessibility to information. Ever since the industrial revolution, humans have had access to a massive amount of information in an unimaginable frequency in the past three decades. How is this connected to the issue we are discussing now? Well, the generation that became parents in the later part of the Information Age(after 1990) had to deal with raising children who were exposed to a large amount of information, maturing intellectually and emotionally to the point where the parents found it difficult to cope. Similarly, their children, who grew up with the world in their hands, found it absurd to adjust to their parents’ methods. As a result, the divide between parents and children has become wide, and the gap is wider and shallower in the middle and lower-middle class segment in rural and semi-urban parts of the country.

The Information Rush

Let’s take a look at what happened over the past decade alone. Internet became a necessity than a luxury, the internet became cheaper and humanity went through an Information Rush, having access to an ocean of information, more than ever before in the history of mankind and it is only getting bigger. Here are some of the intriguing things that the Information Rush enabled that were unthinkable just a few years ago.

Three-year-old children are swiping up and unlocking phones, and they can identify the YouTube icon where they watch cartoons.

Children in schools have more exposure to sophisticated topics like politics and philosophy, which makes them intellectual and wise, but also pushes them into existential crisis very early on. They delve in identity politics even before they reach the age of 17.

The effort to find friendship and love went from waiting for someone to accept your friend request to simply swiping right. People got more connected, building useful networks that help them grow. On the other hand, it made it simple for individuals to experience the dopamine rush of forming new relationships rapidly and frequently, making it difficult for them to handle long-term, intimate friendships and relationships.

This generation is growing exponentially and are so far ahead that the parents are left behind. Now the parents are at an ideological, cultural and moral clash with their children. The Information Rush affected the parent-children relationships in general, but it affected the middle-class and lower-middle-class segment the most. While the children are growing, exploring and blooming into something far different than what parents could comprehend, the parents are still busy making ends meet with little time to explore what is going on in this world. Parent-children relationships became more like people from two different worlds living together under the same roof. Their worlds are so different that both find it difficult to accept the ways of the other.

Meeting Halfway

In a dysfunctional family where the parent-children relationship is toxic and broken, either the parent is adamant about accepting change while the children are ready to meet halfway, or the children are adamant, sometimes ashamed about meeting halfway while their parents are eager to welcome change. Yet the difficulty is that meeting halfway takes on a whole new connotation in this context. In this case, when the parent takes one step, the youngster may have to take twenty. That may appear unjust, but when seen in a larger context, taking twenty steps for every one step the parent makes towards change is nothing short of fair.

Here’s why.

Belief systems built over time cannot be modified overnight to suit a new school of thinking, especially when the new methods strongly oppose the old ways people have adhered to their whole lives. I could see that those who were mature enough to understand this fact, dealt with their parents better than the ones driven by impulse.

In a contrary scenario, even the patient, civil approach is shunned by the parents because they are rigid about their belief systems and expect it to stay intact at any cost. These are people who find it diifficult to even understand a new world view, or they choose not to try. Either way they make themselves unapproachable for their children.

The Institution of Family

It is critical for parents to gradually open up and loosen up by taking small steps towards adopting their children’s ways, while youngsters must be exceedingly patient and see how they may come halfway and understand why their parents are the way they are instead of demonizing them.

Now why is this very important?

To start with, the household unit contributes largely to the economic stability of the country. Economists say that the familial Indian household model is one of the key reasons why India survived the 2008 recesion, as opposed to the predominantly individual households in the west. The moral standards of a society is affected by the familial bond and the values they pass on. While the consumerist world is constantly trying to break the unit of family to create a global, individualistic market, the act of mending relationships to keep the family from breaking is an act of rebellion in itself.

Leaving a toxic household is undoubtedly the best thing to do for yourself. But before you do, make sure you have tried your best to mend the relationship, because…

…you never know.