Seeing my almost 18 month to-be son grow takes me back to my own childhood. While I naturally did not expect both the experiences to be similar, I was also not prepared to see such stark distinctions as well.
Children today are no longer just that, but are prince & princesses! Not only are they called so but am afraid are also treated such and are led into believing and behaving as one. A small evidence can be found in the growing number of couples celebrating their angels' birthdays every month by cutting a cake! Not meaning any offense to the parents indulging in monthly celebrations & realizing fully well that it is purely a personal choice, it still bothers me to think whether the child would experience the joy of waiting eagerly for the yearly birthday celebration. Coming back to my stance on how we raise them, I always wonder What right do we then have to sneer at their reactions however unreasonable when faced with a "no" after having set such high standards and upping their expectations to match that of someone whose every wish needs to be heeded. Also to be seen is their collective behavior at school when each is raised as a prince and princess coming to terms with other kids that are all raised as specially. The love of the parents from the previous generations' had towards their children was perhaps not as overtly exhibited as it is by this generation parents. Therefore, it was perhaps easier for us as kids to be one amongst many.
While today's parents treat kids in a very special way, they do not seem to be adopting the same attitude when it comes to letting them achieve their milestones at their own pace. Competing with other parents on their kids reaching milestones starting from infancy even with respect to when they roll over, crawl, walk, talk and the list just continues. These 'helicopter parents' then assemble their wards' with strict daily time tables while on the other hand are those parents showing extreme leniency. Just the way it is difficult for kids to understand the significance of education at such a tender age it is also equally tough for them to align to a 'can't miss a day at school, can't miss a mark, can't make a mistake & should never fail' kind of set rules'.In spite of completely being aware of the cut throat competition the kids would later face in their lives once they hit the big bad world, the parents from the previous generations seem to have let their children to be. In such discussions we should of course allow for generous leeway for exceptions in each generation.
To be fair with both the set of parents, the environment or the backdrop in which the kids are raised has also significantly altered. Aspects such as greater access to information as a double edged sword cutting across better awareness vying with higher levels of confusion see-saw with the concept of 'follow the ancestral path laid down by the grandparents'. Adding further to this chaos is the factor of raising kids in a multi-cultural context for the present day parents tussling with decisions on whether to adopt, adapt or ignore becoming more frequent. Something as common as children co-sleeping with the parents to vegetarianism in a specific cutture might completely be alien to another. Decisions in such instances tend to become ambiguous. Significantly different also are the support mechanisms both generation parents had and have, with physical support being more common for our parents, technological strength is our asset: how many of us might not have thanked profusely the disposable nappies to say the least at some point?
It's not just the parenting styles that has changed over the generations (I only talk about my generation & the current one), the attitude of children themselves seem to have changed. While a single or at max a couple of toys would have kept us excited for a long time then, any number of toys, technology, outside exposure doesn't seem to satiate the need to explore & understand the world for the current kids resulting in their early initiation into playschools. Reciting nursery rhymes, ABC's, 123s even prior to entering their third year seems to be the order of the day while I remember struggling with learning alphabets in the lower case often confusing between 'f' & 'b' & 'g' & many more at double that age!
Balancing between these two extreme spectrums then becomes quite essential, a task that is perhaps easier said than done!
