During this week end, I have come across some people who are actively involved in offering parenting education to families in Chennai.
I have been on a journey of enquiry recently since Anna and I started living in another state geographically, to find the extent to which parents are involved in active parenting. To my surprise I found from a preliminary survey that only 20% parents of have more than half an hour for their children for a personal time. Forty percent of children have only one parent with them as the other parent is away at the work place hundreds of miles away whom they meet once in a year or twice of thrice. Twenty percent of children are left to the care of grand parents and parents come to visit the child once in a year or so! In some situations the domestic helpers are the core care givers to children.
Having written on parenting widely for a while now, I feel that it is time for us to think about grand-parenting. Some friends mention to me that in certain cultures in India, grand parents are the primary care givers.
I feel concerned that children grow up in a surrogate environment, where parenting is taken over by others.
I wonder whether we can take some initiative to foster neighbourhood parenting and provide some support for grandparents to enhance quality to grand parenting!
M.C.Mathew(text and photo)
No comments:
Post a Comment