The dilemma of a modern day parent
This post was downloaded to me during the night, unfortunately with jet lag and no device handy to record I was unable to get it all down at that time, but I set the intention to remember it during the day. I have seen so many posts in recent years about the lack of support system parents face in our current age. I have personally gone through this, and as I get a little closer to the end of the hardest period of it, I was guided to pen it down as it may help others to understand this better. I have noticed in my own life that understanding situations better helps me heal, and it is really the lack of understanding of what was going on in the first half of my life that made is so hard to heal.
In previous generations of parents, their parents were available to assist them, aunties, uncles, and extended families were around to raise families. Only in the last 1-2 generations are many new parents left on their own with no help to raise families and do all the other things they need to do to survive in the world. This has left parents tired beyond repair, angry, frustrated, depressed, grieving the lack of so many things in their lives, worried about their finances for their children, worried for their families as the world gets more polarised, and dangerous, and extremely extremely depleted, which we refer to as a Vata imbalance in Ayurvedic medicine. Traumas and hardships, lack of rest and proper meals , pain and illness all are part of vata imbalance.
The first question some may have is why are they not being supported?
The reasons are current society expectations and social norms where many current grandparents have inferiority complexes and fears about growing old, therefore do everything they can to not do so. This can look like partying like they are 25, keeping up with the Jones’s and trying to stay relevant even as they feel overtaken by younger people at work/in society/social situations/friends circles. So these people are unavailable to be the parents to the new parents, and the grandparents to the grandchildren. Social media may be telling them they need to continue to look and feel young, and instead of doing so holistically, they may be popping pills and buying into trends in fashion and lifestyle and hanging out with younger people trying to buy themselves into this group. This can also look like not wanting to be involved in these roles and rather having unhealthy situationships elsewhere, and burying their heads in the sand about their unhealthy situationships. Disconnection and disassociation from inner selves, and higher wisdom.
The close knit unit that used to be a family where elders supported their children and vs versa has dispersed and many elders do not support the children, and many children do not support the elders. Many do not know how. Mental illness, diagnosed and undiagnosed is at all time high. Many elders forget how hard it is to raise children without support and expectations are put onto daughters in laws and even sons. More often that not it is the daughters, mothers, women who are expected to do it all by everyone, and even if daughters are not, daughter in laws are, especially in Asian communities. It's as if they are two different species in the parents eyes and one is capable and must and one is not capable and must not. There is a lack of understanding about what a person can really be expected to do and cope with , and too many times I have seen posts about this on fb groups where women are in places like London with no support system, family are absent emotionally, physically, psychologically, and they may be expected to do it all, a job, a family, home, by themselves and in Asian families where expectations are even higher about the amount she can do, and lower on what he (the father can do), the whole thing collapses time and again because it rests on the shoulders of a single being. If that being gets sick, or depressed and upset , or is just a normal human being who needs time off to do something else , they are ignored, mistreated or resented by others in the family, or worse. TV serials do not help the situation with the play off between mother in laws and daughter in laws emphasised and enhanced to give maximum viewership and addiction. It is refreshing though to see the spoof IG accounts where they give people the chance to laugh it all off and find some lightness in their otherwise heavy load of life.
If you have been in this situation and your reading this, I know you are nodding your head and please, deep breath, you are seen ! If you have not been in this situation and your asking the question single or childless people often ask “why did you have children ?”, in many of the cases, people did not go into parenting knowing they would be doing it on their own, in some of the cases they were pushed by family members everywhere to have children very soon after getting married, they were told they would be supported, or it was insinuated over and over, and they clearly did not assume no one would deliver. Some even up in single parent situations, raising their children alone.
This is not the way nature intended children to be raised, it really takes a village to raise children properly, and all the increasing incidents of crime, depression, illness, hostile behaviour in young people is certainly related to the lack of proper human contact and upbringing children have because their parents are too busy trying to survive and keep them fed. There certainly can be negligence on the part of the parent too in some cases, but more so a repeating cycle of uncared for humans raising more uncared for humans and each generation is worse off, especially as there are so many more issues to deal with now that our parents did not have to face. Social media, gender confusion, crime, toxins, microbes etc etc
Even the expectations from schools are many fold more now than they ever were. When I was growing up we would get a couple of letters a term about this or that for the parents to deal with and they had ample time to handle it. It was very low effort. Now with the internet and everything being online, expectations also being higher from students, parents are emailed every few days if not multiple times a day to do something for someone, from signing them up for trips (sometimes with even just a few days notice !!!), to online safety meetings, to making bigger decisions on their career pathways, multiple events they need to attend, activities, groups, rules, etc etc it just goes on. So often it is urgent and must be dealt with in 48 hours or less! You can’t not be online, and neither can the children, with everything done on computer and excessive screen time. When I moved my children from their previous school, the thing I was most happy about was no more WhatsApp groups about lost uniforms, and hearing about people’s socks that were missing. Well it was one of many, many things I was happiest about for sure! I now reject WhatsApp groups that are not essential as I am on too many.
So its no wonder that parents are a nervous wreck most of the time, stressed, dysregulated, on edge, addicted to caffeine or worse, depleted and vata imbalanced because there is an excess of air energy and its being abused to the maximum. All the well meaning posts about turning off your devices and being out in nature can often feel hopeless to these people because they have at least one child on an abroad trip and need to leave it on, or worse they are teenagers who have discovered going out at night! No one tells you about all these phases!
If these people do not have someone who has their back, tools to support them, a soft landing, they can burn out quick, they can be barely surviving. If their partners are absent or travel a lot , they struggle a lot. They need our compassion, our understanding, a break and a half and I do not mean a Kit Kat break but a long calming, regulating, restorative break. They need to learn how to work smart instead of hard, and be given all the real hacks that can make their lives easier. Really and truly they needed society to do its job and be a community, be a support system for them and then maybe they wouldn’t have gotten sick etc but hindsight is just that!
So these are people , please stop seeing them as superheroes that need nothing and no one. Be kind and supportive to them, and for God’s sake do not tell them yes I know how you feel as I have a dog. Dog’s are cute and lovely and a blessing, but they are not the same as children and do not have the same needs (at the time of writing this post, as I am aware how they are being increasingly anthropomorphised with an increasingly broken world where couples do not stay couples and single people just have pets. There is nothing wrong with this, it’s just not the same level of responsibility as raising a human is all).
Recognise the value that a parent brings to society, recognise the attack on the family unit made at the higher levels and its breakdown, recognise that those who are trying even now despite everything they have been through which I have only scratched the surface of, are goodly godly people who are really doing the best they can with so little to begin with, sacrificing their own well being time and again. We can only see a change in society if we can be more compassionate and widen the horizons of our minds, and stop judging everyone. The comments I see everywhere on social media show me how judgemental people are of everyone and everything. When things go wrong its the parents fault, yet what about the school, the society, the lack of infrastructure for them ? Why are values not being taught in school? Spirituality and kindness?
Why is no one else responsible ? If it takes a village then the collective village has to step up, the content needs to change on channels, programming, selling alcohol to minors and vapes, the adults need to be better examples, etc etc not just the parents. Because it takes a village. So be the village.
