Rippling Effect of Indian Parenting

1. I do wonder at the brilliance of Psychoanalyst Erik Homburger Erikson (1902-1994), who propounded the 8 stages theory (trust vs mistrust, Autonomy vs Shame etc) of human development and feel that there is a need for all of us, especially the parents of adolescent children, to comprehend it. Erikson ushered in the fact that the adolescent period of development is an exploratory period of development of the offspring, which is a transition from parental dependence to self-direction and self -determination.

2. I have often visited the Govt colleges of Karnataka, Bengaluru (semi urban/rural) with an NGO team as one of its volunteering mentors for soft skill training, and have been exposed to dealing with late adolescent children (16-19 years), which happens to be my area of research for my doctoral work. The parents often escorted their adolescent children to the seminars which dismayed me. I have now shifted to Kolkata in Dec 2022 and I realise that parents here do the same with their grown- up children evidently displayed when during my morning walk, I see them in hordes, dropping their children to the school bus or even to the school premises!

3. While I came across academic brilliance and zest for learning amongst the students, I could also perceive lack of self- exploratory mindsets and inability to think independently without the involvement of their parents. It made me realize that it is the parent’s fixated sense of attachment with the offspring and a lurking anxiety about isolation from the loop of rearing that overshadow the child’s vital stage of self- exploration and formation of Identity.

4 The co-dependency of parents with their adolescent children is an aspect which requires a certain level of introspection, which if not reigned, will jeopardize the need for autonomy inherently necessary for growing children for their transition to dependable and capable adults.