In yesterday’s diary you read that some Indian people send their children far away to boarding schools. While I have not seen this here in Germany a lot, someone told me that this is a system that comes from the UK – which is logical, considering that India was influenced by the English a lot. And I even heard and know that in richer circles and in the higher society, also German parents do this. This shows me that you cannot anymore just describe a lot of things as ‘Indian’ or ‘western’ but that these borders are blurring more and more.
This actually happens a lot and the first area of life where I can see that is the one of parenting. We already have the example of the school that parents send their children to. The same thing happens with the basic ideas of parenting. What would you generally think of Indian parenting? That they give their children more freedom, that they let them play in the dirt as well, that they don’t want to give that many rules and just let children be children. For western countries you would normally believe that they give their children a lot more rules and structure, that they don’t want them to make themselves and their clothes dirty and that they generally give a lot of instructions on what to do.
It is not like this. Maybe you have to say not anymore. Or you need to specify the social status, financial situation or residential location of the people you are talking about. Because it does make a difference!
While there are a lot of people in India, especially among the poorer people or in smaller towns and villages, who don’t mind their children dirty, you cannot say this for everyone. I think you cannot even say ‘the average Indian’. People of higher society but also middle class parents who are striving to get further than their own parents ever could, people in metro cities but also in smaller towns – there are so many families that emphasize cleanliness these days, that are strict with their children and that make it clear to them that playing out on the road or in dirt is something they should not be doing!
If a modern western person could watch those Indian parents and how some mothers nearly faint when they see their sons playing cricket and maybe falling into the dirt, they would find it very unnatural and wrong. Old-fashioned and outdated, far away from a child’s nature. It was the concept of one or even two generations ago that children should not get dirty. Nowadays, parents in the west pay for their child to have the possibility to get dirty! They know how important it is for a child to play in a forest, get his or her hands muddy and sandy and to experience different fabrics and surfaces!
Parents being overprotective an issue of the west? Not anymore! Parents trying not to fill the schedule of their children too much so that they can also live? Not only something Indian parents think of!
India and the west are getting closer to each other, the boundaries blur. Just try to accept the good of the other country, only then globalization has really been beneficial!
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