Parenting is a tough job. It is a physically and mentally demanding and challenging task, you need to be on this job 24/7 and 365 days a year, without any leave, there is no place to complain and you cannot quit the job. It is challenging irrespective of one or both parents working, surely, both parents working makes it more complicated and adds additional dimensions to it, but this does not mean work-at-home moms have an easier task at their hands. This is why childcare is so vital for parents in nuclear families. It is impossible for parents to provide the required support to their kids of all ages and perform other non-parental duties expected from them without having reliable and affordable childcare. However, this post is not about general parenting challenges or affordable childcare, this is about one of the most common pitfalls in parenting, parents passing on their generational trauma to their kids.
Most parents based on their upbringing and childhood experiences have certain insecurities, prejudices, and generational trauma. I and my wife are not an exception to this. Also, as an immigrant to another country or as a migrant to a different place in the same country, some of our insecurities get stronger or we add some more to our list. Knowingly or unknowingly parents try to instill these insecurities and concerns in their kids. We pass on to our kids our fears about job loss, job insecurity, ignorance about non-traditional career paths, lack of education, insecurities related to inter-caste or inter-racial marriage, prejudices related to gender and sexuality, concerns about poverty and abuse, and ignorance about various other issues. A single phrase "generational trauma" is used here to include all these parental insecurities, prejudices, and ignorance. The problem is that the parents pass on this general trauma with all good intentions, thinking that they are helping their child, thinking that they are protecting their child from obvious dangers that the poor child is unaware of. No matter how good the intention is, the fact remains that we are putting our own biases and fears into our children's minds.
Generational trauma can be in many forms, scaring our children that their poor academic performance will lead them to beg on the streets is one form, reminding our children continuously about how lucky they are compared to the parent's childhood is another form, criticizing children's choices based on our own fears and ignorance is yet another form, passing on our own bigotry beliefs is also a very common form, and this list can go on but I think you get my point. I am sure every parent will come up with some very good reason why they are persuading their child to follow a particular career path even if their child is interested in something else. No matter how good is our reasoning, the fact is that by doing this we are telling your kids their choices don't matter and undermine their decision-making ability about their own lives. As parents, we do these things instinctively without realizing the consequences of our well-intentioned encroachment on our kids' lives. However, this is avoidable. As a parent, whenever we feel a strong urge to fix our kids' lives, we need to pause and ask an honest question, are we passing our own generational trauma to our child? Remember that the world in which we grew up is not the same, even ten years back the way people interacted with each other was different compared to how we interact today. Are our fears and concerns that originate from our experiences in a world that doesn't exist anymore rational? If not, is it right to indoctrinate our kids with these things? If parents take this simple step and do some introspection, I believe we can stop the continuation of this generational trauma. Remember, as parents, we cannot stop every trauma that our children may experience, but we can definitely minimize our own contribution to their trauma.
Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic.
©Vinay Thakur, Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment