Pen Parenting And People

I was waiting at the Adyar signal to cross the road,  and I noticed a ragged woman with hardly any garment on her to hide her modesty, standing and knocking at the window of a plush car. Driving the car was a ravishing , seemingly well educated , well bred and "independent " woman. The signal timer still showed 45secs more for the light to turn green. What apalled was that neither did the woman stop begging nor did the other lady have the patience and heart to give her a penny. Another old lady who was walking by stopped and fed this ragged woman with water and gave her a 10. The ragged woman walked away happy and relieved.  Although I have never advocated feminism strongly , I have always felt that definitely our mothers and grandmothers were victims of inequality and gender bias and they did give up what they could have nurtured. But how does it make sense to cascade it to the next generation. Education should make women stronger and more diverse. It should make them ...

Perfect Parenting has picked up like never before.  When we fail to do the right thing at the right moment or we get intimidated by our peer parents, the feeling of guilt and the self-afflicted loser trait gets us into one of the below situations: a) Redouble your efforts to attain perfection, even if it’s giving you a headache. b) Flog yourself till you bleed c) Shut the mind and thoughts and go take a warm shower. d) Thank the guilt and stare at it accepting its presence Now walk backward and see what all you could have done to be the parent that your children might have wanted instead of berating yourself. Not surprisingly, research shows that (d) works best, particularly when you give yourself a pat on the back and accept that you're doing the best you can at the moment. Ignoring the problem (c) doesn't work. Beating yourself up (b) doesn't work. And perfectionism (a) doesn't work.  Join the club of humanity! We are perfe...

In my previous post I had spoken about how duties and daily chores are not gender specific  and how we should stop glorifying them this post goes into further details of the gender jokes. The biggest disservice we do to women is telling them that they are equal to men. We fail to prepare them for their reality and, by doing so, we set them up for a lifetime of struggle, disappointment and misery. Lets stop that at least with our daughters.Men and women are not equal -- they are different. Like apples and oranges.  This whole bringing-up-your-daughters-the-way-you'd-bring-up-your-sons business is farce. When did we decide that there is an ideal human being prototype and it's "Male? Why is no one bringing up their sons like they'd bring up their daughters?"Somewhere in this gender war , this sexist quote also has gotten into the rut. Many women of my generation are "brought up like sons". Like in Hindi we say "Tu Mera Beta hai ".W...