My friend is teacher in a school - the Delhi Public School.
She is popular with her students, which is strange, considering, that her pupils are long haired teenagers with a war cry towards authority. Incidentally, she loves her job.
So I ask her” Why are you stressed?
She says “I have two lovely kids aged 7 and 10.”
(Well I think they are brats, but being polite, I do not say that).
So, instead I say, “How do you manage a class full of 48 teenage brats and not get stressed?
She says that it’s not the same. Baby sitting other people’s kids is better.
Even with the best baby sitters running 2 shifts under the supervision of her mother- in- law, her kids are complaining about being deprived. She worries about the long term consequences of imperfect child management. She is seriously reviewing the situation, and planning on getting into better child management systems involving tutorials, dance school, finger painting classes and…
Being experienced in the fine art of politics and proficient in the new course of the art of living, I quote the unfailing methodology of success “your in-laws are always better in every way, than my in- laws.”
She says, “I applied that formula that but it had a technical hitch - my husband agrees! But I would not enlist the services of his in-laws too…”
Motherhood has become a totally new phenomenon for us modern Indian ladies.
Our Mummy says – “Competence in child rearing is equivalent to training a mammal to keep its epiglottis closed under water! But do we really need to watch over the new mammalian species so he/ she, does not drown while breast feeding, or over the coke at MacDonald’s? “
But Mummy is wrong. Performance is the keyword today.
That is why for us, surrogate parenting is no longer the issue. Once anyone could baby -sit your baby, but not anymore. We are not looking for substitutes for parenting but superior surrogates who will compensate for our deficiencies and improve the quality of our kids.
Finding the right babysitter is directly proportional to the level of perfection in the kid’s development. This is where the expertise is directed towards, the science of good babysitting. Do not get fooled by the Maids in Macdonald’s who accompany parents at large social gatherings involving joint and extended families, as babysitters…they are passé…
Today, what has emerged as a superpower, the supreme babysitting services is the Educational system in India.
From the age of 2 years they can be used as the best in surrogate parenting. All we need to do is to find a good school, and afford it.
In fact the Government of India is extending schooling years on a regular basis, because of the pressures from mothers.
Today kids in India spend at least 3 years in playschool, which expect you to begin training in nursery rhymes in the womb to save precious education time. 12 years in regular school is prevalent. And I am happy to announce that I have the backing of a million mothers country wise, and around a few crores world wide, who wish to extend schooling till the age of 40 years for boys, and the age of 55 for girls so that they can become properly mature, under supervised babysitting services, before they become active participants of society.
It has led to a few lopsided laws in the country, which some people believe need to be changed.
In India our youth have a different minimum age for marrying – 21 for boys and 18 for girls. They can drive, vote and marry, produce babies, but they cannot drink alcohol by law in a bar before they are 21 years of age.
Parents are comfortable, but social change always has fallouts.
All this has led to a revolution no less bloody than any other. Historians call it The Indian Revolution of the Babysitting Era.
This is about a very cold generational war, and the formation of The BBB of India: Bharatiya Babysitters Body of India.
The BBB started as a dangerous underground movement by the experienced generation of mothers and in-laws and others who felt that their superiority in babysitting was being undermined by women who felt that the new fangled information resource like the internet, pediatricians with dubious connections with sales force of pharmaceutical, toys and diaper companies, schools with secret alliances with textbook and computer companies and so and so forth… were not good influences for kids.
Today, we have nothing to fear because the BBB of India got official recognition as an NGO with Funding from the UNICEF and is now affiliated to The World Baby Sitters Body,( international is better than desi, since the NRIs have become a majority). They are now expanding their agenda to babysitting not only for human babies but pets and plants too…
(Incidentally, my Mother- in- Law has recently been appointed as the Vice President, so now you can woo me as a person with contacts, all bribes are welcome too).
Today, the BBB of India is revising their manifesto, in order to accommodate new modalities.
This trend in society towards institutions rather than individuals for child rearing is a trend that cannot be stopped. The more information oriented we become the less confidence we will have on our level of individual expertise. We have spent centuries of time raising children to be the clones and inheritors of our selves. Today we have new dreams about creating future generations who are not just survivors but successors in a terrain that is unfamiliar to us. And I am not talking about just Mars or Jupiter but our backyard and playgrounds which have new terrain - trees replaced by plastic slides, free pornography for all ages, good instant cooking in cling film, and friends on twitter…
Why protest against the new. Most the old remains too.
And sometimes it’s refreshingly good. Like the legal ban on bride burning, but no law on killing the plants- in- law.
Copyright © 2014, Lima Sehgal
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