Article by- KAVITHA KRISHNAMURTHY (Founder of Head Over Heels School)
Parental push means pressure on children to excel and pursue goals in life. It can be academics, sports or any other activity. This pressure has positive as well as negative impact on children. Excessive pressure causes anxiety and low self-esteem. This can damage parent-child interaction and relation. Let’s know more about the journey of parenting in all different perspectives, in all these years.
ERA OF 40’S -50’S
Allow me to take you on a little journey from the era of 1940’s and 50’s to the current generation of the 20’s. Way before independence, the only objective that parents could have was for their child to be literate, to make sure that the child can get to a school to at least read what’s written around them. Some affluent ones could actually have the privilege to go overseas and complete their dream education in the hope that they would come back to India and help better with the freedom movement.
ERA OF 70’S–80’S
Then was the following generation that was reasonably literate or also moderately educated and could understand the importance of education for their children too. These educated ones were the parents in the 1970’s and 80’s who ensured their children went to a decent school and kept focus on completing school and college. This generation did everything in their hands to provide all the needs to complete education irrespective of what marks were achieved. The objective wasn’t a first class or higher grade but was knowledge gathering and focus on the ability to aim for a good job in
order to sustain a certain
standard of living.
Parenting has never been easy and never will be. It’s an endless process that keeps going in loops only to know that some loops fitted in right while some failed. Parents always mean the best for their child however as it’s rightly said – until you are a parent yourself your will never know this.
ERA OF 2000 ( Y2K)
Then came the parents of the Y2K generation and mostly to be called the ones who had their share of achievements under certain basic privileges, unlike their parents’ struggle, who now felt that their children had nothing much to fight for so they better fight for the best in the chosen field of education. In doing so they sub consciously ensured their child did nothing more than getting comparatively higher marks than everyone around. Like mentioned earlier, parents only have the best in mind for their child however how to achieve this best has become a highly competitive work. More than competition between children, the current affairs of education seems like competition between parents
ERA OF COMPETITON AND COMPARISON
Considering the best school (at times mistaking the best one to be the most expensive one), the best board, the best tutor (based on the highest paid for a one to one) are just a handful of ways in which parents choose to spend on their child’s education. Yes, the spending capacity has increased multifold however the understanding capacity around education is yet to increase at the same pace. With an array of educational institutions coming up each year giving one option better than the other, the choice of selection clubbed with the expertise to select has gotten fairly confusing. This level of competition is a dreadful space to be in but the current generation of children are facing this situation year after year.
PARENTAL PRESSURE
With each parent having better financial status than the previous generation and the spending levels on education going higher each day, the subsequent pressure caused on children is also substantially increasing. Whether the pressure is caused by parents due to worry about their future or to ensure return for value of money spent on education, is yet to be researched. At the end of the day, we all are forced to agree that the pressure is existent and visible, it is getting onto the children and causing internal imbalance.