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The other day, I had a long chat with an old secondary school friend of mine. It was simply an ordinary conversation covering various topics of mutual interest, like many times before. We fondly recalled the carefree days of a bygone era when the future was a blank sheet of paper eagerly waiting to be coloured with our choices and imagination, guided by our family and friends, whether positively or negatively.
So, during the last phone call, my friend went on a rant about one of our mutual friends who had no control over his children. He claimed they had him wrapped around their fingers. This common friend, let's call him Joe, is a widower who lost his wife ten years ago to cancer. He had to play both mother and father to his two teenage girls then. Over the years, despite the ups and downs of their adolescence, he managed to raise them into independent women who have carved out their own futures.
What is Joe's problem, then? He feels that his common friend's daughters are not sympathetic to his situation and do whatever they please without considering his feelings. He worries that Joe will be left alone in his twilight years to fend for himself. The daughters are already planning to live their lives abroad.
I wanted to tell my schoolmate, "What's your problem? You are in no position to comment. You don't have children. You don't talk!”
Being the nice person I am, I didn't say that. I just told him it was complicated.
You see, my classmate was so full of himself that he never hitched up to anyone until he was 50; that too in a long-distance relationship with someone beyond the prime of her youth.
What my schoolmate feels right now is no different from how my wife and I felt before we had children. We had such grand ideas about how we wanted to shape our children to perfection when the time came. We used to scorn tantrum-throwing kids and promised our children would not behave that way. Of course, all of that proved to be false in real life. Many compromises had to be made, and ideal parenting only existed beautifully in our imaginations.
Then there were the external influences in the form of TV, especially sitcoms, which gave a composite picture of what ideal parents should be like. These TV parents never raise their voices. They take in all abuses and forgive them in the spirit of learning. They allow dating and weekend sleepovers. A bear hug resolves all uncertainties.
After that, Oprah and her new wave of human empowerment strode in. Suddenly, traditional values disappeared. In came Dr Oz and his quackery. Everyone at some stage believed they had PTSD of some sort and felt they had to speak out against the cruelty of the world. If the boomers thought they would be strong, they were mistaken. They saw the world as hostile and threatened to retreat into a safe space they would create for themselves. The rest of the world would be shut out, and time would seem to stand still for them.
The internet crept in, which no gatekeeper could hold, throwing parental control into disarray. What parents had aimed to teach through their example over the years was shattered as an unseen force, from God knows where, rattled everything overnight. There was no turning back.
My classmate would never realise that people of my generation are part of the sandwich generation, meaning those with both children and elderly parents. We have to kowtow to our parents and bend backwards to meet the whims and fancies of our children, sandwiched between two dominant generations. One demands its way or no way. The other wants things not now, but yesterday!
