Parenting in the age of anxiety: raising children in india in the 21st century
Abha Adams
Aleph book company
Rs.399 Pages 224
Well-known K-12 educator Abha Adams discusses the challenges and choices parents face, and must make, while raising children in these fractious times
Abha Adams’ reputation as India’s pre-eminent educationist precedes her, and for good reason. As a pioneering force in education, among her many accomplishments, her instrumental contribution in the setting up of the country’s iconic institutions, widely regarded as schools that are centres of excellence — Shri Ram schools & Step by Step — themselves speak volumes of her knowledge and insights. In a life dedicated to education, her enduring and distinguished career began as a student at Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College. Abha Adams is the embodiment of wisdom, a fountainhead of an all-encompassing philosophy of teaching and parenting with contemporary relevance, more pressing and urgent than ever.
It is in this very real context, against a backdrop of severe identity-crisis and a loss-of-self, that Adams’ book Parenting in the Age of Anxiety (PITAA), becomes pertinent, immediately applicable, and serves as a valuable guide to parents, caregivers, guardians, teachers, mentors and principals.
The book’s cover is disarmingly simple, but the content is potent. Adams discusses the challenges and choices parents face, and must make, while raising children in these fractious times. Parents, teachers, counsellors, child psychologists, psycho-therapists, family therapists, and most importantly, children share their first-hand experiences in this book. Besides confronting challenges like early puberty, advancing adolescence, and fitting in with friends to the pain points of teenage years, PITAA also addresses present-day issues like mental health and well-being and problems of raising children with special needs. Critical issues like substance abuse, self-harm, sexual orientation, suicide, and teenage pregnancies, which are usually brushed under the carpet, are discussed at length.
Among a slew of self-help books, there are some key differentiators that make PITAA stand head and shoulders above the rest.
First, Adams is an author who represents an educated, deeply insightful amalgam of real-world, current and relevant experience. The value of career-academics is unquestionable. However, in her case, theoretical knowhow is supplemented by extensive practical, hands-on experience. Second, the author is successfully able to share case histories and offer solutions to three distinct audience-sets directly — parents, educators and students. Third, the most crucial age-range whilst raising children is also addressed: from birth to teenage years. Simply written, yet thorough, this succinct book is a treasure of observations and result-oriented suggestions.
Fourth, it presents a very nuanced understanding of behaviour, triggers, circumstances, stimuli, and resulting manifestations; born from which are solutions bedrocked in a winning merger of practicality and prudence.
The cornerstone of civilisation is not science; it is language. Adams elucidates this critical point by going to the very source of technology when she shares that all tech magnates, from the pioneering Bill Gates to the eccentric genius Elon Musk, ensure that their own children have no access to tech products for the longest possible time!
This fact directly addresses, targets, and speaks of what is ostensibly the most alarming and pressing issue that plagues humanity today: parents and children being more connected to their devices than to each other. This modern-day pandemic is giving rise to a plethora of problems, issues, misunderstanding, unhealthy expectations and pressures, while reducing distance between parents and children leading to stress, anxiety and a barrage of unsavoury psychological trauma.
This is an important book, relevant to current times. A book that needs to be read; its observations to be noted; and its suggestions seriously considered and implemented. It must be read by parents, guardians and care-givers, as well as by educators, institutions and mentors.
We must understand one universal truth. Happiness and contentment, above and beyond every other aspiration, including personal milestones, professional glory and triumphs, monetary goals, are transitory. An absolute non-negotiable prerequisite of building a happy and contented society is to nurture actualised citizens engaged, first in the ‘good of self’, as also the ‘good of other’. To actualise this mantra, this book will be the wisest investment you’ve made. It is family therapy for a modest price.
Kartik Bajoria
(The Book Review)
