Isn’t it a riot to watch Abhishek and Aishwarya absolutely kill it on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ while endorsing the Indian culture of parents living with their adult married children? But does any cultural deviation come without its set of evils?
Yes, I might sound harsh to call a cultural practice ingrained in our culture for centuries evil. But it has survived only because of its unabashed service to patriarchy.
It’s well known that in Indian culture, male children are considered the parents’ support system for their old age. However, what about a male child who’s mentally or physically disabled?
When I was a teenager, I heard my grandmother lecture her daughter(my aunt), who had a physically disabled son and a perfectly healthy daughter, that she should have one more child because she couldn’t depend on her disabled son to be the support she deserves in her old age.
My fourteen-year-old self, who was already grasping the extent to which patriarchy was ruling my household, went on overdrive. Is this why humans have children? What is love? Does unconditional love exist?
It brought me to the larger question: What is parenting? Is it a deal, a transaction with the prize at the back of the mind? Is it an investment that parents put their love, care, and money into to get the returns when they’re old?
As a teenager, I grappled with the harsh realities of life, and this particular aspect of human nature didn’t sit well with me. Somehow, I knew I would never be a parent solely because I expected to receive the same care that I gave my child.
I didn’t want to believe that relationships without expectations, especially parent-child relationships, didn’t exist. There must be something more than the capitalist and materialistic side to humans.
It’s the same side that would revel in an exquisite piece of art at a gallery, listen to tranquil music in the dark for hours, and be moved to tears by eloquent poetry. The essence of being human can not only be reproduction and survival. There has to be more.
Now that I’m a parent, I’ve realized unconditional love exists, but it’s rare. It’s almost impossible to find in an Indian household where women are trained to treat male children as more valuable than female ones.
In spite of my experiences, I still want to believe in a no-expectation, no-emotional-extortion clause for parents.
My mother-in-law told me it’s a shame that her nephew has only one son, who has autism. She was trying to convince him to have one more child because this one doesn’t count. I stared at her. Can she even listen to herself? These are the same parents who don’t miss a chance to claim publicly what sacrifices they made for their children. Were those sacrifices (if there were any?) actually for their children or, in a roundabout way, for themselves?
A physically or mentally disabled child needs their parents more than a healthy one. I know it doesn’t mean that the parent cannot have another child, but trying to coerce someone that they need another child via their selfish logic is inhuman.
In an ideal world, love should be unconditional. But it’s not. The parent-child relationship is lopsided in favour of the children. Both parties do not give and receive love and support equally. But that’s the natural order of humanity. A child often has more power, and the parent is supposed to love the child unconditionally, regardless of their disabilities and limitations.
But does this ideal scenario exist?
In fact, in Indian society, an adult child is often advised by their parents to give birth to a backup son since having only one child, especially a daughter, doesn’t seem like a wise investment. Wanting a daughter is inane, and spending energy on bringing up a disabled child is downright futile. Go ahead and bring up another child in a household that is already struggling.
It’s precisely the logic of India’s elderly generation for the need to have a healthy boy in the family. A woman can have seven girls, but still, she’ll be forced to have more children in want of a son.
At the centre of all these expectations is the Indian joint family system. In a system that endorses patriarchy, one or more healthy males will bring in their spouses to cater to the needs of the elderly in their house without giving spouses the right to have any dreams and goals of their own. Indians might talk about their joint family culture with the West with pride. However, the truth is that it reinforces and empowers the already powerful members of a family while suppressing the weak further.
Why is the selfishness of parents normalized in Indian culture? And is reducing a child that’s not a healthy cis-male to Nothing part of Indian culture? If it is, then what’s so great about this culture?
Photo by Daria Nepriakhina 🇺🇦 on Unsplash
