the critical issue . Teach your children

Long years ago, the British poet Philip Larkin wrote a poem that’s been coming back to me again and again these last few months. Here’s what he said:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad

They may not mean to, but they do

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

There’s nothing very profound in Larkin’s wisdom. All of us know the truth of what he says here, but it’s still worth remembering how, even today, nearly eight decades after he wrote this verse, little has changed.

I’m reminded of a conversation with a student a year or so ago. Bright, intelligent, independent, she nevertheless had to submit to being engaged to a man she did not know.

Realistic that this would have to be her eventual fate, she agreed, but bought herself a bit of time to study. She’d earned a decent amount of money from being a software professional, there were a number of interesting courses on offer, many were residential and away from home, and so she paid for herself and became a student.

The engagement, however, hung over her head like a sword, as did the marriage that would surely follow. Perhaps, she thought, the time that she now had could also be used to get to know the man she would marry — except that a woman who takes the initiative to get to know the male partner did not fit his description of the wife he wanted.

She was mystified when he rejected all her advances. They would spend a life together — surely it would help if they had the chance to know each other a bit before they were married? But she met a wall of resistance, and a lack of support from the parents who insisted that eventually “everything would be all right”.

If insistence, with the claim that “we know what’s best for you”, is one thing, guilt tripping is another. So many young people I meet in the different courses I teach describe how they are often told that if they don’t participate in family rituals, or give in to family pressure, they will bring unhappiness to their parents and their families.

Not surprisingly, much of this — the pressure to conform, to give in, to adjust — devolves on girls and women. And equally unsurprisingly, the women too are often so conditioned that they take it as their responsibility. So, instead of resisting, they simply accept.

It’s not always the case though that parents succeed. Sometimes help comes from unexpected quarters. I’ve known male students who, when they begin to think about gender roles and gender discrimination, will take their questions into their homes and try to work with their parents to change things.

And sometimes they manage. I recall one of my students from a course on feminism asking himself why he had never noticed the discrimination his sisters faced at home. Why was it that he had always had the freedom and the sisters had not? Over a period of time, he managed to convince his parents how unjust this was, and to bring about a measure of fairness in his home.

The tragedy is that he succeeded precisely because he was a man. Had it been one of his sisters trying to make this change, perhaps it would not have worked.

Patriarchy has very strong roots. Like the roots of most trees that have a long and flourishing life, the roots of patriarchy insert themselves into our lives in insidious and twisting ways. Before we know it, they’re there, and entrenched, and it seems almost natural that they are around.

But if patriarchy is entrenched, its subversions are inventive. Another thing I’ve found in my teaching experience is how youngsters can find ways to defeat the designs of their parents.

Education, for example, becomes a sort of escape. There are so many different kinds of courses on offer these days. They can be in management, in creative writing, in photography, music and more. Many institutes are residential, many are co-educational. If parents can be persuaded that a year or two spent in such a course will help (and may even qualify you for the marriage market where the capacity to earn is now valued by middle class families), then there’s a getaway for you.

It’s in these getaways that you learn new things, make new friends and find new strategies. In the end, while you may go back home and give in to pressure — and once again this is mostly on young women — you still carry some of the knowledge of the possibility of change in you.

And perhaps then, when you become parents yourself, you’ll be careful not to fuck up your kids in quite the same way.

Urvashi Butalia

Urvashi Butalia is an editor, publisher and director of Zubaan. Email her at: blink@thehindu.co.in

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