Children (from age zero to ten) often cannot contain themselves and often cannot be controlled by their parents or caretakers. Especially, while travelling in an aircraft they have problems with volume control and temperature adjustments. If they can’t say what they want, they cry. Sometimes they cry even when they can say what they want. They’re entirely unpredictable. In restaurants, public places, schools, play grounds, trains you go anywhere, you will see some uncontrolled children. They add to the chaos in public places by loudly screaming, throwing things which at times hurt other people, my question is why should others tolerate their behaviours? Children are also responsible to maintain social peace and harmony as much as adults. But, these are the effects when parents outsource raising their kids to nannies resulting in nanny raised kids.
A research suggests that parents feel closer to their children and they are lesse
r able to say ’no’ to their whims. The closeness comes at a cost as children have started to manipulate more influence on their parents; they are become more demanding and are spoilt. Their demand for instant gratification for anything is called pester- power. It is now days very much visible and troublesome. The idea that parents must apologize for any noise their child makes in public does not go too well with them. Some children are disrespectful or disobedient; they even pick fights with others, these traits and habits they learn from their parents. If the parents are demanding and rude, their children will be rude and demanding. Parents are solely responsible for how their children act. Sometimes kids just don’t realize it’s impolite to interrupt, pick their nose, or loudly comment on somebody’s looks.
Most parents opt for nuclear family styles; both are working and engage a nanny to raise their kids. The absence of parents in the first five years of a child’s life has its bad effects obviously. In the age of internet where children are not monitored what they are watching, is frightening. Sometimes children are left all by themselves to raise themselves. The internet becomes a companion for the child and his peers whom the parents don’t even know. It’s been observed that in some household, where one parent is earning sufficiently, the other still for the sake of his/her ambition leaves home for more money and career.
The trend today is immediately when the child is born, he or she is transferred to the Day Care Centre. In Day care Centres, you see parents bringing their children-infants as early as 6 am. They spend the next twelve hours outside the home. They pick their children at 6 pm. Then the rich parents hire nannies to take care of their children, and you see parents leaving their children even when the child is still sleeping, and coming back in the night, sometimes when the child is in bed. You find parents who only want to have children, but avoid the responsibility of raising their children. They hire nannies and abandon their children for others to rise. If a child is feeling unloved that affects how his/her development.
Under the tag of being “modern” the culture has taken away prayer and anything spiritual and moral in home or the school. Most children have no spiritual guideline and moral values. Parents don’t have time for teaching them cultural and spiritual values, therefore, the children learn bad things such as stealing, early sexual involvement, bulling, lack of respect to your elders etc easily. It’s easier to learn bad things than good things. Organizing evil is easier than organizing good. The simplicity of evil and complexity of good become visibly rooted in human nature.
Sigmund Freud wrote his book “Civilization and Its Discontents” from exile in London where he fled to escape Hitler’s war. He has mentioned in his book about a glaring flaw that practicing natural science without moral education has its evil effects on society. Like many, Freud failed to see the need for two systems of science with one capable of studying atoms and the other capable of studying values. The asymmetric evolution of the one without the other began with the Greeks and was advanced by the Europeans of the Renaissance and Age of Reason. During this period, the best minds failed to come up with a definition of good without using examples of good; without which there can be no science of values and morals to keep up with advancing natural science and technology, and its unintended consequences.
Coming back to parenting; a child is fully enriched if its mother and father do a good job, it will never ever forget in his life what his parents taught him. And, parents cannot begin to teach when children are teenagers. When you leave your child for someone to rise for you, especially in the first five years of the child, the most crucial years of the child, the fact remains you don’t know what people are doing behind your back with your child. The caretakers smoke, flirt, talk lies, steals your belonging. One of my friends in US kept a nanny for her little baby, the nanny used to smoke heavily. The child was absorbing the whole smoke. After a little while, that child developed severe lung problems. My friend paid heavily for the treatment.
In conclusion, in an era of nanny raised kids, we will find many excuses to make ourselves feel better and shrug our responsibilities for our kids’ behaviour. We have made it the priority to get our kids into the best schools and we have forgotten to teach them good manners which are way more important than good grades. But in such a competitive world, we are only forcing them to get ahead no matter what that takes. No wonder, the moral stamina of society has taken a toll.