Shweta Bachchan Nanda on the brave new world of millennial parenting
I’m your regular Gen-Xer—married at 22, had my first child at 23 and my second at 26. This raises a few eyebrows: “What were you thinking?”, “Weren’t you too young?” etc. Back then, I wasn’t such an anomaly. At least in the Indian context. Over the years, I have managed, without causing much permanent damage, to usher my little girl to adulthood (she turns 21 this month) and my son through adolescence but it also meant I devoted my entire life to their upbringing. My Gen-Zers are close to flying the nest, and it gives me space to pause and reflect on the stuff we got right and the stuff we messed up. So, here’s my two cents on parenting and the latest crop of millennial parents (parennials, if you must).
Barely out of Sweet Valley High romances, I plunged head first into diapers, breastfeeding, colic, immunisations—the syntax of being a new parent is daunting, to say the least. Add to that a flustered, insecure mom and you are on course for drama of Game Of Thrones proportions. You learn the hard way that waking up your mother in the middle of the night—pyjamas covered in baby puke (a cocktail of ripe papaya, durian fruit and banana) asking her, tearfully, what you should do because the baby just won’t drink milk—is not ideal. Being a grandparent means all the cuddles and no changing diapers. The only other option was trusty Dr Spock. But when you resemble the cat’s dinner, opening a book to find a solution is hardly the best option. But it was all we had back then.
Google on board
Today is a brave new world. Millennials, I read somewhere, make up the highest percentage of parents today—that’s two out of every five parents. And they are surprisingly good at it. For starters, they start much older. If there is anything this generation knows how to do well it’s to carpe the diem out of their lives while doing so. They swipe left and right, perhaps commit to a relationship or two before they decide they are ready to have kids, and that would be when they would be ready for marriage. When they go into parenthood, they are older and better informed than I ever was. It helps tremendously that any niggling doubt can be Googled instantly and within seconds you have some sort of take on what’s bothering you. Copy-paste the puke-infused midnight panic scenario and replace irate grandparent with Google or an online forum of similarly sleep-deprived parents and—bingo. Crisis averted. Or are there too many options out there to make sense of?
It takes a village
Another advantage millennials have over us Gen-Xers are the dads. They’re engaged, involved and not afraid to strap on a Baby Bjorn. Don’t get me wrong, men still have a long way to go to equal parenting, but a good father today means half the parenting unit—organising play dates, cooking dinner, waking up for the graveyard shift and rehearsing lines for the school play—not passing out cigars outside the delivery room and Rip Van Winkling it to years later when they teach the progeny how to drive, fancying themselves worthy recipients of the “World’s #1 dad” mug you forced your child to buy him for Father’s Day. Gone are the helicopter moms of the past; today’s more popular “drone parenting” allows for hovering but in a more silent-surveillance sort of way, leaving ample space for unstructured time for kids to explore and adapt to their environment. Children are encouraged to be individuals and they grow up having a strong sense of social responsibility. Millennials may not put emphasis on traditional landmarks in child rearing but strive to bring up their kids to be well-adjusted, empathetic citizens of the world. Today, kids are given more say in decisions that impact their lives, and I applaud parents for this.
The change up
But of course, there are pitfalls to growing up in the digital age—scrolling through my feeds I have seen more ultrasound images of foetuses belonging to strangers than I have of my own children. The first day of school—scratch that—of potty training will be chronicled on social media for the world to consume. (Navya and Agastya, thank your stars your information is tucked away in a baby book.) But I can’t help but wonder: Twenty years from now, will we live in a world driven by socially conscious narcissistic empaths? And how will that affect just about everything? Makes you sit up and take notice! These infants are going to be responsible for passing legislation that could allow us to be shipped to an old-age facility on Mars to live out the rest of our days, hooked up to oxygen tanks and fighting over water. But my money is still on the millennials to do a better job with theirs than we did with them. And as insurance, I am totally investing in an artisanal cheese set and banishing all stemware in favour of mason jars.
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