It’s one of those somnolent afternoons at the start of summer. She has clambered onto a relatively crowded Metro coach along with a toddler. They are clearly returning from some sort of an event, going by the hopelessly inappropriate clothing we keep inflicting on ourselves at such dos.
The child, meanwhile, is getting restless, clambering by turns onto his mother’s lap, sliding to the space she has squeezed out for him, and getting down to stand lurching at the train movement, defying her efforts to keep him still, breaking into loud bawls when restrained.
Finally, she loses it. In a loud voice that startles a coach full of people busy on their phones, she warns him, first saying she will give him a slap, then other forms of punishment, and finally telling him: “I will cut off your legs.”
The child shows no effect, till the mother ultimately gives in and hands him her phone. Peace descends as he sits down, tapping on it.
Seconds later, an indignant young man walks up to the woman, and tells her that she is “absolutely in the wrong”. “You can’t talk to your child like this… You can be reported to the authorities.”
The woman, remarkably unintimidated, asks him: “Do you have any children?” When he says, “No, but…”, she shoots back: “When you have them, then talk. Anybody can sermonise… I could have just given him the phone, but then you would blame us for mobile addiction.”
The young man walks away, but a middle-aged guy takes his place. As other men around him nod, he tells the mother: “Things would not have come to this if you had resisted giving him the phone in the first place.”
By this time, the mother is spent, she doesn’t say anything. And I, a silent witness, am embarrassed. Should I have interrupted? The woman’s behaviour was of course hard to defend, but have we not all felt pushed to the brink by our children on bad days? In that coach with judgment hanging heavy in the air, could anyone have taken the mother’s side?
And, all this while, another doubt nags me: Could the men be as belligerent or I so quiescent had she belonged to the “English-speaking” class? Experience would have taught her to leave disciplining of the child to private. She might have been travelling with a help to cater to the child’s demands. Or, an individual gadget to keep the child at bay.
The biggest question I jostle with is this: Why do we never see men travelling alone with unruly toddlers? When I relate the incident back home, my husband reasons that perhaps the men spoke up as children invoke an instinctively protective reaction.
That may be, but it again brings forth the impossible demands modern child-rearing puts on parents. Of not just undying love, but of bottomless patience; of not just endless time, but every “fulfilled” second; of not just anticipating current needs, but those years into the future. And, always, always, feeling short.
In a recent New York Times podcast, sociologist Caitlyn Collins notes how both in the US, where there are few government-mandated provisions to support parents, and Sweden, where there are countless, fertility rates are falling.
One of the reasons, she says, is how we have taken the “joy” out of parenthood. How no one tells us the good things — just holding your little one’s fingers or being welcomed into their big hug, just having your teenage kids sneaking into bed with you, or just watching them mature and pick up on your emotions.
Most of the literature and movies around us are all cautionary tales about how to best “enable” a perfect child.
What if, in the Metro that day, one of us had given the mother a thought? Tried to give her a break? A perfect child may be impossible, but making one happy takes precious little.
National Editor Shalini Langer curates the fortnightly ‘She Said’ column
A perfect child may be impossible, but making one happy takes precious little
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14.04.2024
It’s one of those somnolent afternoons at the start of summer. She has clambered onto a relatively crowded Metro coach along with a toddler. They are clearly returning from some sort of an event, going by the hopelessly inappropriate clothing we keep inflicting on ourselves at such dos.
The child, meanwhile, is getting restless, clambering by turns onto his mother’s lap, sliding to the space she has squeezed out for him, and getting down to stand lurching at the train movement, defying her efforts to keep him still, breaking into loud bawls when restrained.
Finally, she loses it. In a loud voice that startles a coach full of people busy on their phones, she warns him, first saying she will give him a slap, then other forms of punishment, and finally telling him: “I will cut off your legs.”
The child shows no effect, till the mother ultimately gives in and hands him her phone. Peace descends as he sits down, tapping on it.
Seconds later, an........
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