The role of parents in an uncertain world

The hardest thing about bringing up a kid is the values that you want him to inculcate. It's never a straightforward equation, where you put in the right input and you get the right output. Different kids respond differently to the same input and produce vastly different outputs.


Take for example a parent who always tries to teach his kid to save up and be frugal. He did it in a way that forces his kid to scrimp and save and the kid grew up having the mindset that money is very important. Here's two diverging paths that might happen; extreme but entirely in the realm of possibilities. The kid either grows up spending crazily to 'make up' for his lost childhood and his whole adult life will be about reclaiming some parts of his life that he didn't experience but other kids did. Or, he will continue to save and scrimp like his parents did, perhaps to gain their approval and therefore their affection. It's hard to tell in advance which paths the kid will take. It's like the Schrodinger's cat phenomenon where both outcomes are possible but it'll be determined only when it's determined.


Extrapolating this idea, a frugal parent might or might not come from extravagant grandparents. But folklore always mention about having a generation of alternating characteristics. For example, you have a grandparent generation who are frugal, then a parent generation who are extravagant (to make up for their frugal upbringing), then a current generation of kids who are frugal again. This, of course, is not fixed in stone, and the unpredictability of the next generation to follow what the previous generation values are, is what I'm talking about here in the first place.

Given this, can we really engineer the kind of values that we want out kids to have? I guess we can only try our best. This is important because trying our best is the only thing we can do. In light of this, it's also important not to blame our parents for whatever ills that this current generation is suffering. More likely than not, when it's time for you to become a parent, who knows, maybe your kids will also blame you for whatever nonsense you've taught them that works for you but utterly failed on them.


A good example will be the "study hard then you'll be settled for life" myth. I use the word myth because it's a socialised fact; everyone knows it and follows it, but nobody really question why or how effective it is. Until now. Parents growing up without much education, and thereupon seeing their peers who are fortunate enough to study and landing well-paying office jobs, are the ones perpetuating this myth. It's the right thing for their generation because having a O'lvl cert back then is as good as having a degree in university. If you had a university degree back then, you must be the top 1% of the most highly educated, and by extension, the most sought after job seeker in that generation. Is it going to work for this generation now? I doubt so.


Going forward, what other values or ideas have you tried teaching your child that works for you by might not work for them? Who can tell? It takes a rather long time for the kid to grow up before you can say for certain what works and what doesn't. By then, it's too late. It's like you bought into a share to hold it for the long term and looking at it after 20 yrs, you realised it's a dud. By then, the period of remediation is long gone and you have a kid who might have blamed you for what you've taught eons ago.


The physical part of parenting is never easy, but it can be easily outsourced. The ideological part of parenting is the tricky part. Firstly, you don't know whether what you taught them is still going to be helpful for them in their future that you no longer belong to. Second, even if you know for sure, whatever you try to inculcate in them might turn out to be quite opposite to what you intended. Thirdly, it's not like you have many chances to go through trial and error. Unless you have a kid now and after 20-30 yrs you have another kid, you pretty much only have 1 chance. Given the circumstances, how can someone ever say that they are ready to be a parent, don't even talk about being a good one?


Still, in the light of all the uncertainty, we have to make a choice:


1. It's important to teach your kids adaptability and resilience. How? I don't know. I just know that it's important to prepare them for the future they are going to inherit, not yours.

2. Don't blame yourself as a parent if things don't go right. Don't blame your parents if things don't go right for you. Nobody knows what is happening and in the thick of the battle where there's a concealing fog of war, you can only do the best you can taking into account all the information available to you at that moment. Point 1 comes in mind - adaptability and be resilience.

3. Beware of unintended consequences. Beware of it, but ultimately what else can you do?

4. Be prepared to fail as a parent. Be prepared to fail as a person growing up in this world. There's no perfection to be attained, only improvements. In spite of all this, love yourself, love your parents.


After this internal dialogue, I end up still being uncertain. I know nothing but I have a feeling being uncertain and knowing that you know nothing is the destination of our journey.