Unbounded Bonds...

A survey carried out  a while back in the U.S., concluded that there was no apparent connection in the amount of time a parent spent with one's offsprings between the age of 3 and 11, and the degree of success they achieved as adults.

Firstly, the reason behind such a survey defeats me. Secondly, I still remember the beaming faces of the anchors as the results of the above survey were announced in the morning news. The mask of guilt slid off their faces and they looked purely relieved. "I feel so much better now; a weight has lifted off my chest," one of them confessed.

So, moms and dads, take this very systematically executed study seriously, and stop fretting about, feeling culpable over nothing. Forge ahead. Rid yourself of parental instincts, and join the work-force with renewed gusto. Potty-trained, standing on its own two feet,  armed with a workable vocab, your three-year-old is ready to go it alone into the world. Into the world of crèches and preschoolers it would tumble in , and under the supervision of qualified teachers and assistants, it would learn its shapes and colours, abcs and 1,2,3s. 

Yes, the child will grow inspite of us parents, but it is us who would have missed out on the utter miracle of watching it grow.  For, to participate in its little defeats and big feats, is a privilege, not a mere parental obligation or responsibility. 

Whoever said that when some parents try to squeeze in a day's work in a few hours to be home for the kids, it is because they are weighed down by a sense of guilt? Couldn't it just be that they are dying to return to the nest, to be with their brood, to kiss them, hug them, listen to their tattletale? Couldn't it just be that for them too, it is a that unbounded bond, and the unspoken need (and not guilt) wanting to be fulfilled? 

All said and done, I think a society where even the amount of time a parent spends with one's child is vaguely linked with the level of success he/she would attain as an adult, exposes an in-built fault-line in the platonic plates of its value system. It just goes on to illustrate that in our drive to modernize, and succeed in the professional life, we have lost our natural instincts along the way.