The modern thinking Indian

I read this article in a newspaper, and was shocked (and shocked is a mild word for what I felt). Read a few excerpts, and then we can discuss further:

Dr Harish Shetty, however, doesn't buy the logic. "Drinking with dad is just as bad as it can sow the seeds of alcoholism in adult life.'' He feels that there are some parts of the big bad world that parents should not get inside the homes. It's not just at house parties that alcohol is 'on the house. 'A Congress MLA's son from an elite school in the western suburbs celebrated his birthday party at Taj Land's End, where booze flowed freely until the wee hours of the morning.
For several city children, "beer and breezers aren't really alcohol.''Kids have often sneaked miniature bottles of vodka into the classroom and downed liquor in the loo. Some have even been caught for it, after falling asleep at school. Students at one south Mumbai school have openly gulped down vodka in Bisleri bottles during the school socials.

This is downright scary. Alcohol is not just a party drink; when drunk in moderation and under control, it can be accepted. However, there are many dangers to alcohol drinking that most people know about (and are outlined briefly). Please add more such stuff if you know about this:

1. Alcohol can be pretty harmful to the system. Regular drinking of alcohol leads to damage of the liver, and a craving to have a regular session with the bottle. Damage to the liver (enough to cause lasting damage) increases in probability due to the intake of alcohol.

2. During the formative years, children (or young adults as they would like to be called) are susceptible to peer pressure, and may be forced to join even when they would desire not to.

3. Similarly, in today's world, even with so many other careers available, the need for a good education is a significant factor in moving ahead in life; if children start to discover alcohol and spend time in such parties during this time, there will be a percentage of children who will be actually affected by alcohol.

4. Once a parent allows children to start consuming alcohol, it is one major moral point off; it will be much more difficult for a parent to try and prevent more 'social' drinking at parties / clubs.

5. Nothing comes for free. With an increasing proportion of population becoming obese, and coming down with the 'lifestyle' illnesses, such as diabetes, increased alcohol content just ends up causing more damage to the body.

6. Consider the case where you have given you almost adult child the keys to a vehicle (bike / car). He / she ends up at a friend's party where alcohol is served (you can maybe control going to clubs or other such places (how!!)), and drives home with a fair amount of alcohol in the bloodstream. Accidents happen, and in Mumbai, you stand the chance of having to get your child out of jail (where people caught drinking and driving are sent for atleast a day's imprisonment).

You can add many more reasons, and you could argue that this is a trend that one cannot stop, and you may be right; that does not mean however that one should accept this kind of behavior as normal. Out of readers, how many have faced such a situation, and do you know of things that will help out in this regard ?

Labels: Alcohol, Child, Health, Morality, Parents, Responsibility

Recently I came across a situation that was terribly distressing. There was a school friend of mine (we are talking about the late 80's) with whom I had lost contact some years back. During the time that I remember spending with him in school, he was a good friend. However, as happens many times when you go out of school, and then go to different colleges, we lost touch (even though he was in the same city).
Then, while browsing through the friends list of a friend in Facebook, I came across his name. I promptly added him to my friends list, and within a couple of days, we had regained contact. In email through Facebook, I got to know what he had done after school. He had an interest in going abroad, and so, he did the usual software engineering route, joined a services company, and within a year got the chance to go abroad. He jumped at the chance, and moved with the software company to its US office; and after a year or so, jumped jobs and joined an American company.
All the time, his parents were at home, here, along with his younger daughter. Soon, when the daughter did her education and became a doctor, they found a good match for the daughter (another doctor settled in London) and the marriage happened; the daughter soon left with her husband to London. Now, the parents were left only to themselves in the house. Within a year, they found a suitable bride for their son, he came for the marriage, spent some time at home and then left back to the US. He was still devoted to his parents, coming once every year to visit.
However, and this is now the issue. I visited the parents a couple of days back, and found them to be in a bad position. They are growing old, and have only themselves to take care of each other. They are so used to the city and the circle around them that they are not taking up their son's offer to take them with him to the US, worrying about what they will do in a strange place, whether they will get along with their daughter-in-law (she is used to running the show in that house). The son is not willing to relocate back; he has a cushy life over there, children who are more American than Indian, and so on. And so, the have money (sent by their son), but do not have the moral support that is normally required. They also get testy when you talk to them about going abroad with their son, and I did not raise the issue again in visits. What is a good solution in such cases ?

Labels: Child, Community, Family, Health, Responsibility

A very simple case, but leads to a major moral dilemma. A girl, 15 years old, gets pregnant with the child of her boyfriend, hides this from her parents until it becomes impossible to conceal. When the father of the bride filed a complaint, the relatives of both sides decided to settle the complaint by getting the 15 year old girl and the 19 year old boy married off, and guess who helped in getting this done ? The police, who are supposed to help in enforcing the law that does not allow marriage below the age of 18 and 21 respectively for a girl and a boy.
There is always a certain amount of questions that one may have in such a case - after all, there is always a certain amount of problem in going by a purely legal framework where the boy could be prosecuted for statutory rape and sent to jail. Such a situation would be problematic in the case where the relation was voluntary and a child is involved.

CHENNAI: When a 15-year-old girl could no longer hide her pregnancy after she got too intimate with her teenager boyfriend and the girl's parents panicked, the Tamil Nadu police decided to play matchmaker, despite the girl not being of a marriageable age. The minor girl, who had been in love with her neighbour Deepan (19), had conceived around seven months ago. She had not told anything about the relationship to her parents, but they had got suspicious a few days ago as the girl could not hide her pregnancy.
However, the move to marry off the the underage couple has not gone down well with women's activists and legal experts either. "In the eye of the law, the marriage is not valid. Even if the girl had given her consent, it is not legally valid. Whoever arranged the marriage could be prosecuted," said Madras High Court lawyer Eswaradas.

It looks like the police took the easy way out by settling for this decision. There is a reason why the law is in place, and such actions by the police end up in weakening the law. Children of this age are not fully mature as yet, and would most likely have ended up taking this decision to marry to fight off social pressures and the pressure of the police.
For a 15 year old girl and now mother, the law recognizes that she is not capable enough of being responsible for her actions and to push her into the role of a 15 year married mother means that her life is now set. It is very much possible that both of these young people would regret this decision later, and the consequences could be pretty much problematic. In addition, given that the boy wanted to have a DNA test to prove that he was responsible, he would already be having second thoughts.

Labels: Child, Family, Law, Police

In a shocking incident that portrays how parents have a quest for male children, a couple abandoned their girl child under the pretext of claiming that their child had been switched with another baby, and that their actual child was a boy. They even demanded a DNA test, and when the DNA test proved that the lady was the mother of the girl child, they refused to accept the DNA test. In the end, the police arrested them for deserting the girl child:

MUMBAI: A couple from Dharavi's Rajiv Gandhi Nagar slum was arrested on Friday for abandoning an infant girl at the civic-run Sion Hospital. The parents, Rajmani and Sheela Jaiswal, had earlier alleged that their baby boy had been swapped for a girl child after delivery in December. They left the child behind when Sheela was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday.
They had approached the Shahunagar police station and had demanded a DNA test to confirm parentage. The DNA report, submitted by the Forensic Science Laboratory in Kalina, had confirmed that the DNA of the mother and child matched. The unlettered couple, however, remains unconvinced. ''We don't trust the DNA report given by the police or hospital. We want the DNA test to be conducted in Delhi,'' said Salam Kazi from voluntary organisation Al-Hind, which is supporting the family and promises to provide them a lawyer if need be.

This is shocking. The quest for a male child has caused the parents to abandon their own flesh and blood. In the end, even though the child deserves to live with her parents, given that the parents are even refusing to acknowledge her, one can only wonder as to how they would have treated her later. Such a child would suffer major discrimination, with a bad quality of life.

Labels: Child, Discrimination, Family, Morality, Responsibility

Suddenly, there are a number of questions about the conduct of the mother in the case of the British teenager Scarlett Keeling in Goa, a horrible case where the daughter was murdered on a beach in Goa. There is some backlash emerging against the mother in terms of questioning as to why the girl was left alone, that the girl was doing drugs, that she should have been in school, etc. These are all valid questions, and are relevant to a case where child services would investigate as to whether the children are being brought up in a home where they are getting the proper care, education, etc.
However, the worrying facts of this case is the conduct of the local Goa police.

After Scarlett was found dead on the Anjuna beach, her family had contended that she was raped and murdered. Initially reluctant to treat it as a murder case, Goa Police carried out a detailed probe after a second autopsy was conducted by a team of doctors here following a demand by the girl's mother Fiona MacKeown. "We are happy that police have conducted investigations properly but we want that police's act of misguiding Fiona Mackowen (Scarlett's mother) should also be probed," Vikram Varma, lawyer for Scarlett's family, said.
He said the arrests have been made in the right direction. "But the key for the entire incident is the nexus between criminals, police and politicians which should be unearthed," he said. The family members feel that police have done half their job.
"Scarlett's death investigation was just a part of the entire case. The other half is police complicity in trying to hide the crime. The entire episode of abetment of crime by the police needs to be investigated," he said.

And what the Goa police did was very shocking. One is pretty sure that they had realized that the investigation would reveal the rape and murder of a young tourist girl, and to avoid bad publicity (or to just keep the police case count down and avoid investigating a murder case), the police dismissed the case as that of a drowning. It took the effort of the girl's mother to get pressure to bear on the police and get them to do a second autopsy and investigation which ultimately revealed the truth about the atrocities done on the young girl.
It is not easy to accept such action by the police. In society, the police have been given unprecedented powers of crime prevention and investigation, but those are coupled with a responsibility that the police do its best (and not run for the easy way like it happened in this case). This case needs to be properly investigated and guilty policemen punished. Just imagine what would be the case of the murder investigation of a poor man; this case was after all the mother of a foreign tourist in Goa who could bring an immediate media attention to the case and force action.

Labels: Child, Governance, India, Investigation, Law, Police, Punishment, Responsibility, Security

For some time now, there has been a concerted push to get into the mid-day meal scheme for school children. The introduction of the mid-day cooked meal for school children has been a major factor in the increase of school attendance, especially in rural areas. Pushed and prodded by the courts and by large sections of educators, the Ministry of Education run scheme provides funds for meals in 9.5 lakh schools across the country. Overall, the scheme has been a great success in its stated objective of encouraging parents to send their children to school. Schools provide cooked meals to children as per the local diet, and this also enthuses children to attend.
However, every silver lining has a dark cloud behind it, and in this case, the money involved was too great to resist. And hence there was a concerted push by manufacturers of biscuits and pre-cooked meals to get into the scheme; what better way than to try and point out positives of not using cooked meals. There are logistical issues with the whole cooking process, there is scope for corruption in terms of the process of sourcing of material for the cooked meals being decentralized, and so on. Further, pre-cooked meals and biscuits would allow the exact concentration of nutrients to be served to children. Seem very convincing points, and all of these were actually enumerated in an article in a weekly that I read some time back.
And then I started reading some more, and found that there were many more issues with the proposal. There was a position by an institute that deals with nutrients that essentially blasted the proposal, claiming that biscuits were essentially empty calories and not capable of supplying the nutrients required. In addition, further opinion by experts were skeptical about how many children would be enthused by biscuits; further there was an easy likelihood of biscuits seeming to be strange food to many areas of the country or carried away and not consumed by the children. And then the ultimate; the industry actually got 30 MP's to write a letter to the Ministry of Education in favor of the proposal, and at that time, much more opinion started to come out against change of the cooked food scheme.
So, it is good that finally the ministry has decided against this proposal.

The biscuit manufacturers' and ready-to-eat food industry's attempt to make 12 crore children their captive consumers through the mid-day meal (MDM) scheme has come a cropper. The HRD ministry has shot down the proposal of the two industries to supply either biscuits or pre-cooked meals to more than 9.5 lakh schools under the MDM scheme.
"Replacement of the Mid-Day Meal programme through supply of biscuits would not be in the nutritional interest of children, since it does not fulfill the nutritional norms, dietary requirement and satiety of children and further it also deprives many intrinsic benefits that are being derived through the present pattern," the minister said in his letter to the MPs.

However, at one point of time, it seemed that the proposal was actually working its way through the approval chain. It required some pressure from educators, and from the few articles in the media that cared about the mid-day cooked food program (not too many did though, and this is a very important issue central to human development). One can only feel relieved that the proposal got terminated.

Labels: Child, Community, Corruption, Development, Education, Health, Politics

Ever since the concept of providing a cooked meal to school children as part of school came into existence, India's education system has seen a major improvement. The thought of getting a good nutritious meal has made children more eager to attend school, and at the same time, has made parents see more value in sending their children to school. Continuing this scheme, while making sure that the quality and quantity of food served remains good is an essential ingredient of making sure that India rural children attain more education, and India's targets of making sure that these children grow up into better adults is met. It would not too much to say, that in addition to having good educational facilities and good teachers, providing them good cooked food is essential.
And now enter the money-makers. The very size and reach of this cooked food program makes for an extremely large sum of money that is being spent. This money has attracted many corporates, who have launched a campaign to get biscuits to be served instead of food. The claim is that biscuits will be easier to manage than the logistics of cooking food, and the biscuits can be specially made to be as nutritious as the education program requires. The pressure by this lobby is so large that Members of Parliament have got involved, with many MP's having been swayed to sign a letter promoting this changeover into biscuits.
Hopefully, this latest statement by the National Institute of Nutrition should bring this debate to an end:

Children should not be fed biscuits as lunch under the government's mid-day meal (MDM) scheme. This has been stated emphatically by India's premier agency on nutritional issues, the Hyderabad-based National Institute of Nutrition, backing the contention of many states opposing the move to feed biscuits to children under the countrywide scheme.
In what would be the strongest indictment of the biscuit manufacturers' pitch for their products, the institute has written that it has “worked on the recommended dietary requirements for adults and children, and biscuits do not find a mention anywhere, nor is it recommended as a source of calories or nutrients, because biscuits (sweet or salty) are empty calories”.

This should really bring the debate to an end. Politicians really do not need to get involved in this debate. What is needed that the Ministry of Human resources stops this ridiculous attempt to move away from the cooked meal scheme. The cooked meals currently are region-specific, cooking the kind of meals required for that particular region; it is ridiculous to assume that serving biscuits will have the same kind of impression on parents and children.

Labels: Child, Community, Development, Education, Health, Politics, Responsibility

Ragging in Indian colleges is a given. It may be better than before, but there is no reason as to why a student, entering a college for higher education, has to obey the wishes of a person just because the person is a senior. There is no legal reason, and given the number of cases of ragging which turn ugly, there is no moral reason to have ragging exist. It is talked about as being a good way to bring about a closer interaction between seniors and juniors, but that is possible through more mentoring (assigning a senior to a junior as a mentor), or through more cultural and other such programmes where cross-year teams are encouraged. It is a bogus argument that forcing a student to suddenly start singing, or to go and propose to a girl, or to do other such things are okay.
An activity being okay is from the perspective of the person being forced to do it, and from my experiences in college, most freshers are happy at doing this because they are relieved that it was not something more. There is no basic desire to do such forced events. In fact, many students have a dread about the first days of college because they fear as to what ragging will bring to them. I remember from college of more than a decade past that college authorities had anti-ragging squads, but these would not reach the classrooms or inside the hostels, which is where most of the ragging had shifted to.
So, the Supreme Court implemented a set of measures in the current year which made ragging an offense, instructed colleges to take it more seriously, and file police cases. Colleges did not take too kindly to this intrusion, protesting that ragging was not so bad in their campuses, or that police cases would harm the careers of students who are affected, and so on. So, let us take a couple of cases from this year:

The ragging complaint rocked the Government Dental College and Hospital on Monday when the father of a student told the college authorities that his son had been subjected to physical abuse.
A committee member said, "We are going to question all the senior students in the college, who have been accused of brutal ragging sessions which include physical abuse. We will also look into the letter submitted by the student’s father to college authorities."

When a committee is setup, you mostly know that there's not going to be any action. And here's another one:

The parents of a first- year MBBS student on Wednesday alleged their son was driven to suicide after being "severely ragged" in Government Medical College and Hospital, Chandigarh.
They said Manjot returned home after being severely ragged by senior students at GCMH and committed suicide. Manjot joined classes on July 21, phoned home saying he was "upset" in Chandigarh and that he would come back as soon as possible. "The very next morning he returned," Milap said. When the parents returned after shopping on Sunday, they found him on the bed "motionless", he said, claiming the boy had ingested some "poisonous substance". "Later, friends of Manjot told us he underwent severe ragging in college and then went into a depression," he said.

It should be very clear that ragging is not an entitlement, and is a criminal activity. As long as it has social sanction, there will be people who will feel that they are entitled to torture their juniors and get away with it. They do not have any authority to do it, and should face the required action.

Labels: Child, Court, Education, Health, Law, Punishment, Responsibility

There is an old saying, 'Save the rod, and spoil the child'. It has a simple premise, that unless you teach a child the right and wrong and what to do / not to do, and actually implement these instructions with some punishment from time to time such that the lesson is imprinted. You would also have heard of teachings in Catholic schools where the nuns would imprint morals into a person, and make sure that these are properly learnt through the use of corporal punishment. What actually is corporal punishment? It is the using of some form of physical punishment in an educational facility as an aid to learning. Sounds simple, does it not; it worked in the past, did it not.
Well, guess what, in the past, society had no problems with the usage of such punishment as drawing and quartering, cutting of the head, and other barbaric forms of killing as a death sentence. As society evolves, it moves away from barbarism, and learns better ways of doing things. As a part of this, there is a realization that letting teachers use canes / rods / slaps as a means of punishing a student is no longer acceptable; in fact, for every 2 students who improve from this experience, there will be many others who get scarred with this experience, especially if it happens on a regular basis. There are other ways of making sure that students learn, and usage of such punishment is unwarranted, and in fact, is illegal in schools.
Why such a fuss ? Well, here's one experience:

In a shocking incident, the principal of a school in Andhra Pradesh gave electric shocks to a 10-year-old student. Police in Tuni town on Saturday registered a case against the principal of a residential school run by a Christian mission. Police were on the lookout for the principal, who allegedly justified the punishment before escaping to evade arrest.
"The investigations are on to find out as to how many students were given electric shocks," he said. The incident came close on the heels of another one where a school teacher allegedly pushed a five-year-old student so hard that he injured his tongue badly. Parents of five-year-old K. Devi Vara Prasad, a student of lower kindergarten at St. Mary School in Nallakaunta, lodged a complaint with the police in this regard two days ago. Last month, the head master of a private school in Mahabubnagar district was arrested for allegedly chaining a Class III student as punishment.

Corporal punishment is also a short-cut to try and discipline rowdy kids, or in the above case, to use one's own logic. Once corporal punishment is seen as an easy solution, in effect you are depending on the logic of a teacher to practise the restraint; and this can have fatal effects. In a recent incident, a student was beaten by the teacher with a stick, and ultimately his lungs collapsed and he died.
Secondly, when students are small, they are easily impressionable, and using corporal punishment can make them retreat into themselves, and avoid school.

Labels: Child, Development, Education, Governance, Health, Law, Morality, Punishment, Reform, Welfare

Sometimes the Indian legal system does things which make you wonder. Over the last few years, there have been a series of judgments that have changed the concept of age of marriage and age of consent of sex. My generic understanding, and I would think that of the public is the following:
A female cannot get married until the age of 18, and a male cannot get married until the age of 21. Linked, and yet somewhat separate is the age of consent for having willing sex, which is 18 for both. So a boy of 19 can have a sexual relationship and not yet get married. The corollary to that is the age restrictions, which is that a boy or girl under the age of 18 is considered to be not of the age of consent, and hence not qualified to agree to sex. Put another way, if a boy or girl under the age of 18 has sex, then the law would believe that even if they had agreed, because it is considered that such agreement could have been under an influence and hence invalid, a rape has occurred.
This is also a concept that a lot of parents will agree with, because except for those sections where child marriage is considered natural, parents would want their child to develop into an adult, have a certain amount of education, and then get into a romantic or sexual relationship with or without marriage.
However, over a period of time, this concept has been slowly eroded in court decisions, where the move seems to be that if a person has willingly agreed for a relationship, then the court should also consider those views. So, an example, read about this judgment:

It is not an offence for a girl under 18 to fall in love or desire to marry her beloved, a city court recently held while acquitting a man charged with kidnapping and raping a minor.
Additional sessions judge Kamini Lau held: "...The 17-year-old prosecutrix (the girl) has a right to protect her feelings from the onslaught of her parents and the society. If she had run away to save herself from such an onslaught with her love, this in the view of the court is no offence."

At a certain level, this case should seem to be fine, after all, if a couple in love run away and get married, then the parents will try all measures including levelling rape and other charges so as to penalize the boy and get their girl back. However, at a broader level, the force of such judgments will eventually change the logic currently used and allow all such relationships, including undesirable ones, to flourish.
An example is a case where a family pushes their 16 year old girl to marry a 22 year old boy, because they feel that she is now of age, and anyhow she does not have a future other than to be in a happy marriage. In such cases, if the girl agrees in court that she loved the boy and married him (under any influence), then these precedents can be quoted. It defeats the efforts that are being made to ensure that the girl has a chance to reach adulthood, and be able to take her own decisions.

Labels: Child, Community, Court, Discrimination, Empowerment, Family, Governance, Law, Reform, Welfare

No, this is not the story of a miracle. This is actually a very sordid story that brought out a lot of problems, none of which have immediate solutions that can prevent such a thing from happening again.
So what happened, well it's a short story of the tragedy kind. A farmer saw some dogs trying to dig a pit out of which a small hand was projecting. He must have been shocked, but he chased the dogs away and dug open the pit, and what did he find? He found an infant female (2 day old), alive and crying. He alerted the police who took her to a hospital.
Why was she lying in the pit ? Because she had been deliberately buried in the pit by her grandparents, as she was the 8th female grand-daughter and he would not have been able to take care of her. So he tried to bury her. Don't believe this ? See this link.
I really was stuck speechless after reading this. A child is the most precious thing in the world, and for a caring society, ensuring the welfare of children, especially when they are unable to take care of themselves, is one of the primary responsibilities. To attempt to take a life is a crime, and it is a morally reprehensible act to do that for a defenseless child. My indignation is not tempered by the fact that such things are reported to happen all over the countryside, either through getting an abortion after the sex of the child is revealed; or killing the infant after delivery. It is a shameful act, and yet it happens so often, with doctors violating their sacred Hippocratic oath (hypocritical) to help in such acts.
There are other avenues possible, such as giving the child for adoption. The question remains as to why a girl child is seen as a liability. Give her equal education, and watch her be an equal and responsible member of society. How can we prevent such things from happening ? What kind of society are we moving towards ?

Labels: Child, Community, Discrimination, Family, India, Morality, Reform

The latest version of Time Asia has an interesting covery story, something that is very relevant in the Indian context. The report is all about how the male parent (atleast the examples it is quoting) are trying to do some reform so that they are no longer only slaves to their office, but are equal partners in the home, more so in terms of giving more time to their children. The relevant article is available here:

It's embarrassing for these upstanding burghers of Singapore—so methodical and conscientious in their professional lives—to dwell upon the possibility that they might be falling short at home, but Wong lets them fidget and cough for a few more moments before resuming. "Watching your children over the Internet is one thing," he says, "but the goal of parenting is to get them to do the right thing when you're not looking." And there are plenty of hours in the day when Asian fathers are not looking.
Fathers all over Asia share that sense of guilt over their inability to balance work and parenthood. Dr. Sanjay Chugh, a New Delhi psychiatrist, says these harried, overburdened men stream through his consulting rooms: "Indian fathers have less and less time to spend with their children. When stress goes up for a father, it affects not only the quantity of time he spends with his children but the quality."
Every day, pleading overwork, millions of men cancel millions of promises made to millions of children. Dads cannot read bedtime stories or go to the park. Dads are in their offices, or on the road, or on conference calls. The effects of this physical or emotional absenteeism are actually quantifiable: numerous academic studies have shown that children with distant fathers score lower on tests of empathy, reasoning and brain development than those whose fathers are more involved. The former behave more aggressively, don't get on as well with siblings, tend to be less popular in school and are more reluctant to take responsibility for their misbehavior.

In earlier generations, things were more tranquil. The normal motto was that men would work outside, and women would work at home, bringing up the children and keeping the family together. In today's fast paced world, such a thing is mostly as dead as the dodo. Women have claimed and got their just right to build a career and work equal to men. However, given that there are an enormous amount of work pressures, the amount of time spent by parents on children has declined; after all a double income moves the family towards prosperity faster.
As this article points out, a number of fathers are starting to realize their responsibilities in the changed environment, regulating the amount of time that they are spending at office, and trying to take quality time out for their children, as well as trying to be a part of their lives. This includes taking on more responsibilities for the work needed to be done at home. In India, this trend is anyhow necessary due to the joint family system slowly breaking apart into more nuclear families. This change comes with much greater responsbility for ensuring that everyone contributes towards activities at home.
My experiences with friends who have passed through this phase is that these oh-so-proud men are changing, and becoming more sensitive. I had a friend who married with the condition that his wife would not work, and that attitude remains; however another used to be still expecting to be spoon-fed in the early days of marriage, but after a baby, he quickly realized that things were not the same and now is a great helper to his wife; and then there are the ones whom you can see as the ones who take great pride in helping thier wives, spending as much time as possible with children. However, on the basis of my circle of friends, is difficult to generalize on how much the Indian male is adjusting ! Anyone care to share their experiences ?

Labels: Child, Family, Responsibility, Sharing