Magirents

We have more money. We have more resources. We may not have more imagination, but we certainly have more will to bring that imagination to life.

And without realising it, we are becoming 'magirents'. Magician Parents. Our child has to but express a wish, and the sheer, ironically childlike, thrill of making that wish come true, blinds us to the severely debilitating impact of such behaviour.

My son loves Thomas the Train so let me get him the entire 15 grand worth set, just like that. Not on his birthday mind, just like that. My daughter is obsessed with Miley Cyrus so let me actually plan a London holiday where she can see Hannah Montana in concert. My twins look so cute together so let me actually ship down custom made baby sized genuine Mickey and Donald costumes directly from Disney Merchandise.

No expense, no trouble, and absolutely no effort is too much or too wild for us Magirents. The thrill of the quest itself is our reward. The journey is the destination and the fact that our child smiles, gives us the well trained hug and thank you and promptly moves on to the next toy, seems no impediment or dampener to this wish fulfilling style of parenting.

The child is not ungrateful. The child is - whoa, and that is scary - simply attuned to thinking that this gargantuan, unrealistic, unbelievably expensive, fairy tale like way of life is normal.

Gulp. What have we done?

I know we can afford it, and I know the internet makes organising and sourcing just about anything a matter of but a few clicks, but what happened to some good old middle class values along the way? What happened to phrases like 'choose one', 'next time', 'on your birthday', 'if you learn to tie your laces' or the simplest, baldest, most honest 'mom can't afford that'.

What happened to atleast waiting to be asked?

Most of us magirents aren't even fulfilling wishes. We are pre empting even that. No wonder then that the reaction is luke warm. The child didn't even know that what was just sprung upon him was something he wanted in the first place. Or it was to be had.

Sometime ago my daughter discovered the purple dinosaur from the learning DVD series called Barney. She promptly fell in love. She wanted to watch Barney all the time. She wanted to hug him, kiss him, be with him.

She never asked me for Barney because it didn't strike the 2 year old that 'Barney could be had'. Barney was this awesome, adorable big purple guy on the TV screen. How was she to even know that Barney could be brought home?

I however embarked on this project. My husband was in England at that time and I urged him to search. He scoured all of Oxford Street and every toy store there. But Barney is being 'phased out' now and the stores simply didn't have the soft toy.

Simultaneously I messaged all my friends in all corners of the world to let me know if they can spot and ship a Barney to me from anywhere at all.

Needless to say I was doing all this because the internet had not yielded results. Every on line store said Barney was out of stock.

You know how this story ends. My daughter got her Barney. Not one in fact but two. Because my best friend who dotes on her managed to procure one through complex means as well.

My daughter smiled, played with the Barneys, and forgot about them.

We had spent over a month and a decent amount of money to get, what for her, was just another toy. Nowhere near the real Barney who could jump out of the toy and become a real big fuzzy friend who sang and danced. I believe that inability in her toy Barneys actually frustrated her for a bit.

When I was about to pick up a hugely expensive Thomas Train set for another dear friend's son, she dissuaded me. I actually protested, saying, hey I know how we don't want to spoil our kids, but this is his birthday. My friend was firm. No, she said. A 4 year old's birthday should still have some limitations.

I so totally agreed with her that I promptly abandoned that gift for a cheaper Thomas Train variant. Of course the 4 year old was equally thrilled with it. He didn't know about the other one!

Its good to indulge, even pamper the kids. I know sometimes its compensation for time less spent, hectic work lives and other preoccupations.

But this fairy tale recreation - whether it involves money or not - is simply giving the child wrong cues. The rest of the world for the rest of his or her life, will not live up to that way of being. It is really not just about the money. It is about the fallacy of 'custom making a world to suit the child's wishes, dreams, desires'. The real world is not custom made. So even if it doesn't cost you a penny, it is still a dangerous thing to do.

I had this realisation this evening, when my daughter was insisting on seeing a particular TV ad that she loves. Sometimes our DTH provider shows it in a loop on the home screen, before you chose your channel. So she's used to getting it on demand.

That deal with the DTH provider must have gotten over. The ad was not playing. My baby was slightly disconsolate. Slightly mind you, no big tantrum.

I found myself thinking, oh, I must get hold of the ad on a cd. Shouldn't be difficult. The company is a regular advertiser on the radio station that I work in, and the client's a good friend. Getting the ad wouldn't be difficult at all. Maybe I can ask them to put it in a loop of five or ten runs so I won't have to keep skipping back. Or maybe I could even ask for their earlier ads, my daughter's bound to enjoy the whole series...

I arrested my train of thoughts. What the heck was I doing? What the heck are all of us doing?

Magicians. Parents. Mutant beings designing a wholly unrealistic world view and delivering it on a shiny smooth show me my deepest desires reflecting platter.

This won't even prepare the child for the disappointment of missing the morning bus.

Guilty Until Socialised Innocent

Some days ago I read a heartening albeit surprising article about parents today.

Apparantly parents, especially mothers, of our generation are racked by far more guilt than our predecessors - that wasn't the surprising bit - but they also spend far far more focused and quality time with their children than those of the earlier generations!

Now this latter bit of information was startling. As a new mom I too am constantly plagued by a sense of insufficient time and inadequate attention. I too feel that I am depriving my child of something fundamental in parenting whenever I am at work, at the gym, working on my laptop, surfing channels, meeting friends.

I was happy to realise that actually the time that we do manage to make for our children is not only quantitatively more than what many in our parent's generation did, but qualitatively better too. More focused, richer in content and deeper in bonding.

Happy research results which I read, filed in memory and forgot.

This evening my husband and I came back early from work, met our daughter at my mother's place, which is barely a few doors away, and then while she was having her supper I realised I had some work to catch up on, so I walked home leaving my husband to bring our baby back.

They followed soon, by which time I was deep in the middle of multi tasking - watching a TV show I had recorded and clearing some mail on my laptop.

My daughter plonked herself on my bed, played with my books and wires, hugged and kissed me, romped around, eventually got bored and went off to play with her nanny cheerily. I continued working.

My 2 year old has taken to trying on every adult piece of footwear lying around the house so I can hear her coming from the other end of the house, clip clopping in my slippers or my husband's shoes.

Everytime she walked into the room I lowered the laptop screen, gave her a big smile and hug and felt that stab of guilt. Why was I working when I had come home early and why was I not giving her my entire attention?

And suddenly there flashed before my eyes images of my home maker mother during my growing years. Ma cooking. Ma serving. Ma tending to dad's needs, his parent's needs, our needs. Ma directing the help. Ma buying grocery.

Ma was always busy. And never guilty about neglecting us. If anything at all, she found raising us to be a full time job, a pleasurable one for sure, but one that only added to that laundry list of other duties that kept her busy. There was no sense that the cooking or the cleaning or the serving was in any way taking time away from her 'parenting' duties.

And then it dawned on me that this guilt that I feel every single moment is a product of socialisation and gender stereotyping at its most fundamental level.

A mother who is too busy to play with her baby because she's cooking, cleaning, running house has no guilt. A mother who is ocassionally busy working on a laptop, working out at the gym, meeting a friend for drinks, is committing a double crime. She is not only depriving her child of her mental and / or physical time, she is also crossing the gender lines and being 'busy' with what 'dads' ought to be busy with.

I know at a conscious level we have all left behind these stereotypes sometime back. None of us are ostensibly thinking like this.

But deep down, the socialisation runs in permanently etched furrows upon the mind. My husband feels no similar guilt when he works at home. And I know, even though I hate cooking and almost never cook, if I were to occupy myself in the kitchen with my toddler romping around, tugging at my shirt ends, I would feel no guilt either.

Because that image would overlap beautifully, seamlessly and therefore sinisterly, over the image of me and my mother when I was a child.

That is the real danger of socialisation. It is comfortable. It is familiar. And it operates at levels that we are not even aware of.