Introduction

The spirit of alienation that marks our age has infected the parent-child relationship also in an acute way. This has escalated the tensions and traumas of parenting. Two forces complement each other in this respect. There is, on the one hand, a diminution of parental authority and influence on children. On the other hand, there is a marked increase in the influence of cultural pressures, the pulls of the world, on them. In this massified age of stereotypical pleasures and perceptions, few families there are that struggle to preserve a distinctive counter-culture so as to ward off the infections of the times. The world is too much with our children. And, in contrast, we as parents are not there with our children adequately. Children succumb to the so-called 'peer pressure' mostly because parental counter-pressure is too feeble to help them to preserve their equilibrium.

The pathology of parental deficit has several tragic consequences. Teenagers who get addicted to drugs or alcohol mostly hail from families where parenting has been emotionally and spiritually deficient. Field surveys have repeatedly confirmed the finding that more than 75% of all drug addicts come from unhappy or broken homes and have had strained or indifferent relationships with their parents. Parental deficit is also a factor that contributes to relational aberrations such as homosexuality and lesbianism. On the positive side, sound parenting promotes personal wholeness as well as familial and societal health. Mothers in particular have played a shaping role in the lives of the great man and woman the world has seen.

Parenting, not less than character, is destiny. But, unfortunately, the decisive importance of it is being understood less and less. Tragically, parents discover only too late the opportunities they have wasted as well as the ill health they have unwittingly courted in nurturing their children. The reason for this suicidal blindness is not far to seek. Parents who lack spiritual wisdom tend to conform to the patterns of the world. They allow their values and way of life to be shaped by the prevailing cultural norms. As of today, psychology seems to have superseded spirituality in the understanding of what constitutes family health almost globally. In respect of disciplining children, for example, we tend to go by western norm of 'sparing the rod' rather than by the biblical injunction to the contrary. We are often afraid to say 'No" to our children for the same reason. As a result, they grow up in indolence and potential insubordination.

It is important that parents develop the discernment to see through the cultural norms and assumptions that prevail from time to time. This is possible only if they have a shared spiritual vision and active Bible-based life. There is profound practical wisdom in St. Paul's instruction that we should not be "unequally yoked together with unbelievers". One of the spouses operating on the spiritual foundation, while the other stands on the cultural foundation, is a classic recipe for domestic disaster. It invariably turns parenting into a theatre of chronic conflicts. Each of the parents feels most sincerely that the other is most dangerously mistaken and it is, hence, one's moral duty to oppose the harm being done to the children. Sadly, it is not on account of monstrous villainy that a home becomes a place of misery. More often, it results from what is firmly held to be good intentions.

The foremost parental duty is to create and sustain a healthy family culture. To do this, it is necessary for parents to see through the pathology of the culture that surrounds them and their children. This is a pre-condition for the spiritual vigilance that needs to be maintained. Among the main features of the emerging cultural scenario that parents need to address are:

1. From a hierarchical society based on authority and stability we are fast becoming a society based on individualistic freedom. While freedom is a profound value, the problem on the practical plane is that individualism imparts to it a twist towards license. This poses stiff challenges to parenting, especially in terms of the discipline that needs to be incorporated into the nurture of children. Parents, in such a situation, tend to dilute discipline for fear of alienating their children. The fact of the matter, however, is that it is indolence rather than discipline that alienates children from their parents. Discipline, exercised in love, make children responsible and relationally wholesome. They learn to exercise freedom in harmony with responsibility. When freedom is allowed to degenerate into license, children become rebellious, chaotic and allergic to responsibilities. This makes them vulnerable to various dangers like addition, truancy at studies or work, and incapacity for stable and responsible relationships.

2. Today children are growing up in the media age. They are exposed to a variety of influences and insinuations that pull them in different directions. They are exposed to alien values and patterns of behaviour. Their mental outlook, environment of values and perceptions could be very different from their parents. This is what the concept of 'generation gap' implies. In an age of rapid and radical change such as ours, generation gap assumes sharper edges. Generation gap points to an imbalance between parental influence and the influence of the world on children. Unprecedented media exposure, both in terms of duration and diversity, now threatens to upset the balance in favour of cultural values in the formation of children, relegating parental influence to a secondary position. In the urban context in particular, children live their own sub-culture, somewhat distinct from the culture and value of their parents, in their homes! The tragedy is that parents are not sufficiently aware of this when they should be. This state of affairs goes on till a conflict takes place when the two parties face each other as virtual strangers.

It is all the important in our times to reinforce the shared core values of family life. Family life needs a foundation more stable than the preferences and conveniences of parents and children. Godliness alone can provide this objective foundation. That is why it is important to emphasize the spiritual core of the family culture. The difference between culture and spirituality is that the former is a sphere of change whereas the latter is a sphere of stability. We cannot flee from the culture that surrounds us. And we need not, if we stand on an enduring foundation so that we do not become victims of the twists and turns of culture. Those who lack the foresight of spirituality tend to absolutize the patterns and prescriptions of culture. That is because those who stand on the foundation of culture cannot see its limitations. So parents let culture shape their family culture. And it only when the dangers thereof begin to stare them in the face that they begin to wake up. By then it gets too late to do anything about it. The pathos of the human situation, in this respect as well as in others, is that wisdom dawns too late. That is the reason why we need the foresight afforded by spirituality.

3. The ascendancy of materialism and its accompaniment of consumerism have further aggravated the difficulties in parenting. For one thing, this has multiplied human needs and desires, reinforcing the compulsion to earn more and more. This insatiable thirst is based on the tendency to mistake quality of life for the quantity of income and possessions. This dilutes parent-child relationship; as both parents spend most of their time and energy outside the home. Even more lamentably, within a materialistic outlook parental love tends to express itself more and more through material things, such as toys, eating out, substantial pocket moneys and other forms of indulgence. The basic spiritual issue in materialism is its superficiality. It does not, by itself, make for deep attachment or relationships. The result of all this is an unhealthy emotional deficit in the nurture of children. This undermines, among other things, the basis for parental authority. One of the most powerful trends in this context is the irrational attractiveness of whatever is outside one's own home. Children, to take a typical example, crave to spend their weekends in the homes their friends, away from their own parents. Practices like this exaggerate the value and attractiveness of the world outside one's own home. Not surprisingly, the focus on family gets diluted.

4. Culture is a domain of conformity. Imitation is its basic article of faith. This puts the focus entirely on the surface. As a result, the deeper things of life get neglected and devalued. Mot parents now-a-days have little to do with shaping the tastes and values of their children. Rather, they catch up with their children, or labour to rationalize the tastes that their children acquire. In such a context, discipline becomes a synonym for tyranny; simplicity of lifestyle is mistaken for poverty, personal uniqueness is deemed queer and unnatural. Parents need to realize this has serious implications for the formation of their children's personality. Personality is, in the ultimate analysis, a spiritual phenomenon. And that is true even though psychologists have sought hard to hijack this idea with some degree of success.

Parents need to keep these, and other, factors into account and work as partners in mission to create and sustain a spiritually wholesome family culture for the nurture of their children. Unfortunately, an overwhelming majority of couples live from day-to-day, indifferent to the fateful and long-standing possibilities in their life. Family life is, except for some special occasions, equated wholly with the routine of working, eating and sleeping. They tend to forget the all-important fact that they hold the key to their future happiness or humiliation.