Indian parents have different parenting style for boys and girls. As they rightly mention in the 2016 movie Pink, girls have peculiar standards to adhere to, where the length of their skirt, or the time they come home defines their character. So does having guy friends, or free mixing. Recently, I read a news article about a college in India which has made me wonder how we are trying to bring up our girls.
Indian colleges have come to news many times for following stereotypical gender roles. At IIT Kharagpur, one of my friends was told to not go out wearing shorts. Boys were not allowed to come even to the reception area of girls' hostels. In our college, we have never been able to go to the boys' mess, even for working on projects together. That is why, I didn't get a chance to work on our load runner and step climber robots as they were being built at the boys' mess. These are still lower on the rank of weirdness. One of my friends from a different part of India said that in the college shuttle, boys and girls were kept segregated. In the recent news I found that even in college canteens (cafeterias) boys and girls are told to sit apart. No touching, hugging your classmates are allowed and basically any kind of interaction between the two genders is being discouraged.
This is not normal.
In the human world, one has to invariably come in contact with people, and in most cases they would not belong to your gender. People need to be taught to mix freely with everyone so that "the other gender" is not looked as an alien being, and interaction with them becomes normal. As I changed from an all girls' school to a co-ed school around my teenage years, I saw this difference very well. Those girls who grew up with boys had no inhibition talking about periods or other girl topics with the boys. The boys also were a lot more understanding and now I find the majority of them to be much more accommodative and supportive of their spouses. That is because they have been exposed to girls as their playmates, classmates, friends, from a very early age.
In our society, when a girl is in her late-teens or early twenties, she is considered "good" if she does not have a boyfriend. Having a boyfriend still indicates she is too modernized. Having multiple boyfriends means she had questionable character. Parents still feel proud to say, "my daughter is pretty shy around boys." I feel that is a problem they should try to fix rather than being proud about it. If your daughter is shy around half the world population, that is a very serious concern. How would she interact with her colleagues later? Or her future male manager?
I don't understand how girls and boys who have led segregated lives manage to work on their marriages. Again, having an arranged marriage means you are an obedient child, where you have put full trust in your parents. I have a coworker, who very proudly said that he didn't even see his wife before the day of his engagement. Another girl saw her future husband at the airport on the day of her engagement. I asked her if she would be able to back out of the match had she disliked that guy. She said no, because she was utterly terrified of disobeying her father. These people get married, have kids, and mostly stay married forever because the girls know they have to compromise. Gender roles are strictly observed, and these days the girls do both household work and outside work.
Parents need to understand that controlling your kids lives by archaic rules are actually devastating. You are not letting them grow properly. If a girl always have to worry about what the society would say, then she is wasting her energy in trying to fit in, rather than trying to be herself. Mixing with boys is a necessary thing, and the earlier the exposure happens, the better. Let them know that boys don't come from Mars, they are just regular human beings with emotions. I have seen many cases where boys behave in utterly funny ways - from my friends in junior high, to my friends at work. They still don't know the right way to load a dishwasher, the toilet seat stays up, tables are wiped wrong, and they laugh at our sense of fashion. But that is the fun part of sharing this world with them. They are intermingled in our lives as fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, friends, neighbors, teammates, or colleagues. The more we mingle with them normally, the more they would also learn about us, our feelings and our emotions. That way we would be able to create an interdependence where both genders can be empowered.
Indian colleges have come to news many times for following stereotypical gender roles. At IIT Kharagpur, one of my friends was told to not go out wearing shorts. Boys were not allowed to come even to the reception area of girls' hostels. In our college, we have never been able to go to the boys' mess, even for working on projects together. That is why, I didn't get a chance to work on our load runner and step climber robots as they were being built at the boys' mess. These are still lower on the rank of weirdness. One of my friends from a different part of India said that in the college shuttle, boys and girls were kept segregated. In the recent news I found that even in college canteens (cafeterias) boys and girls are told to sit apart. No touching, hugging your classmates are allowed and basically any kind of interaction between the two genders is being discouraged.
This is not normal.
In the human world, one has to invariably come in contact with people, and in most cases they would not belong to your gender. People need to be taught to mix freely with everyone so that "the other gender" is not looked as an alien being, and interaction with them becomes normal. As I changed from an all girls' school to a co-ed school around my teenage years, I saw this difference very well. Those girls who grew up with boys had no inhibition talking about periods or other girl topics with the boys. The boys also were a lot more understanding and now I find the majority of them to be much more accommodative and supportive of their spouses. That is because they have been exposed to girls as their playmates, classmates, friends, from a very early age.
In our society, when a girl is in her late-teens or early twenties, she is considered "good" if she does not have a boyfriend. Having a boyfriend still indicates she is too modernized. Having multiple boyfriends means she had questionable character. Parents still feel proud to say, "my daughter is pretty shy around boys." I feel that is a problem they should try to fix rather than being proud about it. If your daughter is shy around half the world population, that is a very serious concern. How would she interact with her colleagues later? Or her future male manager?
I don't understand how girls and boys who have led segregated lives manage to work on their marriages. Again, having an arranged marriage means you are an obedient child, where you have put full trust in your parents. I have a coworker, who very proudly said that he didn't even see his wife before the day of his engagement. Another girl saw her future husband at the airport on the day of her engagement. I asked her if she would be able to back out of the match had she disliked that guy. She said no, because she was utterly terrified of disobeying her father. These people get married, have kids, and mostly stay married forever because the girls know they have to compromise. Gender roles are strictly observed, and these days the girls do both household work and outside work.
Parents need to understand that controlling your kids lives by archaic rules are actually devastating. You are not letting them grow properly. If a girl always have to worry about what the society would say, then she is wasting her energy in trying to fit in, rather than trying to be herself. Mixing with boys is a necessary thing, and the earlier the exposure happens, the better. Let them know that boys don't come from Mars, they are just regular human beings with emotions. I have seen many cases where boys behave in utterly funny ways - from my friends in junior high, to my friends at work. They still don't know the right way to load a dishwasher, the toilet seat stays up, tables are wiped wrong, and they laugh at our sense of fashion. But that is the fun part of sharing this world with them. They are intermingled in our lives as fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins, friends, neighbors, teammates, or colleagues. The more we mingle with them normally, the more they would also learn about us, our feelings and our emotions. That way we would be able to create an interdependence where both genders can be empowered.
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