PARENTS are the cornerstone of every person’s familial life. Transcending religious boundaries, children are taught to respect their parents and elders, their wishes and pledge obedience to them. But it is seldom that parents or elders respect the feelings of their children or young ones in return. It is unfortunate that in some family setups, the feelings of children are suppressed not just physically but also emotionally. As a result, the scars of their shattered childhood affect their adult life.
Mrs Ahmed discovered this at a terrible cost. The emotional trauma of her childhood surfaced as she stepped into the role of a wife and mother. One of the first things that Mrs Ahmed, now a mother of three, remembers is her parents’ separation. She was seven, too young to understand the reasons why two adults who had been part of her life so far, parted ways all of a sudden. She was the eldest of three girls. Life was taking an ugly turn and they had only started to discover the miseries that life had in store for them.
With no mother to take care of them, their father moved the girls into an orphanage where they stayed for no less than five years. But the time she was 13, her father had remarried and moved his family to Karachi. But their stepmother had an indifferent attitude towards the girls. At 16, she received a marriage proposal and for the first time in her life, discovered love, care, warmth and compassion in the form of a young man. When asked how she would describe her husband, Mrs Ahmed replies, “He’s an excellent husband.”
Mrs Ahmed’s responsibilities increased manifold after marriage. She still had her two sisters to take care of who were in school. Though life was good, the fears of her childhood continued to plague her. In 1998, she suffered a nervous breakdown. Her husband took care of her quite responsibly, as well as looking after the school-going children and managing his job. He proved without a doubt that husbands, after all, can be very responsible and caring.
Today, Mrs Ahmed teaches at one of Karachi’s best schools. Her children are educated and they have the care and warmth of loving parents. When her husband comes home in the evening, all of them sit down to a family dinner.
There are thousands of girls like Mrs Ahmed in Pakistan who lack parental love and affection. Maybe, it is because our elders feel that it is their God-given right to be served by the younger generation but not care for them. But what they fail to understand is that because of their selfishness, they endanger the future of not just individuals, but whole families. This is something that all of us must try to understand.
PARENTS are the cornerstone of every person’s familial life. Transcending religious boundaries, children are taught to respect their parents and elders, their wishes and pledge obedience to them. But it is seldom that parents or elders respect the feelings of their children or young ones in return. It is unfortunate that in some family setups, the feelings of children are suppressed not just physically but also emotionally. As a result, the scars of their shattered childhood affect their adult life.
