Peacock Parenting

 Heard of Kathleen Saxton? She is British. She is a psychotherapist. Her book is due in September, 2025. She has released a chapter from the forthcoming book on the internet. And, boy, is there some storm!

Why? Well, Madame has introduced in it a new style of parenting. She calls it peacock parenting. Oh, let the nomenclature not deceive you. There is nothing attractive about this freshly minted mode. It reflects excessive narcissism of the parent.

In the Western behavioural analysis, narcissism is the ultimate sin. It refers to an obsession with the self. The notion originates in the myth of Narcissus, an exceptionally handsome youth who is not aware of his own charms. One day, while drinking water from a brook, he gets to look at his own reflection, and falls insanely in love with the  comeliness reflected there, that is, with his own image.

He is so enamoured that he would/could not leave the place by the brook, and wastes away there. Jupiter, or it could be Apollo, takes pity on him, and turns him in to the Narcissus flower which blooms by a water body, and bends over it, as if it were Narcissus looking at his own lovely reflection. Involved in the myth is also Echo, his beloved. Let us not get in to that tangent right now. 

Given this mythological reference, Narcissism stands for people with excessive self obsession, total disregard for the feelings of  others, and craze for constant praise while brutally hurting others' feelings forever.

In the Western world, children's behavioural issues are always rooted in the parents' personalities. A child's adult insecurities would be found rooted in the childhood  frailties of parents. The worst type of parents, hence, are the narcissistic who are so much self-obsessed that they could not care about the child's welfare.

For the Maharashtrian mindset weaned on Sane Guruji's "Shyamchi Aai", such a parental profile is tough to digest. Why, every now and then, we have actors/singers reciting paeans to parents. In my opinion, however, there is no knowing with the Gen Z, or whatever. 

Personally, I believe that once you grow up, you make your own choices. Often these choices are influenced by many other factors than the parental power. The spouse could be a magnet much more commanding and dominant than the poor parents whom many children do not even get to meet months on end. Self-interest is another factor. Why to blame poor parents, and how long? Better to accept responsibility for oneself, and ASAP, right?

Pratima@ Mostly, there are more much-too- much-over-indulged and ungrateful children than worthless parents, right? Why, epics like Kalidasa's "Kumar Sambhav" and Milton's "Paradise Lost" begin with reverential references to parents. These, of course, are to the divine/the deities or the pre-lapsarian parents of mankind.