COURSING beneath the razzmatazz of the urban '90s is an unexpected neurosis: the loss of spontaneous parenting. Counsellors and psychologists in the metros speak of a growing clientele of bewildered parents looking for an interface between themselves and their children.
'Traditional disciplinary patterns have broken down,' says Dr Sujata Sharma, a clinical psychologist in New Delhi. Fifty per cent of her practice now revolves around parents caught in a cleft. 'Love and concern are not enough.We have to teach them 'contracting' and 'limit setting'.' And parents are flocking to learn. Never mind that it costs Rs 200-400 a session to learn to draw up a new social contract: you can go to a mixed party, but we will drop and pick you up; you can have x amount of pocket money, but you must have dinner at home thrice a week...
Sighs Jyotsna Sharma, a well-to-do Delhiite who is being helped by a counsellor to communicate with her 14-year-old daughter, 'Their joys no longer come from simple things.' Counters clinical psychologist Dr Sadhna Vohra: 'The real problem is the mixed signals parents send to their kids.'
Pressured by the constant plea-'Our friends are doing it, why can't we?'-parents play along. Until unresolved inner conflicts send them knocking at counsellors' doors, looking for a contract.
