Harish Shetty

As a society, we accept violence but we don’t like to talk about sex. That’s the environment our children are raised in today.

The reason for this is twofold. Let’s look at the violence. There is a view that might is right, and this is something parents and their children are seeing in their daily lives.

One example is the US dominancy over world issues. Parents believe that children have to be strong, and should be able to deal with the world physically and mentally. Piety and religion have their place, but in the end, violence has to be met with violence — that’s the predominant belief.

Now coming to issue of sex, you need to understand it from a historical point of view. For a long time a major part of India was under the Mughal influence, and this was followed by the British rule, which brought its Victorian values into society.

This prude way of thinking is a reflection of the West at the time. Sexual issues were not discussed, and this is something we still hold on to. Normal expressions of love are not encouraged as parents believe that it will promote promiscuity, pre-martial sex, et al. They feel that this is the best way to protect the children.

The thing is that adults themselves view porn, but they don’t want to expose their children to anything. And this exaggerated sense of duty is because they fear their children — daughters especially — will lose their virginity.

However, what we don’t realise is that children do exactly what they want. In the ‘globalised’ world that we live in, such curbs don’t work.

Shetty is a practising psychiatrist.

Source : DNAIndia