Perils of pushy parenting

In a recent interview with a private channel, Chetan Bhagat, a best-selling author and an alumnus of both IIT and IIM, shared his view that many parents in our country tend to fixate on the idea of their children becoming doctors or engineers.

This fixation can limit their imagination and ability to explore alternative professions. Bhagat made these remarks in response to a question about the alarming rate of suicides among young aspirants, as young as 15–16 years old, in Kota, the epicentre of coaching for these rigorous entrance examinations.

A few years ago, Chetan Bhagat tweeted that exam scores don’t really matter. However, for aspiring engineers and medical students, life often revolves around achieving high marks. Parents, driven by uncompromising attitudes, often fill their children’s lives with fear and the pressure of potential rejection and anonymity. This fear arises from the belief that failure to qualify for these exams could have dire consequences. But can we assume that all 25 of these coaching students, primarily NEET aspirants, who tragically ended their lives in Kota this year, lacked potential for success? Not necessarily.

What they truly feared were the consequences of a possible failure. Perhaps they couldn’t reconcile with the harsh reality that society treats failure with the utmost seriousness, often without room for negotiation. Some of these students might have had passions for music, sports, and painting—we will never know—but they were compelled to sacrifice these passions to meet parental expectations.

According to several leading coaching institutes in Kota, parents reject feedback provided to them and insist that their children stay committed to preparing for engineering and medical entrance exams. Unfortunately, all of these students who took their own lives were emotionally fragile and lacked adequate coping mechanisms when faced with adaptability and adjustment challenges. They likely understood that, due to immense parental pressure, they couldn’t confide in or discuss their problems with their parents.

It is no secret that students endure gruelling coaching schedules in Kota and are expected to devote thirteen to fourteen hours every day to their studies. They are mentally conditioned by the coaching centres to be uncompromising or unyielding in their pursuit of success. They often refrain from socialising with other students, as it is deemed a waste of time. Chetan Bhagat said in the interview that the entrance exams for engineering and medical courses are designed to reject. In other words, not everyone who comes to Kota with a dream of making it into these highly sought-after courses succeeds in cracking the IIT and NEET. Despite being aware of these pitfalls, parents continue to push their children into pursuing these courses, subjecting them to heavy emotional and psychological trauma. For these parents, a lucrative career in medicine or engineering is the sole focus.

A couple of months ago, a leading national daily carried an interesting report on parents of a state paying additional fees to enrol students as young as 5 years old in budget schools and coaching centres in the hope that they will get the best education to crack competitive exams more than a decade later.

Thanks to the growing craze for careers in medicine and engineering, coupled with the popularity of JEE and NEET foundation classes, overambitious parents are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that their children become techies and doctors, with the hope of earning astronomical salaries and achieving higher social status. It wouldn’t be inaccurate to suggest that the age of innocence is fading away, as children are being pushed to behave, think, and act like mature teenagers from the age of 5, all in the pursuit of success and a brighter future.

Imagine how parents are systematically eroding the childhoods of today’s kids, who can’t even contemplate participating in sports or enjoying quality time with parents. In their eagerness to see their children succeed, some parents tend to forget that life offers a kaleidoscope of opportunities.

Let us refrain from solely blaming the congested coaching centres in Kota for the issues that plague our education system. A significant portion of responsibility must also be attributed to parents, who, in their pursuit of excellence, often push their children into these intense environments. Some parents seem to believe that their obligations end once they enrol their children in these highly competitive programmes, leaving them to fend for themselves. Unfortunately, it appears that such pushy parenting practices are unlikely to change, even in the face of the ongoing tragedies that occur in Kota almost every month.

(The writer is a senior journalist based in Delhi)