Balancing traditional & LIBERAL PARENTING

21st-century realities have rewritten parenting rules. With fewer trusted elders to turn to, parents now rely on digital advice and online communities. In this new age, children need the best of both worlds – parenting styles that integrate traditional wisdom with modern liberal parenting

- KIRAN BALIMANE & CYNTHIA JOHN

Twenty-five years ago the dawn of the new millennium was a time of global optimism.

It was a moment of renewed global commitment to human development, with special focus on children's education, health, and well-being. In September 1999, the international community — represented by 189 member states of the United Nations — convened at United Nations headquarters in New York to adopt the United Nations Millennium Declaration.

This declaration marked one of the most ambitious global efforts in human history to address poverty and inequality. At the heart of this commitment were the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — a set of eight time-bound goals to be achieved by 2015. They collectively aimed to improve living conditions for all, especially children and vulnerable populations. The second MDG-2 explicitly committed all signatory nations to “achieve universal primary education” ensuring that “all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.”

This optimism proved contagious. Education World — The Human Development Magazine was launched in November 1999 as India’s — perhaps Asia’s — first education news magazine with the mission statement to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda.” Three years later in December 2002, India’s Parliament amended the Constitution (86th Amendment Act) making it obligatory for the State to provide free and compulsory primary education for all children (aged six-14).

Meanwhile within relatively well-off, upwardly mobile middle classes around the world, a related debate on best ways and means to educate and nurture children to take on the increasingly complex challenges of the 21st century gathered momentum. In 2011, Amy Chua, an ethnic Chinese professor of the top-ranked Yale Law School, USA, stirred a global debate on discipline-based “Chinese parenting” with publication of her book