Fathers are status quo, children are change

THE 1993 movie “In the Name of the Father” was based on the true story of four people, who were wrongly convicted of the 1974 IRA's Guildford pub bombings that killed four off-duty British soldiers and a civilian. The son Gerry Conlon, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, makes it his fight to prove that his father Giuseppe wasn't guilty as charged. The movie ends when the triumphant son reveals his story to the media and proclaims his father's innocence. That may as well be the story of sons in this country but for a necessary twist. The fight of these sons needs to be focused not on proving the innocence of their fathers but their guilt.

Iconoclastic it may sound, but the true freedom of young people in this country lies in challenging the ways of their fathers, in some cases mothers. Parental guidance in many cases is misguiding, concentrated on pursuit of life more as a gamble than as a gift. The young minds need to break out of the vicious circle created by their parents that goes from hypocrisy to manipulation to desperation to more hypocrisy and more manipulation.

This country was once fortunate to repose its trust entirely in its young. It was they who fought the Liberation War, laid down their lives and shouldered the dream of creating an independent nation. It was then that parents were handheld by their children, when fathers even sought opinion of their high school-going sons before they decided to vote in the 1970 elections. It was then in many years that fathers saw more wisdom in seeing the world through the lens of their children. It was also in many years that mothers fortified their hearts to withstand the sacrifice of the apples of their eyes.

That glorious chapter of history has reversed. Those young people became parents in their turn, and they have misled their children in their mad pursuit for wealth and success. If the anomalies of last 43 years are to be summarised in one sentence, it's that parents have marginalised their children in every walk of life.

The children are first marginalised in their homes where greedy parents take up most of the space. In all their innocence these children grow up in the elusive mystery of expenditure exceeding income, their text-book sensibilities slipping through that enigmatic crack. For a second time they are marginalised when parents sublimate their ambitions through the future of their children. Most of these children are forced to become the prototypes of their parents. The loan defaulters' children are raised to believe in the virtue of this vicious crime. The politicians expect their sons and daughters to fill in their shoes. Corrupt parents are splurging on their kids' amenities and opportunities so that these kids can get good education and upbringing.

Little does it matter that it only creates an oxymoron, because corrupt homes are an antithesis to character formation. Children raised by these households are like crops drawing sustenance from poisoned soil. It's a scientific fact that residues of that poison are bound to end up in the food at the dinner table.

David Finkelhor, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire, claims that although today's young people in the United States are risk averse, narcissistic, app-dependent, over-scheduled, entitled and “pornified,” they are at the same time showing virtues their elders lacked. As proof, he throws statistics if anybody has doubts. Crime is down. Arrests for serious violent offenses by juveniles have dropped. Peer victimisation, harassment and bullying have declined. Suicide, too, is less common. Teenage pregnancy is down to record lows. Binge drinking by 12th-graders is low and compared with 1995, 56% fewer youths were running away in 2012.

These improvements have happened, argues Finkelhor, for a number of reasons. Prevention and intervention programmes for parents, families and children, psychiatric medication given to them to reduce aggression, depression and hyperactivity, and the Internet, electronic games and cellphones have worked together to keep idle brains from turning into devil's workshop. But a more direct approach was taken in China 48 years ago. It was the Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, when children were encouraged to denounce their parents, students to attack their teachers and spouses to accuse spouses of crimes and wrongdoings.

That madness perhaps is an extreme example, but the time has come to apply its underlying spirit in moderation. Fathers always signify the status quo, children the change. If anybody wonders why we are stuck like a stick in the mud, it's because change has become a captive of status quo. Herodotus says that in peace sons bury their fathers and in war fathers bury their son. Sons may still bury their fathers, who have buried their sons beneath the deadweight of their dubious convictions.

The writer is Editor, First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star.
Email: badrul151@yahoo.com