Childhood Then Vs Now
A lot has changed over the years. They way children lived, especially indulge themselves in recreational activities then versus, what they do now, is a better of night and day.
Take for example the kids who belong to this generation and a lot that was born during the late 90s for that matter. You can clearly see that there’s just too much that has changed in like just a span of 10 years. While some for the good, most for the bad. Be it the development of the economy or the technology, just everything has supposedly changed in these few gap years, and that too, at a global level.
A task as pure as making friends, meant stepping out of your houses and comfort zones and just asking random kids to play along with. It helped in children grow and learn in a way that todays kids will never be able to know. Today, all you need to do is add a few of them on Facebook and that is about the end of the word ‘effort’.
Being a 90s kid, I myself can relate to most changes. Childhood is something that our generation loves to glorify. We are might not be the generation that witnessed the transition from Doordarshan to cable TV, but what we witnessed was no less. I still remember how mobile phones were a thing and how only our dads used to have them for wok purposes. Today, a 5 year old is seen dealing a number and talk to their play school friends. Video games were a big luxury and so were chocolates, but we had them alright. Today, the fight is all about the model of game, derived by an element of ‘Show-off’.
The economic boom of the 90s meant watching films in the theatre, going out for dinner occasionally and birthdays where mom cooked for a party of 15 or 20. We were perhaps the last generation that knew what it felt like, to be bored out of their lives when a 2 month long summer vacation was given.
Only the kids of today need to be forced to go to school, and with the pandemic that has taken almost two years in this race, the bad has gotten worse. Today’s childhood is packed with more activities than even a full-grown adult can handle. It is no more about the personal development of the child, rather a part in the rat-race, while each child struggles to make through.
There is content to be consumed and classes to be attended. Frequent dining out and visits to mall is no longer a luxury, but a routine. It is also for a fact that without these privileges, these kids are seconds away from witnessing boredom. Their engineering had taken a lapse, in such a way that, even if their parents want, they cannot fit into how the kinds in the olden days lived. Say is a ‘Faulty mechanism’ or routine, these kids have moulded well into what has been given to them.
The conversation how childhood has changed over the decades is incomplete unless we discuss how parenting has transformed. Our children have the lifestyle that we manage to give them. Like I said in the beginning too, it is all about what you feed, and your child will grasp. It is until the age of 5, that the basic roots of child need to be made strong. If the child has a habit of eating food, with an iPad in hand, I am sorry to say, that the coming years of the child will be hard for him, but even harder for his parents.
