Episode 6: Parenting in Popular Culture

The first social conditioning children receive is from their parents and this helps them to build their very first sense of identity within this world. With the dawn of mass media, pop culture is present everywhere. Since we consume it all the time, it is crucial to scrutinise it for the various political undertones it carries, to analyse gender subordination and identify the underlying causes of gender oppression. Anjali, Sahil and Poornima share their observations, personal experiences and understanding of parenting with regards to pop culture and how it has shaped their lived experiences.

About the hosts

Anjali Ramesh is a psychology graduate with a keen interest in gender studies, education, mental health and issues of social justice. She believes in the role one’s experiences play in developing a social consciousness. A former Young India Fellow from Ashoka University, she is exploring different opportunities that connect her to education, feminism, mental health and more importantly, her love for storytelling and community building. Besides these, she pursues music, journaling and her passion for sketching and visual art.

Sahil Pradhan is a queer, fat, and neuro-diverse human being who is an avid K-Pop and K-Drama fan. They are currently pursuing their Bachelor’s degree at Delhi University and consistently work in the field of queer activism and policy change, for which they have been selected as a Civics Unplugged Fellow (2022), Counter Speech Fellow (2021), Youth Ki Awaaz Justicemaker (2022), Young Researcher for Social Impact (2022) and Global Citizen Year Academy (2022).

Poornima, a dedicated woman in the impact sector, is driven to empower women from diverse backgrounds. Her love for cooking, dancing, and art is matched by her passion for thought-provoking conversations. She envisions a world where everyone has the resources and freedom to become their best selves.

Content warning: Parental Abuse, Sexism, Enforcing Traditional Gender Roles and Gendered Stereotypes, Queermisia, Marital Abuse, Body Dysmorphia, Childhood Trauma

Transcript

Anjali

Hello and welcome to our podcast on “Explorations on Feminist leadership by #OneFutureFellows2022”, a podcast by the 2022 cohort of the One Future Fellows, where we discuss, examine, and learn about all things feminist leadership. First off, let us introduce ourselves as your hosts for this episode.

 

Anjali

I am Anjali. I go by the pronouns she/her.

 

Sahil

I’m Sahil and I go by the pronouns they/them

 

Poornima

and I’m Poornima and I use the pronouns she/her 

 

Anjali

We are all curious and perpetually questioning intersectional feminists who strongly believe in and are on a quest to understand feminist leadership. We are here to discuss a very interesting topic today, parenting and pop culture. Needless to say, because of our lived experiences and a lifetime of consuming pop culture, exploring this topic came very effortlessly to us.

 

Poornima

So true Anjali. It is actually definitely an undeniable fact that the first and foremost social conditioning which we all receive are from our parents during our childhood. Therefore, there is a huge significance of parenting or the lack of it in our life and this helps us build a very first sense of identity into this world. In this relationship, you can say traditionally parents have immense power and responsibility and unsurprisingly, the quintessential parent-child relationship is therefore a breeding ground for interpersonal oppressions.  This, I think, already justifies the necessity of exploring parenting better, and one way of exploring concepts is through the representation in pop culture.  So basically, what is pop culture? 

 

Poornima

Pop culture is a collection of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, images, and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture, especially the Western culture.  This collection of ideas both permeates and reflects the everyday life of the society and everything central to the human experience.  Since we consume it so often, it is therefore crucial and important to scrutinise it for the various political undertones it carries. 

 

Anjali

Yeah, absolutely. So when we talk about representation and pop culture, there are two things pop culture does, right? One is that it shows us what is, that is, it represents reality, and two, it shows us what things can be. So it allows us to reimagine new possibilities. In today’s episode, we’re gonna speak about both of these things, what parenting is in pop culture, and how pop culture has taken on some responsibility in showing us how parenting can be more insightful, more empathetic, and less rooted in just normative notions of how parenting works. And yeah, that is that…we wanna explore feminist parenting in a truly feminist manner.

 

Sahil

That’s so true for us too, right? Our triad comprises people from different age groups, because of which we felt it would be interesting to hear what our observations, personal experiences, and understanding of parenting has been with pop culture and how has it affected our lived experiences. More importantly, we have hope that we can re-write scripts of what a feminist world can look like and that’s what our podcast is, a small hope that discussing about parenting and pop culture will lead to someone, anyone, distinct and feeling a shift, tiny as it may be. So let’s get started.

 

Poornima

Yes, so let’s get started.  So I think one of the prominent stereotypical notions and consequences of parenting is around how our social conditioning has made us see parenting as an ultimate life goal, and how the parents are seen as the ultimate provider or the decision maker of their children for like forever. If you think about it, not only does this rob people of their own choice, but it also forces many people down this path, which is questionable given that everyone may not want these things and more importantly, not be equipped to handle the responsibilities that come with marriage and also ultimately parenting. 

 

Poornima

I think what this subconsciously also creates in our head is the role of parents as the ultimate decision maker/providers who simply cannot go wrong ever with things they ask from us for all the sacrifices they have made for their child.  You know, it is often seen as the duty of the child to listen and do things that a parent expects from them.  Now, as disturbing as this can be for the child, this also puts parents on pedestals and they start to be viewed as people who know it all.  What we need to understand here is that just like everything, parenting is an ever learning trial and error process.  This actually reminds me of the movie ‘Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham’.  Now for those of you who have watched this epic movie can never forget the very strict father played by Amitabh Bachchan. He imposed his ideas of who would be an ideal partner for his adopted son, Shahrukh Khan. 

 

Anjali

Yeah, Poornima. Funny you mention it, because it’s one of my favourite movies and I remember that the character, Shahrukh Khan, wasn’t left with a choice at all and this was seen as the norm and the way it should be. Even though Shahrukh Khan decided to marry the girl of his choice, he was ousted from his family for not being ‘the good son’ because he simply wanted to have a partner and a life of his own choosing. Parents are seen as God figures who can never go wrong and even though they end up ousting you from their lives, they are infallible. The devotion, it just makes no sense and ironically, the tagline of this movie is that it’s all about loving your parents. So, love your parents despite anything that they do to you.

 

Poornima

Right.  Also, does everybody remember the stone-hearted ‘Baldev’ who was played by Amrish Puri from ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’? Believe me, for the longest time of my life I was so scared, what would happen to me if I ever got in a similar position like that of Shahrukh Khan and Kajol in these films, you know? This, this thought that, you know what if I also end up doing something you know “wrong”, kept haunting me forever. 

 

Sahil

I mean, maybe you also say more like apart from this, you know “children” concept, parents, I mean, especially mothers are often expected to sacrifice a lot of their own desires and shun aside other things that make them human. As it is shown in ‘English Vinglish’, Sridevi’s movie, and in return expect complete complicity from children in terms of their identity and you know academic and personal achievements and the obedience are subservience to parents. It creates a toxic culture surrounding the concept of parenthood itself and dehumanises everyone involved, to be honest. It also serves a feeling down for a lot of conflict and resentment which unfortunately itself is familiar to a lot of us and many, many, all of us almost.

 

Poornima

That’s true, Sahil. Like, you know, honestly, the sad part about all of this is somehow the fact that parents and children both actually start to see themselves as failures or not being good enough, if they try and do something out of their own choice and not follow, you know, the social protocol. If this is not unresolved trauma, I seriously don’t know what is. 

 

Anjali

While we are on the topic of unresolved trauma, let’s talk about the unresolved trauma infected by our age, gender roles and heteronormative parenting. So parenting and marriage have both always been largely heteronormative institutions and roles for different parents have been written and reinforced time and again. Fathers are financial providers, never really present. Mothers are caregivers and women responsible for the household with no voice in that very household, be it about that child’s education.

 

Anjali

Take the example of ‘Taare Zameen Par.’ The mother, of course, wants the very best for our child, and at the same time is very reluctant about sending him away to boarding school. The ultimate decision, though, is made by the father because he believes that is the best thing for the child. And oh, I’m sure everybody’s heard of ‘Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi,’ the soap that never ended. This never-ending saga had the rules of women very clearly written as that of being perfect bahu, perfect beti, perfect everything. It’s a bit pressurising though.

 

Poornima

Actually, now that you talk about this, you know Anjali, pop culture icons are actually subject to all of this. We all have witnessed interviewers, journalists, asking specifically female actors when they would get married or get pregnant or rather, you know, settle down.  These questions are never asked to a male counterpart and this kind of makes me really angry sometimes, because not only are these limiting for the parents, but also for the children who can all seek to make the relationship so much more holistic.

 

Poornima

Maybe fathers want to be more involved, nurturing, warm and maybe mothers actually want to seek financial freedom and career growth. But these stories again and again reinforce these narratives, repeatedly restricting people’s imaginations of what can be. Lastly, they also limit the idea of families to amatonormative and heteronormative ideas and fail to represent how poor families and chosen families operate. And if institutions are not inclusive, one could always argue that the very foundations are not feminist to even begin with. 

 

Sahil

I guess there’s also a light of hope in all of this representation, I guess. It’s about the radical imaginations and the re-imaginations of parenting, that we’re recently seeing almost growing. One of them is queer inclusive parenting and you know, inclusion of queer and chosen families in, let’s say movies or dramas. I discussed earlier that parenting is largely portrayed as a very heteronormative structure. However, the feminist movement gaining most parents’ support, the presentation of queer and chosen families have also started featuring in mainstream pop culture.

 

Sahil

Families with queer parents, their children and chosen families with friends or even other communities like say in the TV series of ‘Pose’ have all featured in pop culture albeit in small numbers and often harsh representation too. ‘Modern Family’, ‘Full House’, ‘The Grandsons’, ‘Made in Heaven’ are some of the examples of mainstream pop culture that have showcased diversity of experiences one can have as a parent and also as a family. These talk about how adoption or surrogacy or even other methods of having kids are not freely available to queer people, about how same sex couples India can be married in the future as a family and focuses the reality that can come with being queer in a world that spreads queermisia so often. It also helps in understanding and accepting different forms of parenting available to us, available inside the world and outside of it. Single parents, same sex parents, adoption, surrogacy. Therefore, there is of course an immensely long way to go, but it is encouraging that the conversation has started and work to re-write the scripts has already begun.

 

Anjali

Yeah, you’re right  Sahil, it’s so important to acknowledge that the work has begun. And one more thing that I think needs rewriting is the idea of sharing power and unconditional acceptance. So sharing of power and inclusion should be one of the most important values of parenting, which we really hardly see in pop culture.

 

Anjali

So in the movie ‘Dil Dhadakne Do’, though, we see Anil Kapoor, the father figure, initially snubbing his daughter really harshly when she expresses that she wants a divorce and to leave this loveless marriage and her abusive, controlling husband. But he listened and he learned, and he does eventually support her in the way she needs to be supported. Another really heartening example of feminist parenting is in the show ‘This Is Us’, which I absolutely love. The daughter of one of the lead couples, Tess, that’s the name of the character, is a lesbian character. While the parents had trouble grappling with her queerness initially, you know, people are just conditioned differently and because of a general lack of understanding of queerness that permeates the world, the parents took on the responsibility to learn to be better and to do better to support her.

 

Anjali

And their growth as feminist parents is so heartwarming to see. For the last season, Tess is shown to be very uncomfortable in a bridesmaid dress at a wedding, and her mother goes and asks her, you know, what’s wrong? She says “It doesn’t really feel like me” because she just feels a little dysmorphic while looking at herself in the dress. And she says, you know, “I didn’t want to disappoint anybody.” And her mom looks her in the eye really steadily and says “You will never disappoint me.” And believe me when I say I started crying because to hear that unconditionality that was in those words was just incredible. To be shown parents who unconditionally accept their children as they are, obviously not in the context of toxic behaviour or problematic behaviour. It’s just really remarkable to see that, and it showed me what I could and what I should expect from my parents. And hopefully, parents watching can see how powerful and empowering parenting can be, right?

 

Poornima

Yeah, I think that’s very true. I think all these examples that we spoke of does give us some hope, right, that it is a powerful and empowering process, but I think it’s also very important to kind of also understand and acknowledge the challenges or even negotiations that parents actually face because of pop culture, you know, especially in today’s generation.  New or would-be parents who are more, you know, maybe feminist in their approach often worry about how to stop or protect kids from consuming today’s pop culture, which often promotes systemic gendered stereotypes. 

 

Poornima

I mean, pop culture is not just entertainment, right? But also it is an access to information or knowledge and therefore being concerned with it is a very important responsibility that parents take.  For example, there are several series or let’s say animated cartoons on YouTube and even video games which are deeply problematic to say the least.  And sadly, the list of such content is just endless because of the freely accessible Internet culture that we have now.  And let’s be honest here, pop culture is not the same as it was 20 years ago, which was problematic in different ways, as we have discussed sometime back. And our generation currently is now dealing with a host of issues that my parents never really encountered.  I was having a conversation with my friend once where we discussed how, coming from a feminist perspective, we’re constantly challenged by new pop culture phenomena that don’t seem to be the best choices for our children or, you know, the future generation in general. But because we don’t live under a rock, they are still going to be exposed to them. So what do we do then? 

 

Anjali

Yeah, I completely agree. As a former educator, I also really faced this issue sometimes because on one hand, we can’t really control what children see because it’ll just distance them from us, and at the same time, we want to be trusted adults in their life who they come and talk to. And at the same time, what do you do about wanting to protect your children from all these horrors of the Internet and pop culture? It’s really tricky and I think we really need to acknowledge like how much hard work it takes to be a feminist parent.

 

Sahil

And it’s so true. This also reminds me of the series I have watched recently. I was watching, I hope everyone knows now, ‘Victor’, and the parenting concept that parenting a queer child can be very tough in some cultures is so well, well written there. The ‘father’ figure is accepting of Victor’s sexuality. But the ‘mother’ figure, because she’s a Catholic and ardent Catholic, she has a very difficult time understanding these things and she’s taking her time to understand these concepts and try to rebuild her imagination of what queerness is. And that is so beautifully done, especially also in a cultural perspective.

 

Sahil

The same post for another series I was, which was ‘Ladybird’, another movie which was beautifully done, especially the mother-daughter relationship, which can be tricky to understand, you know. I guess feminist parenting or even parenting in general, in a, let’s say in a world which ardently urges for us to be feminist in some ways or the other, is a very hard work, as we’ve all mentioned. But the question arises right, is feminist pop culture the answer to all of our parenting problems?

 

Poornima

Well, Sahil, I think the question is rhetorical here. I think because I think it’s clear as day that it is not, you know, parenting is hard work, as you rightly said. And it takes truly, I think, courageous people to take on the responsibility to raise responsible people. I mean, looking at pop culture to understand narratives and to reflect is very necessary, but one also needs to look beyond and look inwards and to communities. Which is why I feel trying to follow feminist leadership principles and placing them at the foundation of one’s parenting is, I think, probably a good start. So you know, maybe starting by being a little bit more self aware, creating a safe environment for the parents and the children, caring for oneself and others, committing to learning and unlearning, active listening, using power responsibly and maybe more transparently, also taking accountability when mistakes are made.  I think, you know, this is something which we all have struggled, I think, with parents. But I think some of these things could go miles in rewriting the future of parenting. And parents can manage to retain even humaneness as well as demonstrate leadership through care and also most importantly by setting an example

 

Sahil

So true, I guess what we can say is that I guess the representation of pop culture is widely now diverse and also very, very rapidly changing and even I would say in a better way because now we’re seeing more and more queer characters, queer parenting and not just one shade characters, right. I mean already platforms like Netflix or Amazon Prime, let’s say, have opened the avenues to showcase gems of wholesome and even layered characters, which was not available in the 90s or let’s say the 80s of one-layered woman and binary characters.

 

Sahil

Like I remember this movie called ‘Tribhanga’ of Kajol. Like the irony, right? We were talking about Kajol being restricted by the hero norm- and now she’s free I guess. The film tells a story about three generations of women navigating the messy imperfections of parenting and how hard it can be, you know, on how to suppress one’s desire and not to let it go and destroy a child I guess, showcasing how it’s OK to learn in the process and maybe even unlearn your own things. Another series which is very controversial I would say ‘Bombay Begums’. I remember the whole Twitter blowing up after this. It shows the reality of how women, you know are forced to choose between career and parenting, which should not be the case. And that somehow men can manage both. Or can’t. That’s funny, I would say. Lastly, I guess I’ll mention this recent series ‘Masaba Masaba’. It has been a huge favourite of mine, I would say. I guess I’m rooting for Neena Ji the most in the series.

 

Poornima

True. true. 

 

Sahil

Sure. And it’s very core, you know, it shows Neena Gupta as a very layered character with imperfections, perfections, her whole. It’s so wholesome to watch her as a layered character and not as one shade, you know, like ‘maa ki aanchal mein dhaka hua’ thing. And you know it’s so warm to see that you know, my mother is also the same. All our parents are so layered and we can view them as that, as humans who are very layered. I guess they have their own stories to tell and their lives to fill with colours.

 

Anjali

Yeah, yeah, true. You’ve said it. We say this is all easier said than done, of course. And parenting really is just hard, hard work, man. So good luck to all of us, those with parents, those planning to be parents, those who already are toh all the more. And I hope we manage decently and can get through life without being or causing collateral damage because of the way parenting traditionally is. And that we all have the courage to rewrite what kind and radically different parenting can look like.

 

Poornima

Yes. 

 

Anjali

So to our listeners, thank you for joining us and listening in today. We really appreciate your support.

 

Anjali

If you like this episode, please follow us on Instagram and Facebook @OneFutureCollective and at onefuture_india on Twitter. And keep an eye out for future episodes of “Explorations on Feminist Leadership by #OneFutureFellows2022”. Please leave your feedback, questions, comments on Anchored or in our DMs. We look forward to hearing your thoughts. Until next time, take care of yourself and we hope that we can explore more together. 

 

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End of transcript