ONE YEAR!

Part II- Reflections based on the responses from parents

The workshops and research were done in a school in Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu, a small semi-rural town known for its temples. C.P. Vidya Mandir matriculation school is a low-income private school and the gender sensitization programme was administered to 620 students while 418 students participated in the pre and post-survey and focus group discussions.

The entire strength of the school is approximately around 1800 students and 77% of them belong to Backward castes, 17% of them belong to Most Backward caste, 3% Backward caste (Muslim) and 3% SC. The self-reported income of 70% students is between  Rs. 1,20,000 and  Rs. 2,00,000 per annum.

Among the 418 students surveyed,

• 270 students belonged to the age group between 12 and 15 years. And, 150 of them belonged to the age group between 15 and 17 years
• 47% of the students are boys (198) and 53% of the students(210) are girls.

The summary of this discussion is documented in this blog here,

As part of the gender program, The workshop was conducted for parents of 9^th and 10^th Std and we couldn’t do it for the other classes because it got interrupted by the lockdown. The following observations are from the Pre-surveys and 167 parents participated in the workshop and 126 responded to the surveys.

70% of the respondents were female, 21% of them were male, the rest of them didn’t identify or both the parents responded together.  The average age of respondents is 40 and most of them come from low income, non-English speaking backgrounds with an average literacy at the Matric level or less.

Questions highlighted in bold were asked to parents in Tamil for the purpose of understanding their attitudes and perspectives. I have tried to compare their responses with their children and teachers.

1. According to you, Which is the biggest problem you have with your child?  

Parents responded by saying, S/he is, “Hot/Short tempered” followed by “talking back” (In Tamil, they meant children keep disagreeing with them), using mobile phones, lack of concentration in studies.

Students response to the question, “What did you wish your parents understood about you?”

A lot of boys have responded by saying, “I wish they understand, “I am a good boy”

Girls have responded by saying, “I want the freedom to go out”, “I am always angry“

Other common responses are ,” I am trying to study but it doesn’t work” or wish they understand, “I am not good at studying or understand I have this talent etc”.

My reflections:

“ Whenever I Speak she doesn’t understand”, “He is unwilling to understand what I am saying. I am finding it difficult to explain it to my child.”

Their responses indicate parents’ frustrations in communicating to their children and teens’ perceived view of not being understood which are inline with existing research around adolescents.

Observations: A few of the concerns expressed by their parents about their children seem to be the same as the ones my parents had with me! Based on my conversations, I feel that there isn’t much communication happening in households between parents and kids. The conversations are still very basic – needing permission to go to a friends place, wanting a phone, unavailability of TV. Most of them haven’t had conversations on aspirations, career etc. None of the girls goes out anywhere by themselves and they don’t go out in general besides going to school and tuition. There aren’t any public places to hang out in our town except for temples so family outing and spending time together are restricted to that and occasional movies. Father’s presence in both boys and girls lives seem very less.  Fathers have more presence and communication with girls than boys. A lot of moms expressed concern about their kids(Boys) about how little he talks at home.

My rant: As a society, I feel we have a huge problem of communicating with each other starting within our families and reasoning with children is taken for granted and we don’t do it and doing it is difficult.

2.What is Your opinion about your child being friends with boys and girls of the same class?

Most of them said, “ It is good and healthy”. A few others had caveats like, “ It should be within limits/boundaries”, “as long as they are good boys”.

In Students responses, some of the boys felt their parents don’t approve their friendships and a few girls expressed having restrictions in talking to boys.

Observations: Based on discussions, parents seem to be genuinely okay with the overall idea of their children being friends with the opposite gender in the classrooms. But, when it comes to the specific scenario like talking/texting over the phone they seem to be uncomfortable, scared and suspicious of their children’s behaviour. Since these aren’t discussed at home, children presume their parents won’t allow them to be free so they hide even talking to boys in the class. They often ask me to explain to their parents in meetings asking them to let them talk to boys. I think every parent has a different level of threshold of what’s acceptable and not. A few of them are completely okay with their girls going out with their class boys for work or ‘treat’ for birthdays and a  very few them aren’t even okay with boys and girls sitting together. I think this could be easily handled if we have more joint open communication with parents, children and school management regularly because I feel it comes the fear of unknown.Before we started this discussion, the management believed parents would be very conservative and would probably oppose this, fortunately, we are surprised by parents responses. A lot of teachers are okay with friendships with the opposite gender but a good number of Teachers seem more conservative compared to the parents, probably because it’s not a hypothetical situation for them and they see girls and boys together every day. For  a few teachers, if they study together it’s okay but not when they play or dance together because they haven’t seen it their lives too.

Peers influence in adolescents is talked in always negative light but based on the existing research and my experience here, I see a great potential among these kids to influence each other positively especially with cross gender friendships. Example, in the projects we worked as part of consciously creating platforms for them to work together, boys influenced girls to be more adventurous, girls nudged the boys to be more patient and listen.

3. What are your aspirations for your child?

Based on the reponses, the first picture depicts the word which was often used and second picture shows how many times it was used.

• 

• 

As the word cloud depicts most of the parents just wish their children would, “Live well”. We need a deeper discussion around this. Other responses include, “Study well”, should have Panbu, Ozhukam (Kindness, good behaviour) and be honest.

Kids aspirations were specific to careers and Jobs and it was mainly traditional choices of Engineer, police, teacher etc and were influenced by their interests media, parent expectations and sometimes the need to earn money for the family and support them.

Observations: I presumed parents would respond more by saying they should get a job or earn more money because the families are from low- income households. But, aspirations were more value-driven and this needs to be discussed among parents, school management and teachers whether the education provided in the school aligns with the aspirations of parents and students.

4. Are you aware of the mental and physical changes your child goes through during adolescence?

Most of the parents said that they are very well aware of the changes that happen to children during their adolescence.

Students response: It was seen that the girls’ knowledge about periods was informed more by the societal myths, and not facts. However, boys as old as 15 and 16, had only a vague idea about it. Girls expressed discomfort in talking about menstruation in front of boys, and in this regard, younger girls from 7^th and 8^th grade were more uncomfortable than the older ones. Although we discussed the taboo around periods at home, they were habituated to it to an extent where they expressed that they are least affected by it.

Most students, boys and girls alike were completely ignorant or reluctant to talk about what boys undergo during puberty. Each class’s awareness about menstruation and puberty was connected to how it was taught by their teachers. Some teachers have taught the students the facts while most of them resorted to analogies with flowers and animals and have rushed through the topic. 

Observations:  Teachers are familiar with biological changes of body during puberty but the discussions and knowledge around psychological and behavioural aspects of teens are limited in school.

5. How do you think we can prevent child abuse?

Based on the reponses, the first picture depicts the word which was often used and second picture shows how many times it was used.

• 

• 

Parents thought children need to be taught and said this should be discussed. Other responses include that assaulters should be punished and boys need to be taught.

• “Sex ed should be explained to both girl and boys and the characteristics should be explained to prevent this”, “We should freely and openly discuss everything with children”,
• “We should teach the boys at home and the boys we know about women safety”,
• “Should explain to children how different people approach differently and should teach them about good touch and bad touch”,
• “Both the kids-boys and girls should be brought up with kindness”

     Students responses mainly ranged from not knowing what to do to demanding brutal punishments like,  “being burnt alive, kill him, hang him”. The next popular suggestion was to have CCTV cameras. Although, after our workshop, during Post surveys children responded differently by quoting POSCO act or calling for workshops.

Observations: Media has a major role in influencing children on these issues. Most of them had stated news and movies as the source of information for knowing about child abuse. During the workshop, parents were enthusiastic to know more and demanded these discussions be held regularly.

6. What’s the role of teacher and parents?

Parents felt both teachers and parents have an equal role in having these discussions. They suggested that students are more attentive when teachers tell them these things and also a few parents suggested they are responsible for creating a friendly atmosphere at home.

Students expressed more confidence in parents and friends compared to teachers for the question, “Who would you confide in?”

Observations:  Except for a few teachers, there is a huge mistrust among teachers and students around these discussions.  We need constant engagement among teachers and students around these issues.

7.Are men and women treated equally?

47% of respondents felt men and women aren’t treated equally. While 35% of them felt they are treated equally and 18% didn’t respond to the question.

8. Should we have discussions in school around these topics- Adolescence, Love/ Relationships, Sex education and  Child abuse?

We had asked this question to 76 respondents,

Observations: More than 70% of the respondents feel it is important to discuss about Adolescence,Love ,sex ed and child abuse in classrooms. I was surprised by this response and I didn’t think so many of them would think Sex Ed is important that needs to be discussed. Teachers felt these topics need to be discussed too but felt they would be uncomfortable to do it themselves. Management was hesitant to  ask these questions.

• Was the workshop useful? And, Give suggestions

All the parents (100%, I know how this sounds!) felt the workshop was very useful and shared these comments,

• “We could have such workshops twice or thrice in a year
• I feel students would understand you easily compared to us
• We need more discussions about this
• A lot of new info was shared. Shouldn’t be one- off exercise. Should be continuous. It needs to be repeated to enforce it, Whatever we hear often is what gets registered, whether it’s good or bad
• Younger generations need higher thoughts
• Combined-studying should be encouraged and without any gender difference they should sit together and study
• Girls and Boys should mix without any differences. And, one shouldn’t make of the other and these things should be taught to children
• Should have a meeting with both children and parents. Teachers also.“

Based on my experiences in the last year, I am revisiting so many of my assumptions. I didn’t think people would be open to talking about these topics around gender or climate change. But, based on my conversations, I think a lot of them are curious and want to know more and are willing to listen more. Like my town, Kumbakonam, there are hardly any forums where ideas are publicly exchanged and debated especially not for women. We have only religious events and that’s not interactive too.  The initial reaction could be mixed but I think if we design the conversations in the way that is familiar to them, it can be pushed to have meaningful conversations. For example, I started the gender workshop by talking about careers, jobs and mental health before addressing the gender discrimination at the household level. It requires some tweaking but most of us never get a chance to be part of discussions where possibly new ideas are shared and discussed. Most of the people I meet in my town and cities too have never had any chance to have informed public discussions. These kinds of conversations around politics, gender, caste, religion can’t be restricted to classrooms or watching videos or social media interaction. Gender is not an isolated issue, it very much exists with other issues in our communities. I see talking about talking gender as an opportunity to talk other things too.

We need real spaces where communities can deliberate on issues which matter to them and this need to go beyond even less popular institutions like Gram Sabhas. I strongly feel these lack of public spaces, conversations and representation are perhaps the main reasons behind why our democracy is under attack; Because it doesn’t exist in our imagination and most of us have never experienced it in our lives.