Samar Al Abriya

We are responsible of many aspects that shape our children’s lives. Our choice of life partners is huge decision when we think of it as choosing a parent to our future children. Not only that our genetics play a great role on how they look and their health, but the circumstances we choose to beget them in can have a major influence on their lives. It is true that not much could be done about genetic issues and nature, but nurture is definitely something manageable if taking into consideration and given effort.

If we take the gender issue as an example, it can be argued that we mostly don’t choose the gender of our offspring but we surely affect how they see themselves and the other gender. When you tell a boy that he should play with cars and guns and tell a girl she should play with dolls and kitchen items, we are shaping their perspectives and understanding of gender. We are dictating on them how gender roles should be and what to expect from the other gender. By doing this, we prevent them from discovering themselves and force a fake social identity on them. A boy who is taught that kitchen is a place for women only may be discouraged to think of pursuing a job as a chef despite having the talent perhaps. Similarly, a girl who thinks of guns as a masculine toy would never probably discover the talent of being a good shooter in her.

Another example that shows how we shape our children’s characters and attitudes is how we raise them to be racists or humanists. When you teach a child to treat the housemaid or the driver as an inferior person, we are rooting the seeds of discrimination in them. When we instruct our children not to mingle with some other kids because they belong to a certain religion, race or social level, we are harming them more than protecting them. A person who cannot live in harmony with other people is far more likely to lead a happy life. The world is too diverse to isolate ourselves in a shell that contains only our cousins.

The examples above are however few, that can highlight how our children are nothing, but reflect the products of our long process of slowly shaping their personalities. It is true that we are responsible of providing food, shelter and education for them and we mostly do provide these, but we shouldn’t overlook such aspects of nurture. We own our kids that.