This question is very interesting as well as significant. For instance, the growing middle class is a cause of cheer and attraction of the world towards India as a business destination and it is setting a virtuous cycle of economic growth. However, the growing middle class is not an unmitigated bliss; many of our current socio-economic dysfunctionalities are rooted in the expanding middle class.
It is a public knowledge that ‘being middle class’ is a particular construct of the mind but it is another matter when the most intensive global research on creatively accomplished persons ends up discovering the same. In a 30-year longitudinal study of over 90 creative persons, which included two Indians – Late Pandit Ravishankar and neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran – Mihaly Csikszentmihaly discovered that nearly 90% of those researched came from either the upper class or the lower class of the society. Mihaly Csikszentmihaly is a world authority on happiness and creativity.
The inference from the research was loud and clear – middle class is very averse to risk – it does not actively ‘allow or support’ its children to take up long and unpredictable creative pursuits.
It is in this context that we can now see why the overwhelming majority of educated middle-class parents want their children to pursue the supposedly ‘safe careers’ such as ‘software engineering’, law, medicine, MBA – similar to their professions. In the end, such children may end up under-achieving their potential because they would be pursuing careers similar to their parents in very different times and not make the best of the better start in life (compared to their ‘successful’ parents). Incidentally, there is more ‘bad news for middle class children’ – fathers are particularly ‘conformists’ and strongly prefer their children to seek ‘safe careers’ and not try to reach out for the moon and risk going nowhere.
And there is a gender bias too – daughters face lesser ‘safe career’ pressure. The study found that, out of every ten male creative persons, three had lost their father before they reached their teens and out of every ten female creative persons, two had lost their father before they reached their teens. Mothers tend to be more liberal in educating their children.
We, authors, know families where parents have chosen ‘safer and high return investments in real estate, gold, stocks’ over world-class education to their children (with all the means to do it). Many of us may also know of ex-NRI friends whose children carry American or British citizenships and they live in houses worth over USD 1 million but find the fees of the American or the British schools in India to be way too expensive (at USD 25,000 per annum per child!)
Moving on, let us see some more evidences of the ‘middle class dilemma’. One of the important reasons why Japan has been losing its scientific innovation edge is the increasing choice of liberal education among the children from educated middle-class homes. Children of yesteryear’s engineers, doctors and scientists do not like the regimented professions of their parents. This mega shift in career choice, coupled with a totally controlled immigration policy, dealt a deadly blow to Japan’s industrial reinvention over the past two decades.
A similar situation grips the USA too, in terms of liberal career choices of children. However, the USA carefully crafted an engaging higher education and a welcoming immigration policy to attract the best of the world to its fold and has been able to keep a good supply of the brightest professionals to the widest realm of ‘regimented technological domains’.
Indeed, choice-based espousal of liberal professional pursuits is a natural fallout of education and prosperity. We, the educated parents, have to grow to find a middle path with our children. On one hand, we must let our children discover themselves and choose careers that best fit their dream life styles, and on the other, we should work to influence their career choices by creating more possibilities through an education system that realistically equips every one of them for ‘a million careers options’.
We should also expose our children to the realities of the multiple roles to be performed as they grow up; one has to be a great spouse, parent, housemate, professional, support aging parents, worthy citizen of the neighbourhood/city/state/ nation/humanity and so on. Once again, the middle-class prefers its children to ignore all roles for the sake of the most economically rewarding professional careers; and surprisingly, even daughters are being groomed to accord the highest priority to the most economically rewarding professional careers.
Indian homes and children cannot be an exception to this expression of upward social mobility. Yet, it must be emphasised that liberal professions are hard to take off and for most creative pursuits it may take up to a decade of exceptional hard work to gain a semblance of professional success, if one is among the lucky ones.
It also requires too much longitudinal parental support – monetary and emotional.
It is a hard choice being an educated middle class – especially juggling with the world of EMIs, globally competitive careers, working spouses and the resulting ‘soft parenting’.
