A mother plays the most important role in shaping a child’s life. The child sees the world through his mother’s eyes. While let us all accept one fact, we Indians are very obsessed and prejudiced about certain aspects in our lives like caste, colour, sex, religion just to name a few. Whilst the Media plays an important role in moulding our perception we always tend to forget that the seeds of prejudice about the society are sown by the family in our tender minds.

For Example: We always talk and scream about Gender inequality at work as adults but did we realize that we ourselves are encouraging gender equality in our homes but differentiating between daughter and son, husband and wife, mother and father. Aren’t we hypo-crates sometimes, that we celebrate Durga Ashtami in the temples but mourn the birth of Durga in a family.

Ever since our childhood, we are taught that black is ugly, earlier this perception was forced on the girls now, the cosmetic companies have ensured that even boys face this complex of skin colour. Considering that India is close to the Equator we are a hot region and therefore our skin colours are bound to be on the darker side. Instead of making us accept this, our family members fall into the trap by the huge cosmetic giants for their sales and end up buying cosmetics for children as young as 10 to make them fair.

Our urban lifestyle has made us healthy to obese and in some way even genetically we Indians are never size zero. Even if you notice the Indian style of saree drapes, were meant for curvy women to highlight our curves. Now just imagine a saree or sherwani on a stick.

As parents the first things we need to teach our children is to accept ourselves before being prejudiced by the things around. Once we teach our children to accept themselves as they are we can have a better society for our children, where they are safe and do not have to surrender to peer pressure.