Opinion My children have more than I did. Here’s how I am teaching them values
Old values still matter, but hard work, patience and perseverance can’t be taught through fake deprivation in a world where abundance is real
Scarcity sounds hollow when it isn’t real. Worse, it sounds punitive. (Source: Freepik) Values have always been at the core of parenting, particularly in India. We send our children to school to learn how to read, write and compute, but learning how to be human — how to behave, choose, endure, and care — has been, traditionally, the responsibility of the family.
When we, the now-generation parents, were children, this education came bundled with a familiar set of values: Respect for elders, focus on good grades, thrift, patience. It also came with standard teaching practices — don’t eat the snacks laid out for guests, wear hand-me-downs, wait for your birthday or Diwali for something new.
Some of these values no longer make cultural sense. Blind respect for elders, irrespective of their behaviour, is one we should be glad to see questioned. Children today are being taught, rightly, to speak up when something feels uncomfortable or wrong.
Other values endure. Hard work, perseverance, patience still matter. I imagine they always will, even if I may sing a different tune five years from now when AI has fully rearranged the rules of effort and reward. What has gone out of style, however, is the framework through which these values were taught: Scarcity.
Many of us learned patience by being asked to wait. We waited for birthdays, festivals, new clothes, new toys.
Stand up if you were told to wear hand-me-downs, eat homemade versions of food your friends ordered in, work hard, and offer the best chocolates to guests.
Now that you’ve all stood up, you may sit down.
To be clear, I would give an arm and a leg for my children to willingly accept hand-me-downs or choose homemade food more often. These are sustainable, thoughtful ways of living — frameworks that may yet save our health, and the planet. But when they were taught to us, the reason was straightforward and honest: Scarcity.
Wear hand-me-downs because new clothes are expensive.
Keep the new toy in its box because I can’t buy another one this year.
Offer the best chocolates to guests because there are only a few.
Today, that logic doesn’t hold in my home. I have been fortunate to do well in life, in ways far beyond my mother’s imagination. I can buy my children new clothes all year round. They have more toys than they deserve, not just on birthdays. We can order tiramisu a couple of times a week (the children get waffles or doughnuts, for the record).
And therein lies the problem. I have not developed a new framework for teaching old values. Scarcity sounds hollow when it isn’t real. Worse, it sounds punitive. This generation can smell inauthenticity from a mile away.
My Gen Z office team once gave me a sharp dressing down for refusing to buy my 14-year-old daughter the latest iPhone when I had upgraded mine. My reason was simple: How do I teach her that you have to work for what you want?
The answer, I’m learning, is not artificial deprivation. It is experience.
The values still matter; scarcity does not. So, instead of fighting an unwinnable battle, I bought my daughter the phone — and also got her a cat. A rescued one she had been begging for. Caring for the cat teaches her things I cannot. The cat doesn’t magically learn to use the litter box. Until it does, someone cleans up the mess. That someone is her.
We take the children sledding in the snow, where the joy of the ride is always followed by the labour of dragging the sled back uphill. There is often more drudgery per unit of joy in life, and that ratio is worth learning early.
We upcycle clothes and remember to carry bags to the market — not because we can’t afford things, but because we are clear about why and how much we consume. We order in only once a week, not because it’s expensive, but because you can only eat so many feelings.
In the meantime, I observe. What do they persist with? How long do they sit with discomfort? How do they speak to themselves when results don’t meet their own expectations? These patterns matter far more than whether they waited six months for a toy.
Values endure. The tools must evolve. And perhaps our real job now is not to manufacture scarcity, but to create experiences honest enough to do the teaching for us.
The writer is a strategy consultant, parent and traveller
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