
A few thoughts on Indian children. There are hundreds of millions of them, so no single statement can be made about them. They are hugely varied.
But let me describe two kinds of Indian children, in particular....
One type of Indian child is a modern creation. These little ones have privilege that is still somewhat new in India. Sure, there have been princes and princesses and children of the wealthy from the dawn of Indian civilization, so the fact that some children have privilege in India is by no means new. With that said, what is new is that there are *so many* of them now that the game has changed. There are whole stores filled with toys and treats for these pampered kids.
It's somewhat new for India.
Our kids live a lot like these kids, so we can see real similarities, and very often our kids are friends with these privileged Indian kids.
Here's a difference I have seen, though.
In some cases, certain privileged Indian children have someone with them at all times. They have nanies until they are far too old to need one. They even get fed by someone else's hand. This is a little odd, this hand feeding.
A kid of 7 or 8 years will stand there with an open mouth and a craned neck just like a baby bird as their mother feeds them. Often the mother is engrossed in a conversation with other adults while doing this. I'm not really sure what it is about, but it cannot help with autonomy.
Second data point, many Indian children sleep with their parents until they are well beyond the age where (most) Western families would have them in the bedroom. I don't have that many data points on this, but I have had it explained to me by some folks that this is common.
You add a relative degree of affluence to hand feeding and add a dash of children sleeping in their parents bed - it sometimes leads to an interesting product. Not often, but every once in a while I'll see a shocking product of this excessive doting and pampering and you have a gigantic, lumbering infant.
I saw one yesterday, that's why I mention it.
She ran onto the plane yelling in an infantile voice at her "daddy" about wanting a window seat (in which a guy was already sitting) and did something that looked to be a combination of skipping and falling forward down the aisle of the plane. The parents looked to have a unique mixture of ennui and adoration for this little girl. She had braids with bows in them and her jeans were hiked up way too high and she sounded like she had just started to talk - and as God is my witness she had to have been about 13.
It was just plain odd.
I've seen it before. And I am piecing together data points that make me believe kids like this girl are raised to do almost nothing for themselves, including picking up a fork. Domestic servants are a part of life here, even for those in the lower middle class. And when you have a degree of affluence that permits many servants, etc. ...
... then you end up breeding giant baby humans.