A few years back when parents in Japan started hiring Grandparents on rent it used to sound hilarious.
The concept of rental grandfathers or grandmothers who could play with children is not a page from a comic book, it is actually a disturbing reality.
If we fast forward the trend of grandparents for hire in the Indian context, one can see that we are not too far from facing the same problem.
A Tokyo firm, Japan Efficiency Corp., is doing booming business renting families to the lonely. For example, a couple in their mid 20s with a 2-year-old son rented an older pair of stand-ins to play their child’s grandparents, who live far away and are too old and feeble to visit.
In India, the concept of rental grandparents may sound ridiculous but then the idea of having a robot as a care companion may sound even more bizarre.
In nursing homes throughout Japan, an interactive, therapeutic robot is helping provide care to elderly residents. The robot’s name is Paro, and it looks like a baby harp seal, complete with fur, soulful eyes, and even whiskers.
The larger point of debate is, is our social fabric eroding to such an extent that even after being the most populous country in the world, we are losing family connections.
The scarcity of grandparents is common to the urban and rural areas. In the urban scenario, children have migrated due to over-education whereas in the rural areas the migration is mainly due to under-education and need for basic survival.
Due to the changing family dynamics the collateral damage is faced by the grandchildren.
Unfortunately many grandchildren are being deprived of the love and care of their grandparents simply because we have stopped attaching value to the emotional connect.
Having said that, the question is, do we have to deprive ourselves of our parents and/or grandparents love? Is work life more important than family bonding?
Intergenerational bonding is not a cliché word, it is supposed to be a natural progression of life. Most of us realise the importance of parents and grandparents either when we are in trouble or in need of emotional support.
The way we are headed, it seems that Grandparents may soon become an endangered species and we might have to take our children to the zoo to show them how grandparents look and behave.
Pankaj Mehrotra