The Family: Fading Out

Musings

Dr Rajagopal Soondron

In 1975, Dr Edward Tronick, a developmental psychologist, observed how infants reacted to their mothers’ eye contact; he noted how an elder’s smile or indifference brought immediate changes to a baby’s expression. Just three minutes of emotional absence from “mum” drew a ‘withdrawn, hopeless facial expression’ from the infants. They could sense, positively or negatively, that certain facial expressions were comfort-inducing while others triggered disagreeable feelings.

Family Social Media. Pic – SAHM

Years later, researchers found that even three-week-old babies could recognize their mother’s voice. By allowing them to suck at an array of feeding bottles in turn, they found the infants would suck longer at the bottle electronically connected to their mother’s voice. This denoted that they start to develop their senses and psychological skills from an extremely early age.

But lo, not everything is rosy in the maternal land; human reactions can be versatile.

In 1972, waking from my wooden berth on the night “Boat Train” as it ploughed through the paddy fields toward Madras, I was welcomed by a beautiful sunrise breaking through the eastern horizon beyond the Bay of Bengal. Some seats away sat a woman immersed in the popular Kumudam magazine; beside her was a small girl — surely her daughter — who, like me, was admiring the magical sunrise. She kept pulling at the lady’s sari to draw attention to the sight, but her puny hand was gently pushed away; her mother refused to be disturbed during her perusal.

I felt disappointed by that spoilsport attitude; I could only watch the child’s fading smile and nonplussed body language. She was completely let down by her mother’s negative reaction.

Fifty Years Later

Now, fifty years later, it is the opposite scenario — adults are begging their children to interact emotionally with elders, to admire sunrises and sunsets; but the youngsters have turned indifferent to their parents and surroundings. They are yearning only for the latest news on social media.

After millennia of wonderful mother-child relationships, our modern generation is set to experience a sudden jolt. Since infancy, our children have learned by imitation — from the nuances of language to manual dexterity — quietly studying the faces of their elders to decode happiness, sadness, or stress as they sought to mould their own characters.

The Mothers’ Role

At home, women were the ones to transmit finer feelings and thoughts to the next generation. Men did their best to participate, but surely women were the ones who mellowed the minds of children and the growing males who would later be called to defend the nation; gradually, these young adults became more sensitive, influenced by maternal feelings and memories. Perhaps they started thinking differently — of the possibility of the other option: peace.

Mum was always at home; coming back from school, children looked forward to her presence and comfort as soon as they crossed the threshold. What an immediate psychological relief it was to meet her welcoming smile. But then came women’s liberation; rightly so, women struck back at millennia-old male domination. They chose to participate in all walks of life as defined by male society; suddenly women became politicians, professionals, space travellers, and soldiers.

As a consequence, our children were soon packed into school buses in the morning; in the afternoon, they loitered or went for private tuition, returning to a “dad-less, mum-less” house. The homecoming psychological relief is gone. They discovered more fun with friends than with parents, attaching themselves to outdoor elements and becoming ready to lose family attachment for the sake of friends. Must we blame them if these children discovered dopamine-releasing addictions — media or drugs — or more varied leanings than before?

Information

We never suspected that the human mind could encapsulate such a strong, dormant, addictive information module. Looking back, what were our ancestors thinking when they woke in their caves? Were the males thinking of their mates or children as we do today? Or were they already thinking of their next meal and forest venture — fishing for some semblance of information to plot the coming day’s outing with minimum risk? Is it possible that from the beginning of time, information was the primary concern dominating the Homo Sapiens mind?

No wonder, nowadays, major countries have perfected their intelligence-gathering systems to face looming dangers. Following suit, the digital world has infiltrated all aspects of our lives — even common people are in ecstasy as they sift through tons of information to their heart’s content via mobile phones: to digest, use, marvel at, or even to tease and harm neighbours. Our ancestors, had they been present, would envy us with eyes popping out of their sockets.

The Nail in the Coffin

“Un malheur ne vient jamais tout seul!” Concurrently with women’s liberation and travel facilities, the digital world arrived. What could fit the occasion better for the new generation than social media to replace a missing mother’s smile? On one hand is the diminishing attachment to family; on the other is a flood of impersonal information to connect with strangers at the other end of the planet — whipping up a novel sense of universal brotherhood — while weaning themselves off from a “suffocating” home life where the parents’ own digital lives are also on the rise.

For millennia, we took for granted that family life is the sine qua non of human culture; but modern trends prove it is no exception to the rule — like everything under the sun, it is meant to disappear one day.

The beckoning of AI, information overload, and virtual relationships are de facto becoming the rule. Unfortunately, our new generation, caught in between, is going to pay a heavy price; it is falling prey to new psychological forces that will trigger a totally new mindset in modern civilization.

Is all this part of biological evolution?

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 20 March 2026