As an educator, I come in touch with children from various backgrounds . It is heart rendering to see how the economically turbulent times in the World and the National economy are affecting the families in India.

In the present century, most of the families in India are nuclear families. These families work as small independent units in their own way , lacking any support from extended families . Being independent a lot of responsibility comes on one’s shoulder. In the Indian family structure, mostly the fathers are the breadwinners and the mothers sit back voluntarily or take a break from their careers to take care of their kids and the family.
With the present turbulent period in the world and the national economy , it has become very difficult for the sole bread winner to secure his job. With the present economically tough conditions , companies are under stress of maintaining their profit margins and are not able to support the employees . We are constantly hearing of mass layoffs by private sector companies. These companies themselves have stressed balance sheets and are unable to bear the employee costs. But, what happens to either the people who are still working or those who have been laid off? The people who are still working, work under extremely stressful conditions. This stress comes from the insecurity of their jobs. They work under unnatural conditions, work overtime or work odd hours to secure their jobs. Those who are out of job are too under the pressure of running their families and maintaining their status quo. In both the cases , these breadwinners are under huge stress. A lot of unhealthy feelings such as anger, fear etc , enter inside these people. Whichever side these breadwinners are , stress is carried down to their families . The first people to bear with all these unhealthy emotions are their partners and their children. Constant arguments crop up at home with playing the blame game . The silent sufferers are the children who are caught in the crossfire that occurs off and on between their parents. Now a days , I see a lot of children becoming depressed and suicidal with all the disturbance going on at home.
Times are turbulent but, we need to find a solution to keep ourselves calm as parents . We can turn to spirituality to keep ourselves calm during these turbulent times. Spirituality offers a lot of insight into realms less trodden by us and leads to deeper understanding of the functioning of life. Here, we need to be very clear that spirituality is very different from religion. Spirituality is independent of any religion and is above all religions.