Raising a Daughter in this 21st Century India (From Craddle to Marriage and After)

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About the Book The mother of two daughters, the author has used both her own experience and suggestions from peers to give valuable insights on bringing up a daughter in the 21st century India. She has not only attempted to highlight the problems of bringing up a daughter today, but also tried to show how these can be tackled and how the best of our traditional values can be combined with current requirements to bring up a well-groomed daughter in this fast- changing world of today.

The book contains time-tested tips, valuable suggestions and reliable recommendations, from paediatricians, psychiatrists, teachers and other experts; and will serve as an effective guide for all mothers.

Peppered with numerous first-person accounts, Raising a Daughter in the fast changing environment of 21st Century India can serve as a handy guide in moments of trying situations, while dealing with your teenage daughter.

About the Author Rupa Chatterjee had her early schooling in Germany and Japan. She finished her schooling from the Convent of Jesus and Mary, New Delhi and graduated with English Honours from the Sophia College, Bombay (Mumbai). She subsequently secured a B.Ed. degree.

She has written on a wide variety of subjects, ranging from the reservation policy to home management, with one of these, Smart Housekeeping, having been published by the V&S Publishers.

Preface Although some of what I wrote in the previous edition still holds true, the winds of change sweeping into our society have strengthened in the past six years and many new avenues and opportunities are opening up to our daughters, which were not there even six years ago. Along with economic liberalization, the spread of education and the growth of television, new doors of opportunity are available to our daughters. From one Kiran Bedi there are now hundreds of them in the police forces, army, navy and air force. A girl of Indian origin in the United States, Kalyani Chawla, was part of the space programme. Reality tv has crept into our drawing rooms and parents from small towns of India are allowing their young daughters to participate in song and dance competitions or beauty pageants, which would not have happened even five years ago. For many mothers, not only is the ghoongat out, but even they are getting into jeans and skirts and thumbing their nose at convention. The divorce rate is up, careers are paramount and motherhood is taking a back seat in the present scheme of things. Changes are taking place very swiftly, but it is necessary to step back and take a look at what we are doing and what awaits us in the future. While society is changing, human nature and biology remains, to some extent, constant. The instinct to find a partner and nurture comes up as nature designed it to do.

Introduction Until the last three decades of the 20th century, women throughout the world were placed in a special category to be protected, cosseted, respected, revered, or discriminated against and exploited, as the situation warranted.

Till the mid-1960s, women all over the world were expected to fulfil their designated traditional roles in society which encompassed, as the Germans put it, "children, the kitchen and the church". Although history is full of instances of learned women and powerful queens from Vedic India to Victorian England, women by and large played a secondary role in society. A woman's ultimate aim was to have a 'good' marriage, as wealth, power and social prestige all emanated from the man and his status in society. The concept of a woman having her own identity and independent status simply did not exist.

**Contents and Sample Pages**