PARENTING: INDIAN TRADITIONAL VIEWS AND MODERN VIEWS AND EFFECTS OF YOGA ON ADOLESCENTS‟ ATTITUDE TOWARDS VIOLENCE, BELIEFS ABOUT AGGRESSION AND ALTERNATIVES

Abstract

According to Indian traditional texts, the human being has five growth phases namely, śaiśava (infancy), bālya (childhood), kaumāra (adolescence/teenage/pre-youth), yauvana (youth), vārdhakya (old age). The basis is not just the „age‟ but other vital criteria namely āśramas (duties and responsibilities described in Indian traditional texts: brahmacharya, a a, vānaprastha, and sanyāsa) and pu uṣā a (objectives of the life narrated in Indian texts: dharma, artha, kāma, mokṣa). Though the scientists, developmental psychologists, and the Indian traditional texts claim that the learning process would start at a stage when the baby is in the mother‟s womb itself, what one learns from the parents in the first four formative phases of life (śaiśava, bālya, kaumāra, and first part of yauvana) provides firm foundation and continues to influence other phases of one‟s life. In support of this view, time and again increasing number of research studies have been demonstrating that parenting process during infancy (śaiśava), childhood (bālya), adolescence or pre-youth (Kaumāra), and first part of yauvana (youth) is one of the important factors significantly contributing to the child/adolescent behavior. Many of the studies have shown noteworthy relation between parenting processes and child delinquencies like aggression, violence, attitude supporting violence, and beliefs supporting aggression. Thus parents are often blamed for the delinquencies (if any) of the children. Further, they have also shown that the aggression and violent behavior surfacing during childhood/adolescence is mostly stable from childhood to adulthood that could lead to multitude of problems like juvenile delinquency, adolescent relational problems, and adulthood criminal attitude. Further, empirical studies say it is essential to correct the child/adolescent behavioral problems, violent attitude or aggressive behavior at the earliest to deter delinquency in the later age points. Researchers are advocating many methods to address these childhood or adolescent delinquencies, where yoga is one of the prominent, time tested, proven effective tools. Indian traditional texts also strongly advocate yoga as it is broad based implying that irrespective of the causes of delinquency, nature of deviance (covert or overt), gender, and age, yoga can address the issue and the positive results can be found.