Mother Hits Girl Over Boyfriend: Why Are Parents Critical Of Dating?

A video of a woman beating her daughter in front of people for having a boyfriend has been going viral on the internet. The video has raised concerns about how parents believe it’s okay to hit their children.

The video shows the mother repeatedly slapping her daughter as the girl cries, requesting her to stop. However, the mother continues to beat the girl ruthlessly and then drags her out of the room. The video has sparked massive outrage among netizens.

Mother Hits Daughter Over Boyfriend

In a country that hails the concept of love in epics and makes numerous love films, many parents are against their children, especially their daughters, falling in love. Is falling in love such a huge crime that a girl deserves to be beaten mercilessly? What entitles parents to raise their hands over their children?

Today, many parenting educators are advocating gentle and respectful parenting right from birth, but this video is the harsh reality. Parents inflicting physical abuse on their children even after they become adults is completely normal in our society. This brutal reaction is why many girls lead double lives inside their own homes. Parents complain that their daughters are secretive, but they fail to realise that it’s their regressive mindset and oppressive behaviour that forces their daughters to keep their personal lives in the closet. 

Strict Parenting Only Worsens Things

Many Indian parents fail to understand that even the most basic things, like their daughters having male friends, staying out late, having sleepovers, partying, travelling, falling in love, and more are the bare minimum that every person is entitled to do. The responsibility of parents ends with empowering their daughters to efficiently handle challenging situations if needed and providing the assurance that they will always be supportive of them, no matter what.

But what do Indian parents do? Play Hitler in their daughters’ lives to the extent that daughters begin to perceive their parents as authoritarians and never as their safe space. By not having open and honest conversations with their daughters, parents are paving the way for their daughters to seek guidance from sources that could potentially be harmful and make the wrong decisions.

Many people lead double lives because they have strict parents; the version of them that exists at home is not even remotely close to the person that they really are. 

This pressure from parents puts daughters in a really tough spot – they can’t seek help if they are feeling depressed over a breakup, they can’t reveal if they have been harassed or abused by someone, and they can’t open up about their true feelings, their sexuality, or their gender identity inside their own home to their own parents. How is it even "home" when an individual isn’t allowed to be their true self inside that space?

Why Can't Parents Be Supportive?

Parents think they are protecting their daughters by restricting their freedom, but at what cost? Sometimes women make bad choices because their parents have failed to empower them to make the right one; because their parents have denied them a safe space to open up in; because their parents have imposed unrealistic restrictions on them, causing them to rebel.

While it's understandable that parents sometimes do this out of love and are excessively concerned about their daughter's well-being, why can't they just equip their daughters to make wiser choices when it comes to relationships instead of curbing their rights?

While my intention is not to blame parents, this video is a reminder of how oppressive Indian parenting is. Today, as a parent myself, I want my daughter to consider me the first person to open up, to share her problems with me. It’s a parenting win only when we provide a safe, understanding, respectful, and supportive environment for our children. However, if our child, kid, or adult is hiding things from us out of fear of being judged, shamed, or criticised, that's a parenting failure.

Suggested Reading: Why Do Indian Women Lie To Their Parents?

Views expressed by the author are their own