The Problems Facing Modern Civilization

of elderly parents and grandparents being sent to old people’s homes, where they live separately from the rest of the family. In the joint family system, grandparents were always present to look after grandchildren, but in western society, their place is no longer in the home. In a sense, the focus of parental life is likewise no longer in the home, although for different reasons. Formerly, the mother was always at home to look after the children. But now, with both parents working, the children meet them only in the evenings when they are both already too tired to give them their proper attention, or on weekends, when they are generally too concerned with their own recreations. The western child is deprived of his mother because, like his father, she has gone to her office, and he is deprived of his grandparents, because they have conveniently been put away out of sight in old people’s homes. It is such children who become so emotionally unbalanced that they see no further point in going on living. SUICIDE OF A WOMAN SINGER When the 18-year-old pop singer Yukiko Okada jumped to her death from the roof of a high building in April 1986, because of an unhappy love affair, she ‘inspired’ many young people to follow her example. A large number of young people actually threw themselves off high rooftops because they felt sorry for her and wanted to be in heaven with her. A few left suicide notes mentioning the singer by name.31 This is the ultimate damage done by making a woman a mere object of the “screen,” a mere plaything of the imagination. If a woman devotes her life to managing her home, she becomes the giver of life to the young, whereas when she leaves her home to become a means of entertainment for others, she can do them the greatest injury — even becoming a morbid stimulus to annihilation. AWAY FROM NATURE The human baby is the weakest and most tender of all the babies of living creatures. It therefore needs its parents’ care and guidance in its physical and mental growth for a more extended period than any other young creature. That is why nature has endowed parents with a special attraction for their offspring. In the past, the separation of children from their parents was caused only by emergencies such as war, or occasional premature death, and, in normal circumstances, it was taken for granted that the children would enjoy the protection of their parents for as long as they required it. However, in advanced societies, a prolonged period of guardianship has become the exception rather than the rule, for the simple reason that the modern concept of living has destroyed the sanctity of marriage. Either children are born out of wedlock and are unwanted right from the very beginning, or they find themselves bandied about between