I like my mom and dad because they take me on trips abroad,” says five-year-old Rashi, showing her latest Singapore snaps. Rashi’s mother Uma Vaid, who works as a public relations executive, confesses that she and her software engineer husband have frequent 14-hour workdays. “Rashi knows that as she goes to school, we adults go to office — and that’s why we can afford to indulge in the goodies of life like foreign jaunts,” Vaid adds.

Forty-year-old Drupadi Sen (name changed) feels that in the last couple of years her 11-year old son Pablo has become extremely confident. “I resumed work after a nine-year sabbatical as I wanted to personally supervise Pablo’s upbringing, and initially, I worried that he would resent my long absence every day,” says the IT-enabled services executive whose husband is an equally busy mediaperson. “But he almost enjoys the fact that his parents are not around — he can call the shots at home, eating what he likes, playing computer games and calling up friends.”

Echoes Ashutosh Punj, a Delhi-based marketing executive, “My 14-year-old son Arjun is the boss when he stays alone with our servants as my wife Aarti and I are often out on tours.” But is Arjun complaining? “I’m glad they have a life. Nowadays, it’s uncool to tell friends that you have a stay-at-home mom,” he says.

In India, middle or upper middle class urban children seem to have adjusted to the 24X7 economy pretty well. Gone are the days when all fathers worked 9 to 5 and all mothers stayed home to cook and supervise the upbringing of children. Today’s couples work and play hard even as they raise a family, and children are savvy enough to appreciate the comfortable lifestyle made possible by their hard working parents.

But does this picture-perfect yuppie family have a dark side to it? How do children negotiate the pressures of growing up in affluent, urbanised spaces without having their parents around for most of their waking lives? “Children crave for attention, no matter what gizmos they may get as alternatives,” affirms Dr Sweta Ghosh, reader in the department of sociology, St Xaviers College, Calcutta. “Without attention, no matter how confident or indifferent they appear, there’ll always be varying degrees of alienation, frustration, stubbornness or delinquency.” While even in these politically-correct times most childcare experts hold that children need to grow up within a disciplinary system, today’s overworked, pressed-for-time parents take the easy way out and pacify their children materially — an extremely myopic solution with long-term consequences.

For example, the Vaids concede that they give in to Rashi’s pizza-and-cola dinner demands too often, as a result of which Rashi is fast becoming obese. Punj would love to know why Arjun’s cell phone is always engaged, and Sen sometimes worries that Pablo is becoming difficult to discipline. “Children of busy parents are sometimes spoilt and lack social skills,” feels Sheena Misra Ghosh, consultant clinical psychologist, AMRI, Apollo Clinic and the Society for Nature, Education & Health, an NGO. “They may or may not be ‘latchkey kids’, as domestic retainers are around, unlike in the West. But they hardly get their parents’ time.”

Instead, the buzzword that most parents clutch on to is the much used and sometimes abused ‘quality time’. Smiles Misra Ghosh, “Today quality time has been reduced to small capsules spent by the family together, often expensively, at malls and multiplexes. Or it refers to impatient, stressed-out parents sitting down with the child’s homework at night.”

At the very heart of the issue lies the question of the working mother. While today’s women are vociferous about not wasting their skills and talents after motherhood, society perpetually sends them on a guilt trip for neglecting their children for the sake of their careers. Vaid echoes the dilemmas of successful working mothers when she says, “I am outraged when I’m called a bad mother simply because I enjoy working and am good at my job.” Adds Punj, “My wife feels more guilty than I do for going out on tours, because society expects men to prioritise work and women to prioritise family.”

Ghosh points out, “We often fail to notice that social systems are simply not geared to help career-oriented mothers. There is a lack of enterprise and imagination in developing parallel socio-economic systems like day-care centres and flexi timing at work.” But in India, there are other advantages: even if these systems take time to be implemented, help is nearer at hand. As Ghosh says, “The good news is that we can look for solutions within the family. Grandparents and senior citizens unrelated by blood but with time on their hands can be a bridge between busy adults and their neglected children.”

What if the busy lifestyle of parents has already started to psychologically affect the child? Misra Ghosh reveals, “When the child is uncommunicative or unable to verbalise feelings, I find play therapy very useful to identify problem areas.” Along with therapy, parents need to take a holistic look at the elements that make up the child’s home. “A healthy spousal relationship, communication between all members of the family, and simple acts of togetherness glue families effectively, and result in happy, well-adjusted children,” affirms Ghosh.

As socio-economic compulsions force people to get busier than ever before, double-income families with children are slowly learning to find their feet amidst new realities, aspirations and anxieties. Facing them with openness and warmth will help children like Rashi and others grow up.