What position is that?

Baby boomers ie those born before the 1960s had no technology available till they were in the mid 30s to watch a blue film. Today kids in class VIII are making their own blue films with their cell phones and acting as film distributors. But those in their 40s and 30s now have other problem as this letter of mine shows.

A SOFTWARE FOR HARDWARE

I write with reference to your front page headline “Sex in City Hits New Low” (DNA 11 Feb 2007). The reasons NOT stated in your article are two. Thirty/forty years ago, we graduated at 22, joined employment at about 24, married at about 26-28, finished our families by 30-32 and became Vice-Presidents/General Managers at about 40-45. Today although a man joins employment at 25, he becomes a VP/GM at 30, gets married at 35 and has his first child when he is nearing or already in his early forties. The wrong muscles are being used at the wrong ages with attendant consequences. Having worked so ‘hard’ at office for his stock options by writing sophisticated software, he finds that he is left holding (sorry for the pun) only very soft options at home and is unable to write a programme to boot his own hardware!! That this is happening when women are becoming more aggressive and demanding is a modern Shakespearean tragedy. The fertility clinic industry will become the fastest growing one in the coming years.

Go to any school at admission time. You will see parents who are in their late thirties/ early forties standing in line for admission to the nursery class for their first child. It is this phenomenon of having late children that is also responsible for a dramatic rise in the number of congenital birth defects, ADHD, Dyslexia, Down’s Syndrome etc. No doubt evolution will slowly take care of this phenomenon, but for an evolution, a century or even a millenium, is a blink of the eye. A related problem is the growing phenomenon of ‘only’ children. Parents are so exhausted by the effort to produce one that they stop thereafter. Contrast this with time of our grandmothers when pregnancy was an annual event! A whole generation is growing up without knowing the meaning of brothers or sisters and if their parents are also single children, then no uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. The family tree is now virtually a family pole! That this is happening mainly amongst the elite and the educated is a social and demographic tragedy whose effects will be known in a few decades. It has been revealed that the absence of siblings and/or close relatives also adds to the emotional stress, particularly if the parents have departed and this normally happens at around 40-50. This is called the Robinson Crusoe Syndrome.

Let’s go even further or younger. Fifty/sixty years ago, boys walked about in their birthday suits with their crown jewels revealed to all. Boys started wearing underwear only at about 12-14, when the consequences of wet dreams started showing on their school uniforms. Even then, the underwear was of the loose variety with a cord and no elastic. Thus the reproductive machinery had ample space to develop under ambient temperatures. Today a child is wrapped in diapers from day one and goes into tight underwear as soon as he is able to stand. Constricted by tightness, the effects begin to show 20/30/40 years later. Tight underwear only makes one a VIP – Very Impotent Person.

To put it in brief (again, sorry for the pun), the best software programme for good hardware is to go easy on the underwear. My letter may appear to be funny or frivolous. I assure you that it has been written in all seriousness, the ‘humorous’ language being used only to enhance readability.