Six-Pocket Syndrome:
A Kaun Banega Crorepati episode featuring a child’s overconfident behaviour towards Amitabh Bachchan has sparked debate on overindulgent parenting among Generation Alpha (people born from 2010-2024/25), which experts link to the “Six-Pocket Syndrome.”
- The Six-Pocket Syndrome, a term from China’s one-child policy era (1979-2015), describes how one child was doted on by six adults (two parents and four grandparents) who poured all their affection and resources into them.
- This overindulgence fostered entitlement and a sense that every wish deserves to be fulfilled, leaving little room for discipline, patience, or empathy.
- In India, the Six-Pocket Syndrome is common in urban middle-class families, where working parents and indulgent grandparents shower children with attention, gifts, and leniency.
- This overcompensation fosters a belief in the right to demand and be rewarded instantly, without understanding effort, boundaries, or consequences.
- Reflects the shift from a responsibility-based society (where children contribute and adapt) to a right-based society (where children feel entitled to comfort and attention).
- Erving Goffman’s “Dramaturgical Perspective”: Explains how modern children, shaped by family and media, learn to perform roles that attract validation rather than build character.
- Childhood becomes a stage for social approval rather than moral learning.
- Zygmunt Bauman’s “Liquid Modernity”: States that society now prioritises instant gratification, fluid identities, and social visibility over long-term emotional grounding.
