Why parents push their kids into the rat race

It is that time of the year when parents of school leaving children get into a tizzy over what lies ahead of their wards in terms of their academic and career prospects. The parents and the young brigade must have by now spent months considering the remotest possibilities, and thinking of frustrating uncertainties. Much in life will depend on which way they steer their wheels now.
The task of finding our wards a niche in this world isn't easy anymore, for things aren't the same as when we or our parents were children. The challenges of child bearing and rearing aren't the same as it was then and parents are at their wit's end trying to chart the course of their children's progress.
I am imagining a time when families were large with many mouths to feed and minds to educate. My grandparents on both sides had many children and till the older ones grew enough to chip in, they all ate from what the patriarch brought home. They all went to school, some dropped out yet did well for themselves, some went ahead to become professionals, the girls were all married off modestly but decently to grooms who didn't demand dowry, and the family branched out, as strong and verdant as a peepal tree. It wouldn't have been easy for my grandparents to achieve this, but they lived much longer and healthier than we with our vast resources and capabilities can ever aspire to. What a breeze their lives as parents seem when compared to what we are presently experiencing!
Cut to the next generation when we were children. I barely remember a time when my parents agonised over what subjects we would learn in college or what careers we would choose. Such even tenor that we don't remember anything of those years that now children spend in grueling conditions. They were pleased to see good report cards that came without much pressure or monitoring. They gently reminded us of the importance of education, values and good living. They probably were confident that we would find our life's bearings, and boy, did we?
All parents then wanted their children to be 'happily settled,' the term essentially implying comfortable finances and amiable domesticity. They too would have given their all to ensure that their children had a good life, but did they spend years wrestling with the world, jostling to get their wards their due place, with niggling thoughts of their children being miles away when they will really need them, as we do now?
Parents today are fighting battles at different levels - with the world to make sure their young ones stay unharmed by its toxic influences and vagaries; with societal prejudices and false standards of worth that can shatter their children's self-esteem, with themselves capitulating to the changing demands of time that makes them unpardonably overbearing in nature or condescending, with self-assertive children whose demands are exceedingly materialistic, and with their own cavorting pride that finds ultimate realisation in the success of the children.
Even when we berate the rat race, we exhort them to it. Compete. Succeed. Be aggressive. Achieve things in life that we didn't. Be happy. Make us proud. It's all we want of you in life. Simultaneously, we also seek 'peace of mind' for them, but we don't utter it, for we realise that things that fetch true peacefulness are unmaterialistic and we are afraid to prescribe it. We don't want our children to become mendicants. We dread the prospect of them being trampled upon by the forces of a ruthless, new world.
So we strive to arm them to the teeth and watch nervously from the sidelines as they battle it out in the middle, unsure if they will still romp home in victory. In the end we merely say a tad resignedly, 'we did our bit. Now it's their destiny'.
Asha Iyer Kumar is a Dubai-based writer