Why Did You Bring Me Into This World?

Parenting, Theology, and Psychology

After reading my article The True Measure of a Legacy, one member in our discussion group, Mani, left a comment. What began as a brief exchange on legacy unexpectedly developed into a discussion on parenting, creation, theology, psychology, and one of the oldest questions human beings have ever asked.

The conversation unfolded as follows:

[03/06, 10:37 pm] Lokesh: Last four para are key.

[03/06, 10:37 pm] Lokesh: Thanks for sharing.

[03/06, 10:38 pm] Lokesh: I only hope and pray I leave a tiny bit of legacy.

[03/06, 10:39 pm] Dayanand Bharathi: Not leaving any legacy itself would be the best legacy—like me.

[03/06, 10:43 pm] Lokesh: Legacy you left is all that you have written and shared through your life.

[03/06, 10:44 pm] Lokesh: How should one answer the question: Why did you give birth to me? I did not ask for it.

[04/06, 12:13 am] Dayanand Bharathi: What kind of answer you would give to your child in future is my answer to you now.

[04/06, 12:50 am] Mani: Sometimes so difficult to continue conversations and parenting when such questions are asked.

[04/06, 8:51 am] Dayanand Bharathi: Yes. Every generation faced the same challenge and somehow managed successfully.

[04/06, 8:52 am] Dayanand Bharathi: Tell them that you need them more than they need you. Either by word or through actions.

[04/06, 9:53 am] Lokesh Any reason why do you say that I need them more?

[04/06, 9:54 am] Dayanand Bharathi: Because you desired children and wanted to become a father. So all of them began from your need first.

[04/06, 9:58 am] Lokesh: Interesting.

[04/06, 9:59 am] Lokesh: God needs us more than we need Him.

[04/06, 9:59 am] Lokesh: So He created.

At that point the discussion moved from parenting to theology. Yet the question that triggered it all remained the same:

“Why did you give birth to me when I never asked to be born?”

The more I reflected on it, the more I realized that this single question contains several different questions hidden inside it.

A Mother’s Practical Answer

Long before this exchange with Mani, I had heard the same question in another setting.

During one of those recurring pre-marital mother-daughter battles, my sister asked my mother in exasperation:

“Why did you give birth to me without asking me?”

My mother answered in a way that has stayed in my ears ever since:

நாளைக்கு உனக்கு ஒரு குழந்தை பிறந்து அது உன்ன பாத்து இந்த கேள்விய கேட்கறபோ; அதுக்கு நீ என்ன பதில் தருவயோ அதே பதில்தான் உனக்கு இன்னிக்கு.

In simple English:

“When one day your child asks you the same question, whatever answer you will give then, that is my answer to you now.”

That answer was neither philosophical nor sentimental. It did not pretend to solve the mystery of birth. Instead, it pushed the question forward into responsibility. It quietly said that life cannot be answered only by argument; it must also be answered by participation.

Even today, that strikes me as a form of practical wisdom that addresses the immediate human situation more directly than many theological explanations.

What Question Is Really Being Asked?

When a child asks:

“Why did you give birth to me?” at least two different questions are hidden inside one sentence.

The first is theological.

Why does creation exist at all?

Why did God create?

Is existence gift, necessity, play, love, justice, karma, or mystery?

The second is psychological.

Was I wanted?

Was I welcomed?

Did you bring me into the world for my good, or because of your own needs, expectations, loneliness, social pressures, or unfinished dreams?

These two questions overlap, but they are not the same.

People often try to answer a psychological wound with theological doctrine, or they drag theology into an emotional space where the child is not seeking doctrine at all but reassurance, honesty, and relational truth.

Theology Has Its Place

Religious traditions do speak about creation, but they do not all speak in one voice.

In broad terms, Abrahamic traditions generally uphold God as the sovereign creator who does not depend upon creation for divine existence. God creates freely, not out of lack.

Hindu traditions, however, do not offer a single doctrine of creation. Different schools understand the relationship between God, self, and world differently. Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, Dvaita, and the various bhakti traditions all provide distinct perspectives.

Many bhakti traditions portray a deeply relational vision of divine life. Love seeks response. Music seeks a listener. Sweetness seeks a taster. Devotion presumes mutuality.

Such a perspective may offer an interesting analogy for parenting.

The decision to bring children into the world begins with parental desire rather than the child’s request. Parents desire to nurture, to love, to continue a family, to become father or mother, or simply to participate in the fullness of family life.

In that sense, the child enters a world already desired by others before ever having the ability to desire it.

But Psychology Has the Immediate Task

Yet even the most sophisticated theology cannot by itself resolve the immediate emotional reality of parenting.

A child asking this question may not be seeking metaphysics.

The child may instead be asking:

“You wanted me—but did you know how to love me?”

Or:

“You chose to bring me here. Were you prepared to carry the responsibility of that choice?”

Theological explanations may tell us why existence is possible; psychological questions ask whether existence has been received with love.

Perhaps this is why a well-known observation continues to resonate across cultures:

“I was sent into this world without being asked, and I will be taken away without being consulted.”

The statement captures a universal human experience. None of us requested birth, and none of us controls death. Between those two mysteries we attempt to construct meaning. Theologians do so through doctrine, philosophers through reflection, psychologists through human experience, and parents through love and responsibility. Each offers part of the answer, yet none completely dissolves the mystery.

This does not make scripture irrelevant.

It simply means that scripture must first be understood within its own theological context rather than recruited to answer every contemporary emotional crisis.

A child’s question belongs first to relationship.

The answer therefore begins not in debate but in trust:

“You did not ask to be born; that much is true. But now that you are here, you are not unwanted. You are not a problem to be justified or an accident to be defended. You are a person entrusted to our care, and therefore one whom we must love responsibly.”

The Indian Family Theatre

In practice, these questions are rarely discussed in academic language.

They emerge in kitchens, living rooms, family quarrels, and late-night conversations.

Before marriage, mother and daughter may fight on every issue under the sun, and the daughter’s great philosophical weapon may be:

“Why did you give birth to me without asking me?”

After marriage, a comic transformation often takes place.

The same daughter, now daughter-in-law, may turn from metaphysics to management and ask her mother-in-law, with equal seriousness and greater practical urgency:

“Why did you not raise your son properly?”

The daughter grows close to her own mother, consulting her on how to run the household, handle in-laws, and decode the husband.

On the other side, father and son slowly drift toward each other in a fellowship built not on romance but on survival. The son begins to understand the father’s silent struggles, while the father, having long ago learned the diplomatic art of remaining alive between two strong women, offers sympathy with the serenity of a war veteran.

One laughs at such scenes because they are exaggerated, and one laughs again because they are true.

A mother who was once a wife stands on one side.

A wife who may one day become a mother stands on the other.

The poor husband-son stands in the middle like a drum beaten from both sides.

And somewhere in the background sits the father smiling quietly as if to say:

“Now you understand.”

Humour, however, should not hide the seriousness beneath it.

These domestic dramas reveal enduring questions about love, authority, dependence, responsibility, and the emotional patterns that travel from one generation to another.

Theology or Psychology?

So should parenting be understood through theology or psychology?

The answer is both—but not in the same way.

Theology frames the mystery of existence.

Psychology addresses the lived experience of the child and the practical responsibility of the parent.

When theology is used where psychology is needed, parents may sound profound while remaining emotionally unavailable.

When psychology is cut off from theology, life may be managed efficiently yet emptied of larger meaning.

Parenting therefore requires both depth and tenderness, both reflection and presence.

A Personal Limitation

At this point I should add a personal qualification.

I am hardly the ideal person to offer advice on parenting, having escaped much of that responsibility myself. Yet life has not entirely spared me from it. Over the years I have, in different ways, attempted to help raise a few children who came into my life as foster children, grandchildren, or through other family circumstances.

The experience taught me something both humbling and uncomfortable.

Parental responsibility involves more than affection, goodwill, or even sacrifice. It carries a depth of obligation and endurance that is difficult to replicate artificially. In many cases I discovered that foster relationships often operate differently from biological ones. The commitment may be genuine on both sides, yet the bonds, expectations, and responsibilities are not always experienced in exactly the same way.

Of course, there are remarkable exceptions. Many adoptive parents and adopted children demonstrate a depth of love, loyalty, and commitment that equals or surpasses biological relationships. The point is not to diminish those realities. Rather, it is to acknowledge that parenting involves layers of attachment, identity, responsibility, and belonging that are far more complex than abstract theories often suggest.

Perhaps this is why questions such as “Why did you bring me into this world?” carry a unique weight when asked between parent and child.

A Modest Conclusion

It may finally be wiser not to offer grand answers to a child’s existential protest.

No scripture answers birth and death in a way that closes all questions forever. Every faith ultimately leaves room for mystery.

Perhaps the most honest parental answer remains the simplest:

“The answer you would one day give your child is the answer you must begin to live today.”

The more I reflect upon my mother’s response, the more I realize that she did not so much answer the question as relocate it.

She placed it in the future.

She entrusted it to experience.

Life itself would become the commentary.

The father in my poem asks his son, “Do you understand now?” My mother answered my sister in much the same way. Neither offered a philosophical explanation. Both entrusted the answer to experience.

The daughter becomes a mother.

The son becomes a father.

The child who once demanded an explanation for existence eventually hears the same question from another voice.

At that moment, theology, psychology, and experience finally meet.

And perhaps then one begins to understand what no argument could fully explain.

Ashram, June4, 2026

Appendix: From Secular Song 489

வந்தவள் சரியில்லை / என்கிறாள் பெற்றவள்
வளர்த்தது சரியில்லை / என்கிறாள் வந்தவள்

“The one who came into the house is not proper,” says the mother.

“He was not brought up properly,” says the wife.

இருபுறம் அடிவாங்கும் / மத்தளம் ஆனான்
இருபுறம் இழுபட / பைத்தியம் ஆவான்

“Beaten on both sides, he becomes a drum;

pulled from both sides, he slowly goes mad.”

இதனைப் பார்த்து / சிரிக்கிறான் தகப்பனும்
இப்போ புரியுதா / என்கிறான் மகனிடம்

“Watching all this, the father laughs

and says to his son:

‘Do you understand now?’”

Secular Song 489

Recently I witnessed what it means to be caught between a rock and hard place.  Wife standing on the upper staircase mother standing in the down steps shouting at each other, the poor son cum husband sat paralyzed keeping his hands on his head.  Like our TV debate both the ladies were not listening to each other but shouting towards the poor man.  It is interesting to know the context. When the marriage was arranged, the girl demanded a car from his father. But the boy’s mother objected to it by saying that first they should finish the marriage, later when money is available the car can come. But pestered by the girl, her father booked the car but was unable to pay the balance.  So after the marriage, when the boy received notice from the showroom to pay the balance and take the car, his wife suggested pledging her jewels to take the car. But his mother objected to it by saying that others will only blame her, and asked her son to pledge her jewels and get the money.  Finally he listened to his mother’s advice and brought the car. Then it becomes the bone of contention.  When they took the car often, mother became irritated by saying, why waste so much petrol when you have two two-wheelers (he already has one motorcycle and scooter).  But the wife said once the car came she cannot go on the two wheeler.

When it became a serious issue and there was a lot of tension, finally when it became an issue between husband and wife, the wife told me, ‘he is a good boy but he cannot take personal decision’.  But I cannot understand one thing: listening to his wife’s decision alone means making a personal decision? After several rounds of fight and argument, finally in the climax when both the mother and wife were shouting at the boy keeping him in between them, I watched it silently, unable to do anything but writing this poem.

Are any feminist listening?

Secular Song 489: The Man Is the Real Sufferer

What exactly is a man supposed to do
when he gets sandwiched from both sides?

The wife says: “No brains in him!”
The mother says: “No sense in him!”

The wife says: “Your mother is impossible!”
The mother says: “Your wife is hopeless!”

One blames how he was raised,
the other blames how he’s married.

And the man himself concludes:
“Looks like I was born guilty!”

There’s no escape route anywhere.

He becomes a two-sided drum—
beaten from both ends,
pulled both ways,
slowly going a little mad.

No matter how hard he tries to escape,
life ends up being a never-ending tug-of-war.

When he tries to rest his head in peace,
the mother says, “He’s plotting something!”

Meanwhile the wife says,

“He’s just like his father—needs controlling!”

And the mother fires back:
“She’s changed him completely!”

Caught between “the one who gave birth”
and “the one who came later,”
he stands right in the middle—

while both sides pull, push, and poke.

And the father just watches and laughs,
turns to the son and says:

“Now do you finally understand?”

The man caught between mother and wife
quietly wipes his tears from both sides.

No matter how many arguments you give—
one truth remains:

The man is always the real sufferer.

And strangely enough…
the woman who agrees with this?
Nowhere to be found.

Mathigiri, 16-12-18, 11.30 pm.

Secular Song 489 ஆணும்தான் பாவாம்

என்னதான் செய்வான்

ஆண் மகனும்

இப்படி இடித்தால்

இருபுறமும்

சுயபுத்தி இல்லை

என்கிறாள் வந்தவள்

சொல் புத்தி இல்லை

என்கிறாள் பெற்றவள்

வந்தவள் சரியில்லை

என்கிறாள் பெற்றவள்

வளர்த்தது சரியில்லை

என்கிறாள் வந்தவள்

பிறந்ததே பாவம்

என்கிறான் அவனும்

தப்பிக்கும்  வழியே

எங்குமே காணோம்

இருபுறம் அடிவாங்கும்

மத்தளம் ஆனான்

இருபுறம் இழுபட

பைத்தியம் ஆவான்

தப்பிக்க எத்தனை

எத்தனம் செய்யினும்

இறுதி வரையில்

சடுகுடு ஆடணும்

தலையணை மந்திரம்

கேட்கிறான் என்று

தாயும் ஒருபுறம்

தாக்கிடும் போது

தகப்பனைப் போலவே

மகனை அடக்குறாள்

என்று தாரம்

மறுபுறம் சொல்ல

தாரமாய் இருந்த

தாயோ ஒருபுறம்

தாயாய் ஆன

தாரம் மறுபுறம்

இதனைப் பார்த்து

சிரிக்கிறான் தகப்பனும்

இப்போ புரியுதா

என்கிறான் மகனிடம்

பெற்றவள் வந்தவள்

இடையில் மாட்டும்

ஆணும் விடுகிறான்

கண்ணீர் மறுபுறம்

ஆயிரம் சொல்லினும்

ஆணும் தான் பாவம்

அதை ஏற்கும்

பெண்தான் காணோம்

மத்திகிரி, 16-12-18, இரவு,  11.30