2026-05-05
How to escape the control of Indian parents
Disclaimer
- Quick Note
- target audience - people who want to escape parental control
- I am biased by Indian environment in this post, this doesn't apply to every environment
- I have not spent a lot of time on this post. Don't take advice from internet strangers on a topic as important as this, unless you've really thought it through.
- This post only applies to you if you do feel actively and significantly controlled by your parents. This is true only for a certain subset of the population.
Main
- This has been a post I have been hesitating to write for a long time. Why?
- Parental control is one of the biggest problems in India.
- Lots of people in previous generation are parents and hold positions of political power. The political pressure to not publicly talk about this topic in India is staggering.
- I fully expect an intergenerational culture war to exist in India in the next 10 years once current children become adults, assuming the human race exists 10 years from now. See South Korea for an example of what an intergenerational culture war looks like.
- A lot of western authors online know jack shit about this topic, including therapists.
- Even now, I don't think I will write a long post, for safety reasons.
- The short answer is this.
- It would be nice if you had money and political connections (since child rights are non-existent in India) and a social circle that would defend you. In practice, there's a significant chance you have none of these things.
- When you have nothing to protect you, the only thing that can protect you is willpower. Decide in advance that you are literally willing to commit suicide (or murder) or go to prison, than be controlled by your parents. Go all-in.
- This has to be a commitment you really believe and not a bluff. Some parents are very manipulative and will successfully call out your bluff, if it is a bluff.
- Some rare parents are violent enough that will pursue conflict with you anyway.
- They are genuinely fine with you committing suicide or going to prison.
- But most parents are not like this, and will fold when you demonstrate this level of willpower. Most parents care about their children atleast a little, and care about their image in society atleast a little. If you commit suicide or go to prison, this also hurts their image in society.
- If you don't have this level of willpower, you may have to build it up over time.
- Spend some time away from your parents with some excuse, to compare and contrast how this is, versus living with them. If you haven't lived apart for any time duration at all, you probably have genuinely no idea what living apart from them is like.
- Figure out what you actually care most about in life (very hard challenge). Figure out if your parents are actually accepting of this, and if not, how badly it hurts you to not fulfill what you care most about in life.
- It is possible that being under the control of your parents feels only mildly bad but not extremely bad.
- In this case, I don't have some magic insights for you.
- Plenty of people waste away their entire lives in situations that are mildly bad but not extremely bad, and you are welcome to join their ranks.
2026-07-15
Update
- This is a biased list, but I like the writings of Pete Walker, Issen Dai and Daniel Mackler. (I don't 100% endorse their worldviews as is, but like I said, I like their writings.)
2026-08-03
Update
- Assuming you do manage to get into a position where you are not in their control, you probably now have a choice as to whether you want to be honest with them, or continue to hide your life from them or deceive them about what your life is actually like.
- I will try to make a case for why you may want to be honest with them, although I am aware you might see this differently than I do, and you may not shared my values or life goals.
- The most important thing here is to see the long-term consequences of your actions and to notice the type of person you are becoming, as a result of the actions you are taking.
- Benefits of being honest with your parents, for you personally:
- Because you are comfortable standing up to authority and being honest in this case, this will have a tendency to percolate into other aspects of your life. You may be able to be more authentic, and not have to suppress as many parts of yourself for the sake of others.
- Being authentic could intrinsically make your more happy, even in aspects of your life unrelated to this one.
- Being authentic could help you find and negotiate better relationships in your life, unrelated to this one.
- Being willing to stand up to authority could benefit you situations apart from this one too.
- Benefits of being honest with your parents, for society as a whole:
- I (Samuel) am someone who values the truth a lot. I am very dismayed to live in a country full of people who have been trained in the arts of deception and status games, because they are unwilling to be honest with their family.
- I understand that being skilled at deception has its advantages. However, I see most people use these skills to fight for the pettiest of stakes.
- If you want to become skilled at deception because you want to get into politics and improve the country's governance, I might still be able to respect that.
- If you want to become skilled at deception because you want a slightly bigger salary or you want to steal your parent's property or similar, I think this is probably a suboptimal way to live your life, and also makes society worse off. I tend to not respect people whose primary objective in life is stuff like this.
- I think a lot of problems in society can be fixed if enough people were willing to actually be honest about the problems in it. Suppression of common knowledge is a thing, and families, religious institutions, governments, etc tend to collude to suppress the formation of common knowledge about the problem. This is not a problem specific to India, ofcourse.
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