Money, sex and kids

By making money-talk taboo at home, we slow down our kids' progress towards financial literacy.
Gautam Chikermane
YOU MUST be out of your bloody mind. That’s the most perverted thing I’ve ever heard. Why do you want to corrupt the minds of these kids?" The shock was genuine, so was the anger. Not surprising when someone tells you that he wants to teach your children about money. "Money? For God’s sake, money is at the root of all evil... children must be kept away from it." But the same parents who so vociferously condemn this "misdirected enterprise" (to educate children about money) spend thousands of rupees– often dollars too–on them, and not just on necessities like their education, but on excesses like cellphones and ludicrously large libraries of video games. In their own lives, they certainly desire it. Lust for it. Worship it. Even fear it–perhaps because they don’t much understand it. Is that what explains this schizophrenic ambivalence about money: lust for it when you are an adult and do your damnedest to guard children from its "corrupting influence"?
Opinion in Outlook Money