“A human being cannot be raised.” Why Sadhguru refers to the age-old practice as a real crime against humanity

Every parent wants the best for their child. From choosing the best school to teaching discipline, good habits, etc., parenting often turns into a constant effort to shape children into successful people. But according to Sadhguru, this very urge to ‘shape’ a child might actually be the biggest mistake parents unknowingly make. In one of the recently posted reels on his official Instagram, Sadhguru said something that made a lot of people stop and think. Speaking about how children should be nurtured, he said, “You can only raise cattle. A human being cannot be raised. If you raise a human being, he or she will be just like a flock.” It sounds harsh at first but there is a deeper message underneath it. One that highlights the kind of pressure so many children quietly grow up carrying today.

(Image courtesy: Isha Foundation)

For generations, parenting has largely meant guiding and controlling. Parents decide what their child should study, how they should behave, which hobbies are worth pursuing and sometimes even what kind of person they should grow up to be. Sadhguru's concern is with what happens when parents already have a fixed picture of who their child should become before the child has even had a chance to figure that out themselves. “Raising means you've already fixed what they should become,” he explains. And when that happens, a child's individuality can quietly get lost before it ever gets a chance to emerge. Sadhguru adds, “This is a real crime against humanity that you've already fixed what your child should become, not only in terms of profession, this, that, in every way, you should not raise.” Children are not projects to be completed. When parents become too focused on moulding them into a pre-decided version of success, children may slowly stop exploring who they genuinely are.

In Indian households especially, parents work incredibly hard, dream big for their children and genuinely want them to have secure futures. But somewhere between all that concern and all those expectations, pressure quietly slips into the relationship. A child who loves painting gets pushed towards engineering because it feels safer. A naturally introverted child is constantly told to speak more, be more outgoing. A teenager who is struggling emotionally sits through lectures when what they actually needed was someone to just listen without judgement. Most parents do not intend any of this as harm. Many are simply repeating the same patterns they themselves grew up with, because that is all they ever knew. But emotional pressure does not always look dramatic. Sometimes it simply looks like a child who never quite gets the space to become themselves.

Rather than ‘raising’ children with rigid expectations, Sadhguru suggests that parenting should look more like cultivation like tending to a garden. “You must cultivate and watch what is going to blossom,” he says. The idea is straightforward but powerful. A gardener cannot force every plant to grow in exactly the same direction or bloom in exactly the same way. Parents cannot expect every child to think, feel, learn and succeed identically either. Good parenting does not always mean directing every single step a child takes. Sometimes it simply means creating a home environment where a child feels safe and loved enough to actually discover who they are. There is an important difference between helping a child grow and controlling their identity, between being their guide and being their blueprint.

Across urban Indian families, conversations around parenting are quietly shifting. More parents today are thinking seriously about emotional well-being and about the long-term impact that constant criticism or comparison can have on their children. Mental health experts highlight that children who grow up feeling excessively controlled can struggle with confidence later in their life. On the other hand, children who feel genuinely heard and respected at home, where they are allowed to have opinions, make some mistakes, grow into more emotionally secure adults. None of this means parents suddenly become perfect or that parenting gets easier. It remains one of the most emotionally complex things. But perhaps the goal is slowly shifting now.

One of the hardest things about parenting is accepting that your child may not become the person you imagined or planned for. That the path they choose might look completely different from the one you had in mind. But maybe that is not a failure on anyone's part. Maybe the real job of a parent is not to design a child's future like an architect with a finished blueprint. Maybe it is simply to give them enough love, enough values and enough confidence in themselves to go and build their own. And perhaps, as Sadhguru reminds us, the healthiest and most meaningful parenting begins the moment parents stop trying to raise children into some completed project and start learning to truly nurture the human being they already are.