Parent Child Relationship

This New York Times article reveals how animals use their relationship with children to improve their social standing. This isn’t very different from humans where we too derive pleasure from our children. We feel happy seeing them play. We put big burden our expectations on their small shoulders and really, like the male Barbary macaques mentioned in the article, we “strengthen our social clout” through our children. Coincidently, I was reminded that it is father’s day today. After playing with my son with some time, I was tempted to dust off my notes on astrology on how to judge children through horoscopes.

Ideally, this article should have written itself as part II of Progeny in Vedic Astrology and Dattak Putra Yoga. However, life is such that when children come along, they take up majority of the time and energy of their parents. Most importantly, they divert the focus away from all other activities. Even now, when I am trying to concentrate on this article, I am not able to get the tunes of Itsy Bitsy Spider and Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun out of my head.

A relationship between a parent and child is a complex one. Responsibility and expectation does not always balance each other out. Both the parties grow together and as everyone gets older, maintaining the relationship is not necessarily a piece of cake.

To judge such a relationship, we need to look at 5th house in parent’s chart and 9th house in the child’s chart. Due to Bhavat Bhavam, both 5th and 9th become important as 9th is 5th from 5th and 5th is 9th from 9th. In general, we should look at influences on 5th house and its lord to determine how the relationship and association would be in future.

Happiness through children is indicated if there is a positive influence through Moon, Venus and Jupiter. Similarly, unhappiness would be caused by Saturn and Rahu. Afflicted Mercury causes worries, Mars causes danger and Rahu can be the cause of scandals. Adverse navamsha and saptamsha positions of well placed planets in rashi chart cause misunderstanding.

Placement of 5th lord in various houses is important. A good yoga/combination between 1st and 5th house lords predicts a good relationship. A good combination between 5th and 7th or 9th house lord predicts that the parent would benefit from foreign travels of the child. If there are negative influences, the relationship would be estranged by distance. Similarly, if the 2nd house is involved and there are a lot of negative influences, a parent might not be able to support the child financially.

The rules explained above are from the perspective of a parent, but can be turned around and looked from the perspective of the child as well. Take an example of 10th house – an unfavourable combination between 5th and 10th house would mean that a person would neglect his/her children for career. A similar combination involving 9th and 10th house would mean that a child will not get enough support from parent because of the parent’s career aspirations.