Are we getting it wrong?

The family is the basic unit of the society. Little wonder that any structural problems in this unit often leads to fundamental problems. We tend to underestimate the impact that the family has on the overall outcome of the society. When I say family, it can be a single parent home or with both parents present….they’re both families.

If you trace the issues in a dysfunctional adult’s life, you can almost always bring it back to the family. It is highly unlikely for you to find children that grew up in stable homes growing up to become dysfunctional. And by stable, I don’t mean wealthy or powerful please. I mean family with values, love and kindness as the bedrock. However to every rule, there are exceptions.

Following this closely is the role of environmental factors. A child might have grown up in a stable home but end up on the wrong side of the divide because of the kind of company he keeps. Environmental factors play a huge role in modifying these fundamental values.

Abuse does either of two things; makes you become an abuser, or you might become so repulsed by it that you’ll do everything in your power not to be one that inflicts abuse. Unfortunately, the former happens more than the latter. A child that grew up in an abusive home is likely going to become a tyrannical adult…or such a child (especially if female) may be unable to form meaningful relationships as an adult.

If you see an adult with low self esteem, you’re likely going to find something in his early life that made him turn out that way. A child that grew up in a home where women are meant to be seen and not heard, where women are supposed to only sweep and clean without any contribution from the men…will likely require the same of his spouse. Women that grew up seeing their mothers beat up every day will likely grow up unable to form meaningful relationships or they may even end up with an abuser because that’s all they know.

A woman that was raised in the home of “my money is my money ” will likely not see any reason to contribute to finances in the house….afterall my mother didn’t. Although I have to admit in this last instance that some women became like that due to past experiences from relationships. Boys that rape were probably not taught about consent and may have seen their father manhandle their mum. Or it may just be due to some environmental factors they were exposed to.

So when you see a dysfunctional adult….know that majority of the issues in them have their roots embedded in their childhood. Even psychiatrists will tell you that a person with mental issues that has a strong family support will likely do better than those without a good support system. I see us complain about how some of us were raised. But I daresay we may not be doing better jobs ourselves. In the past, when children erred, they get reprimanded even when their parents are not there. Now you dare not scold another person’s child if you don’t want to be insulted. I think the way of our parents had some of its advantages too. We just need to find a balance. Let us not be quick in throwing away the baby with the bathwater.

We need to be more deliberate in our relationships with our children. We need to learn to be their friends but at the same time remember that we’re still their parents. We need to be more involved (both fathers and mothers) in raising our kids. Raising children or homemaking is not the sole responsibility of one gender. We need to do all these… so that we can heave a huge sigh of relief years to come that we have contributed positively to raising sound, kind, empathetic, loving and self sufficient children. So that posterity will judge us well.

Tó omo re dáaďáa lóni, kó lè bá fún o nísinmi lójó òla (Raise your children well today, so that they can give you peace of mind later in life).

All pictures from Google images.