ECONOMIC HARDSHIP IS MAKING PARENTING MORE DIFFICULT -Juvenile Counsellor
The state of the nation’s economy has been on the front seat of national discourse for quite a while with the skyrocketing price of commodities occupying the front row in the comity of contemporary national issues with is devastating effects on families. Naijahomemakers interviewed Mrs Mary Ayinla, a seasoned juvenile counsellor with over 10 years experience to find out the effects of economic hardship on proper parenting and children upbringing.
WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF ECONOMIC HARDSHIP ON PARENTING?
Financial constraint! Economic hardship is causing financial constraint on families. You need money to take care of children, you need to give them convenient accommodation. If you are training a child in one room apartment for instance, you can’t deprive such a child from playing on the street or playing with other children in the compound. Those are the kind of situations children learn unhealthy behaviors. As a parent you don’t have total control over the child’s playing. If you lock him in the room, he will be feeling deprived when he sees his colleagues running around and the effect is worse. To him his mother is wicked, unknown to him that the mother is trying to shield him from hazardous exposure. As a result as the mother is avoiding a problem she’s creating another. Parents inability to secure a decent accommodation is one problem caused by money. If the mother can afford a comfortable house, toys and digital gadgets in a decent environment where there are like minds, children will play decently with minimal supervision.
EFFECT OF PARENTS EXPOSURE
Most times living in a particular environment has to do with the parent’s exposure, income and education which usually have effect on the type of children they raise. It is almost impossible to see children rolling tires in some environment. parenting in such environment will be easier, where children play with friends raised by equally exposed parents who are trying to raise their kids properly just as you are trying to raise yours. It is money that can take you to such environment.
ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS ON PARENTING
If you have the mindset to raise your child speak good English and you are in an environment where pidgin or local language is spoken, you may be frustrated. Most likely it is the “environmental language” will learn and be speaking. I am an example, growing up my mother struggled to control my siblings and I from speaking pidgin. We speak correct English in our family but the pidgin spoken by people around us overruled. It wouldn’t have been a struggle for them(her parents) if the family was living in a decent neighborhood in town. Training up a child, in as much it has a lot to do with the parents, environmental factor is very strong, it is a strong force that you cannot control even as a parent.
Mrs Ayinla says language is one of the many environmental factors parents may need to contend with. She says “a child will be forced to come down to the level of people around him either to feel among or to communicate which may make him to drop his standard.
EFFECT OF FINANCIAL CONSTRAINT ON MENTAL HEALTH
“Financial constraint will bring about mental stress for parents. Imagine a father that is lamenting on how the economy is biting hard into his income and affection is responsibility at home will be affected mentally. How can such a father adequately show love to his child? When you are preoccupied with how to pay school fees and feed the child. It seems impossible. The parent becomes absent minded or aggressive to children.
EFFECT ON CHILDREN EDUCATION.
“Of course, when you can’t afford a good school. The financial constraint cut across everything. When you have finance a lot of things are made easy. Though not all, we have some badly raised children with their parents having so much financial capability but you need finance to adequately train a child. You need money to enrol them in good school, to give them good accommodation in a decent environment, to give them enlightenment and exposure. For instance, a child that goes to US for holiday, that travels to good places, see nice resorts, that has been to good recreational centres, the way such a child will reason and act cannot be compared with a child that the best he does is to roll his tire round the streets. They can be the same age but the exposure and horizon cannot be the same. One is going to be broader than the other. He is just naturally going to know things and not limited to the environment where he’s living.
EFFECT ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
“What I think, learning is easier when is fun” imagine a school where they have all the facilities to make learning fun and the school where the kid sits on the floor to write is note. Which child do you think will do well? Though we will still have children that will do well in such setting, so imagine what such a child will do in a conducive learning environment. He will do excellently well. So it’s like minus one when you are not buoyant when raising a child. The world is already leading by one goal. When you have finance it’s a plus for you.
EFFECT ON CHILD LABOUR
it is when you don’t have money that you asked a child to hawk. A child that is supposed to be in school. Do you know how many cases of abuse that happen through that? But when the mother has no where to get money and she has groundnut in her backyard that can be sold. Maybe it’s from the return the next meal will come from. It has not even for the school fees they chased away the child for. Financial constraint gives birth to so many things. The child may be abused, trafficked…. a hungry child is not a productive child. He will be preoccupied on how to satisfy his belly. When a child is consistently hungry he will resort to stealing. There is no home training in that, there is no home training in hunger… That is how bad habits start. A situation where the child has profiled his parents not to have answer to his predicament. There is nothing glorious when parents are struggling financially.
IS IT NOT NEGLIGENCE ON THE PART OF THE PARENTS NOT TO PROVIDE CHILDREN BASIC NEEDS?
It’s not as if they are not trying. Do you know how hard the country is? Do you know how hard people try to look for jobs on daily basis, do you know how much they sack and retrench people? Do you know how much labourers take home? I was told of some women that carries 25 rounds of mixed concrete for ₦700. Imagine somebody that has four children and worked from 8am to 4-4:30 pm for ₦700. Some of them will even back babies while doing such a dehumanizing job. I heard one of them has a month old baby. She was instructed to go and drop the baby somewhere if she’s interested in working. Will you say that mother is not trying. Will she steal? Immediately she has a better offer she will let go of that. Now with the income she’s earning, what can that do with four kids? The children she left at home since 8am maybe there’s nothing for the to eat, if it’s an environment you see people eating and you can sit with them is better. If it’s an environment that you have to fend for yourself the kid will steal of find any means to get out of the situation.
WAY OUT?
financial stability.
HOW?
we are in this country together (laughter) except you seek for greener pasture. As it is now, even those that are earning well, what they are earning is no longer enough to settle all their expenses. People earns 100k and have expenses of 200k. They will eat but look at the debt of 100k that they keep pushing forward. The country itself is is (unable to find the appropriate word) the country is dehumanizing.
compiled by Akintola Oluwatobi