We’ve raised the quality bar of human existence slightly higher than we met it with a majority agreeing on the reforms and improvements needed in different aspects of our social system.

However, when it comes to the foundation of society itself, family … we are massively divided. This article will seek to illustrate why and hopefully rectify that.

The reluctance to challenge gods

Often times when one of the flaws of parenting is highlighted, it is always met with a reluctance and staunch refusal to level criticism at people that we deem to be perfect. From ‘Why my mom is the best’ essays in elementary school to ‘respect your mother and your father’ religious and cultural indoctrination, the system that has been trusted to imbibe knowledge into us constantly reminded us our parents are perfect beings so much that it became a subconscious truth.

One could say our brainwashing wasn’t done maliciously but to simply infuse a sense of trust between us and our parents to protect us and keep us from making stupid decisions. After all, when you believe someone is perfect and wants the best for you, you tend to not question their actions.

Extensive research on parental figures has however shown that indeed, they are humans. Made of flesh and blood, they are simply older vessels of the human form, equally as prone to mistakes as the rest of us. The extent of their knowledge and experiences is limited to their own experiences and second hand knowledge from those in their social circle, i.e., in a society with millions of people, they do not know everything.

An example is the popular conviction that picking a career from the sciences was the best route to success. Millions of kids had their passion and talents made irrelevant and were driven to science class so they could end up becoming doctors and engineers. Very few of our parents saw the rise in the gospel of tech and creative arts coming.

Since it’s been proven no group of people have all the answers and partaking in the rituals of reproduction does not bestow you with unlimited wisdom or make you a superior being, we can, therefore, and should treat parental systems with the same scrutiny as we have other social systems.

The acceptance of choice

In the pulling down and rebuilding of a very defective parental system, another argument that comes up is that it’s a disrespect towards people who have shouldered so many responsibilities in taking care of us. A lot of this usually comes in the form of phrases such as ‘see someone whose parents suffered for’, ‘if your parents had abandoned you, you won’t be here to say this’.

Firstly, it is important to know and always remember that having a child is a choice. Due to the pervasiveness of the culture of necessity that having a child is considered as in our society, parents do not see themselves, and are not seen as people, who have made a conscious choice of reproducing a child. When you see having a child as something you have to do and not as something you’ve chosen to do, it becomes difficult to see that the responsibility that comes with that is one you’ve willfully chosen rather than one that was entrusted upon you. It’s an upside down logic that’s not only carried by the parents, but by the children themselves.

For those who interpret reproduction as a task they have to fulfill, there is an unhealthy dynamic that ensues between them and their children that creates a toxic environment. In cases like this, financial planning, the child’s environment often takes a backseat to the selfish desire of the parents to be seen as mothers and fathers.

Considering the decision process of having a child to raising it is driven purely by their own self-interest, conflict arises from the battle for control between the parents who see the child as an extension of themselves and the child who sees him/herself as an independent soul with his/her dreams and choices.

The Falsehood of the greatness in suffering

Another pressure point in this issue is the assessment of the struggle and difficulty that the average person in our side of the world has to go through to raise a child. For some twisted reason, those who go through the most stress in providing a good life for their children are by default considered great parents. There is a deification that comes with the length a parent’ suffers to fulfill their responsibility to their child.

Unfortunately, this quantification of suffering as qualification for greatness creates an imbalance in comparison to parents who do not require such hardship to fulfill their responsibilities. If we are to accept that Mr. Akande is a great father because he has to take loans and work two jobs to send his children to the best school, what does that say about Mrs. Obinna who, as a successful merchant of imported goods, can provide the best of everything for her children without breaking a sweat? Shall we say she’s not as great a parent?

The truth is neither can or should be deemed great simply on the basis of what they went through to achieve the same result. Both willingly chose the responsibilities of raising a child and those include fulfilling the barest minimum by providing shelter, education, food and protection. Whatever hardship or ease they experience in the process only has a bearing on their own previous choices, luck and planning.

There is also something quite reductive and insulting about the idea that the defining impact of one’s parents is the amount of suffering it took to deliver the basics of parenting; a set of responsibilities that any functioning government would be able to fulfill with a decent social welfare program. Those basics are merely the tools for survival.

Parents, however, have a larger impact on their wards’ lives than those and it’s the imperfections in those impacts that is truly up for debate.

The wind of change

In improving the foundations of the parental system, we must remind ourselves the task of parenthood rises above the banality of basic survival but as nurturers of mind, soul and body to create contributing members of society.

It’s important to note that whatever criticism is levelled against parents isn’t being done out of a false belief of our generation having all the answers to parenting but out of an understanding that the challenges and flaws in our lives will be replicated in our own children’s lives if we do not identify and fix the mistakes of our parents.

There is an adage that says ‘Family is the bedrock of thesociety.’ With parents as the unit responsible for nurturing this bedrock, it’s advisable, nay, important that we make sure that those who take up the responsibility to create and nurture the individuals who make up our society do so in the healthiest and most productive way possible.

We must shun the culture of shaming those who are courageous enough to come forward to speak of the ways their parents failed them. We must listen, encourage and learn from their stories. Just as we have and are creating a society where it’s safe for those who have been sexually assaulted to come forward, we must pull the cloak of invincibility under which we’ve put parenthood and create the same for these victims.

To pretend our parents have all the answers and always do right by us will not only be a lie but a setup for failure for prospective parents who will be tasked with raising children in an increasingly complicated world. We must highlight every mistake from the disregard of mental health issues by our parents, who, either through ignorance or zealot religiousness, dismiss the evidence of such problems

Our searchlight must be focused on our parents’ ill-advised decision to have more kids than their income could provide quality life for. We must seek to do better especially in this area by encouraging sound financial planning before making a baby and dead the culture of praising our parents on how much they suffered to fulfill their basic responsibilities.

The philosophy of child abuse in the name of child discipline has to be erased from our parental system. Parenting based on fear and cowering before authority needs to be replaced with giving the child a voice and the tools needed to speak truth to authority when necessary.

The doctrine of parenthood should no longer be that of child owners but as guardians whose job is to teach, and guide a new individual passing through them into the world to be his/her own self.

The quality of problems our kids face individually should be better than ours but this will not happen unless and until we set our bias aside and objectively put our upbringing under the microscope like we have every other aspect of our society we’ve improved today.

If we hope to be better parents than ours, it will not be out of a refusal to question our parents, it will be because we did.

Written by Seun Adelowokan

Seun Adelowokan :Humanist. Big believer in common sense. Arsenal lover.