Neglectful Parenting In Contemporary Society -By Hadiza Abdullahi

Parenting can simply be defined as “the process or the state of being a parent”.  Once you have a child, you are involved in the process of parenting. Toni Morrison defined parenting as “the process of developing and utilizing the knowledge and skills appropriate to planning for creating, giving birth to, and rearing and providing care for offspring”.

However, many parents do not care to deliver these responsibilities, and this leads to different social problems in Nigeria and the world at large. In a lay man’s term Parental Negligence can be seen as the failure or inability of parents to fulfill their parental responsibilities of providing the proper and adequate care and attention to their children.

The child-parent relationship is supposed to be an affectionate, harmonious, supportive, and productive one, but due to certain factors, this relationship is becoming conflicting, unsupportive, destructive and agonizing. Some parents may be emotionally unsupportive to their children, yet provide all their basic needs i.e. food, clothing and shelter, while some are not supportive in any way.

A study conducted on improper parenting and parental negligence by Dr Manzoor Hussain, a Senior Assistant  Professor and Mohd Anzar, research scholar at the University of Kashmir, pointed out that the quality of a good parenting depends on several factors which include; the mature personality of the parents which is a basic element of good quality parenting, stable and intimate marital relationship as well as the form of the pregnancy i.e. planned or not, as planned pregnancy implies better preparation to be a parent.

On the other hand, A broken home is believed to be among the major factor that contribute enormously to the issue of neglectful parenting, as children from such families are usually brought up by either of their biological parent and a step parent, and most at times these children undergo different sort of challenges, trauma and agonies from the step parents particularly step mothers, majority of whom do not like the idea of having a step child under their custody. 

A typical example is the case of two minor almajiris; eight-year-old Habu and his six-year-old younger brother Tanko (not real names), whose parents got separated and had to live with their father and his new wife. The father, although was financially stable and could cater for their basic needs and education, however , refused to do so due to the influence of their step mother who rejected them, and as a result the innocent boys ended up leaving the house, roaming  the street as Almajiris.

A research has indicated that couple’s desperation towards becoming parent also promote  this issue, as some couple especially the rural residents, who consider the number of children as a pride, are only interested in giving birth to as many children as possible without having any adequate plan to their wellbeing. Rather, exploit the children by engaging them in different forms of child labour such as domestic chores, street hawking, street begging or even working as house helps, all in the name of sourcing for income, which the World Health Organization WHO, regards as child abuse. This exposes such children to all kinds of dangers when they mingle with bad people who may negatively influence and or harm them.

These children easily go astray because their parents are not around to watch and caution their wrong behaviours, hence most of them end up going into drug abuse, prostitution or even being recruited into terrorist groups etc.

In an interview with Hajiya Salamatu Yaqub, a housewife and a mother, she lamented that absence of adequate  Face-to-face interaction (which is as an essential principle for a good parent-child relationship, in which both children and their parents understand each other’s needs, views, emotions, and brings about strong and growing intimacy between them) has contributed immensely to this problem.

Similarly, Malama Maryam , another mother expressed her grief over the way some so- called civilized and educated Nigerian parents, especially young mothers adopt an improper way of parenting where they focus more on their jobs ,education and other forms of businesses , instead of the primary role of every traditional Nigerian parent specifically mothers who are supposed to put the welfare of their families ahead of anything else, however, some abandoned these responsibilities completely while some entrust the responsibilities to nannies and other house helps to handle, who may not be morally upright talk more of instilling moral values on children.

A teenager (who refused to be named) and who is also a victim of neglectful parenting , said  “being neglected by your own parent is the worst and most traumatizing experience of every child”.

 she further disclosed how she and her siblings went through a lot due to this issue, even though their parent take proper care of all their basic needs such as adequate feeding ,clothing, shelter and enrolled them in one of the best schools as well as received good medical care, yet  they are always absent to watch over them, support them emotionally and cautioned them. She added  “we miss our parents badly and do a lot of things we should not  do and mingle with people we would not have been mingling with supposing our parents are around”.

Children with intellectual, psychological, emotional and developmental disabilities are especially vulnerable to being forced into child labour, and are more likely to face threats of violence and abuse. These children— especially girls—are too often victims of trafficking, prostitution, domestic enslavement, forced marriage and other forms of abuses. Some children who have physical and visual disabilities or serious visible birth defects or disfigurement are forced by traffickers to beg. In the most extreme cases, traffickers would intentionally disfigure children in order to exploit them through forced begging. 

Yusuf Muhammad Daura, a student at the Department of Special Education, Bayero University, Kano, while discussing this issue, described parents who take advantage of their children’s physical disabilities and refused to work hard, instead used them to source for income, as irresponsible and self-centered, saying most of these children seen on the street begging or hawking, when interviewed, explained how they are forced into it and if they were to have an opportunity of living a normal life, they would be more than happy to join their mates in going to school.

However, it is understood that, some children undergo neglectful parenting not because the parents or guardians are not around to support them emotionally or failed to provide for their basic needs , rather due to their inability to home trained and discipline the children properly.  A friend who confide in me when discussing about this problem said “I can’t help but blame my mother over the unfortunate condition my cousin sister jummai (not real name) found herself in”. She continued, “Jummai is my mother’s niece who lost her parents when she was very young and had to be under my mother’s custody ,who unluckily could not give her the proper upbringing she was expected to, because  my mother brought jummai up neglectfully ,although she made provision of all her basic needs and enrolled her in both Islamic and western school, she was not able to instill the moral values in her, because my mother would never scold or punish Jummai whenever she was wrong , as she does to the rest of us ,her reason was ,she does not want to be harsh on her as she is an orphan who should only be pampered so she would not miss her parents. Unfortunately jummai ended up becoming a very stubborn girl who does whatever she feels like doing and being rude and disrespectful to anyone who tries to interfere in her affairs.” She added “as I am taking to you right now, Jummai dropped out of school, has a baby out of wedlock and presently, we have no idea of her whereabouts.”

The Implications of parental negligence include lack of mutual understanding and affection between parents and their children, the inability of such parent in meeting up to their expectation of taking good care of all their children’s needs also weakens the close bond that is supposed to exist between parents and their children. The children may feel the parent are worthless since they could not cater for them, and this might make them disrespect or hate the parents.

 Research indicates that children who lack proper parenting turn out to behave aggressively, violently and performed poorly in academic activities. Mr Yahuza Abdullahi a primary school teacher when interviewed, confirmed that most of the children going through improper parenting perform poorly both in academics and recreational activities as they do not have the extra support they need such as helping them with their home works and getting the necessary learning materials.

Therefore, it is paramount that couples must be physically, psychologically and financially ready before they venture into the demanding task of parenting. As someone who is planning to have a child, your plans for your children or unborn children should be on how you intend to take adequate care of them while making provisions for their basic needs i.e. food, clothing, shelter, education and proper medical care, as well as providing a conducive environment to protect and keep them safe while instilling the right morals and values on them and having a plan on how you intend to caution and correct them, whenever they are wrong. 

Also the government has a critical role to play in tackling this menace, because as citizens of Nigeria, these children have fundamental rights that must be protected by the government. Thus, the government should have the full authority to punish any parent or guardian caught abusing or neglecting his or her parental responsibilities. 

Hadiza Abdullahi, Department of Mass Communication, Bayero University, Kano.