Betty Ann BlaineIT CUTS across all socio-economic classes and across every community, and there is no denying it. There is a crisis of parenting in Jamaica and it seems to me that immediate action must be taken to prevent irreparable damage.
What we have now is what I call a new breed of parents with a completely different set of values, outlook and world view than those of their parents before them. The old parental ethic of self-denial and self-sacrifice for one's children is not so obvious anymore. What we see instead, is a culture of self-fulfilment and self-indulgence that literally puts parent and child in competition with each other. Parents these days tend to spend more money and time on themselves than on their children. In days gone by, every farthing would be put away to buy books and to pay school fees. I remember my own mother walking down her single pair of good shoes to the ground, than half-soling it, rather than dipping into what she had put aside to send me to school. In her eyes, as with parents of that time, education was paramount, and they were prepared to make any and every sacrifice to ensure that their children got that education.
PARENTAL SELFISHNESS
This new trend toward a type of parental selfishness began to take root around the first half of the 20th century and accelerated dramatically in the 1960s and 70s. Personalism was becoming the new ethic. Instead of common good and common bonds, personalism celebrated the worth, dignity and autonomy of the individual person, including the subjective self or inner life of the person. As one writer puts it, it emphasised rights more than responsibility, and freedom more than commitment. It led people to focus on expressing and fulfilling themselves as free individuals, rather than on fulfilling their obligations as members of groups, such as family, church, community or country. Within this new dispensation, people and parents began to regard any kind of constraint on their personal freedom as an intolerable restriction of their individuality.
A troubling outcome of this was that the emphasis on individual freedom began to foster a general rebellion against authority, and in many cases, a reluctance on the part of authority figures, including parents and teachers, to exercise their legitimate authority. Regrettably, we are continuing to slide down this slippery slope. My own experience working with volunteer adult mentors and their adolescent mentees, is instructive. Whenever a poll is done of older mentors about the role models in their lives, the unanimous response is always my mother, or my father. The opposite is true of adolescents who are asked the same question. Of course, depending on where you ask the question, you may invariably have to first explain what a role model is, but even after you do, many teenagers find great difficulty in identifying such a person.
One of the most interesting, but depressing experiences I had, was discussing the importance of punctuality with a group of adolescents as a result of chronic late-coming to classes. In looking for solutions, I turned to the group and said, well, why don't you ask your parents to wake you up at an early hour? A huge laughter erupted and one boy's reply was, "Miss, when me get up, my mother no wake yet, a me have to wake my mother." Of course, critical to this discussion is the issue of teenage parents. It is by far, one of the biggest and growing problems that exist in our country today and it is, from what I see, at epidemic proportions.
In one particular case, 12 adolescent girls out of 18 who graduated from a comprehensive high school, have all had babies. This is now commonplace, and yet the country is silent on the matter. None of these girls are employed or employable. There are several among the group who can barely read and write. Even more alarming is the fact that most of the babies are also born of adolescent fathers, none of whom are employed or employable. The others are fathered by grown men who have not been charged with any offence and all of whom already have other baby mothers.
But the problem is by no means limited to a specific socio-economic class. From my experience it's clear that there is an equally urgent crisis of parenting that exists among the more privileged classes in the society. Yes, the children have the material things, in most cases, too many, but they are woefully lacking in parental supervision and sound values. Parents need to understand that things can't make up for quality time and quality parenting. Sending children off at every available holiday to North America, robs both parent and child of quality time together, as well as deprives the child, both psychologically and culturally, of an appreciation of their roots and the reality of living in a country where most children are poor, needy and disadvantaged.
PRIMARY MORAL EDUCATOR
The family should be the primary moral educator, and parents, their children's first moral teachers. Parents are also the most enduring influence on children. Children change teachers every year, but have at least one of the same parents all through their growing years. The parent-child relationship is also laden with special emotional significance, causing children to feel either loved and worthwhile or unloved and unimportant.
What Jamaica needs now is a revolution of positive parenting, and this is an urgent priority. Our parents, Government, churches, schools, civic organisations and others have key roles to play in stemming and turning the tide of this onerous and growing problem before it is too late. Massive public education, including billboards, radio, and television, as well as well as the enactment of critical legislation, are among the obvious solutions. We have no time to waste.
Betty Ann Blaine is a member of The Victorious Movement of Jesus in Jamaica, an historian and founder of Youth Opportunities Unlimited. E-mail: bab2609@hotmail.com.
