Families have been very much on my mind in the past week or so. It all started when I watched a television programme on the Food Network where some four teenage chefs were competing and one of them was to be “chopped”. At every stage of the competition one would get chopped until only one chef was left standing who would then go on to compete at the national level. Anyway, what was striking was that among the four young people only one came across as having been brought up in what one could call a stable and “normal” home – that is, based on their own testimonies, since a short peep into their personal lives was equally provided during the programme. One of the girls (there were three girls and one boy) expressed without inhibition that she had never known what it was to have loving relationships within a family setting, even though she considered herself as a warm, loving and outgoing person. Another pathetic case was that of the boy who, unfortunately, was the first to be chopped. He had lived through a personal tragedy having had cancer as a child, and was currently living with his two moms. In my (possibly prejudiced) opinion, he did not look like a happy child. More on that later.
A few days after watching that programme, I was interviewed by a group of four university students. When I arrived at the venue, the group’s leader announced that the issues I would be interrogated upon would centre primarily on the family, contrary to my expectations that they would be interested in asking about women in politics and leadership matters, or specifically on my experience during the last elections. Rather, they wanted my ideas on how a better relationship could be fostered between parents and their children, especially those who are young adults like them. They painted various scenarios of conflict among their peers and their parents, resulting in many of them feeling misunderstood or unloved and, consequently, disoriented.
Finally, and to cap this direction of my attention towards family-oriented matters, I am writing this piece from Abuja where I have been invited to participate in the launching of the report of a “landmark research” conducted by “Voices 4 Change”, a non-governmental organisation working primarily on seeking ways to reverse the gender inequities within our society, on the theme: “Being a man in Nigeria: Perceptions and Realities”. It is well known that much of the violence and discrimination suffered by women are perpetrated within the family environment, most often coming from their fathers, brothers, husbands and in-laws, and they include genital mutilations, forced marriages, wife battering, terrible widowhood practices, excessive household chores, etc. Let us also note the increasing and worrying incidence of rape within the family, committed by fathers against their own daughters or step-daughters. The research sought to examine how the perceptions and expectations of people about masculinity and the pressures of the current social realities contribute to the perpetration of violence against women and what steps need to be taken in order to reverse the trend.
Many families are going through very trying times, no doubt, but even the idea of what constitutes a family has already been fundamentally modified with the legalisation of gay marriages in some Western societies. When the teenage chef mentioned above talked about his two moms, I felt a pang in my heart. I wonder, do we have enough evidence on what impact having two moms or two dads would have on children raised in gay families? The adults are probably convinced that it is someone of their own sex they wish to marry; but what about the children who do not have a voice in the matter and cannot yet say how they would be affected by such an arrangement? That was why, when President Barack Obama was trying so hard to foist the legalisation of gay marriages on us in Africa, I felt that an answer which our leaders could have given him was that we would like to wait for some twenty years or so in order to see the results of the research which would be conducted on the impact of gay marriages on the children raised in such homes.
We in Africa have not gone that way yet, but it does not necessarily mean that all is well in our families either. Far too many of our children are growing up in very unhappy homes and having to deal with issues which they should still be shielded from at their age. How does a girl go through life knowing she had been raped by her own father? What kind of an unnecessary burden is that to carry – as if there were not enough challenges in life already? Why do we claim to be a warm, caring and hospitable people and yet visit the most terrible acts of wickedness upon a woman who has the misfortune of losing her husband? There is no doubt that the current economic challenges in the nation are bringing out the worst in some of us, due to the stress and frustrations we have come under. Unemployment and the general difficulty in making ends meet are contributing to violence both in the family and the society at large. It is time to put these matters on the front burner of social discourse. With dysfunctional families, our nation cannot truly prosper.