Your Family or Your Job?

Last Sunday in the Sunday Nation, they went on and on about the fact that parents were taking their pre-teen children to pubs in the excuse of family days while in actual fact they shunt them off into laxly supervised play-pens and proceed to get druink with their cronies. Never mind that these joints do not have separate sanitary facilities for the young 'uns; never mind that these children are being socialised in very un-socialble places; never mind that the law is clear about access by children to dens of iniquity and vice. What we are witnessing is a generational shift from family values to hedonism.

Young parents, and some of the older ones, no longer want to spend time with their loved ones; they want to spend time with their friends and work-mates. Look at how much time we devote to making and spending money, and how much time we do not devote to keeping our children on the straight and narrow. The result? Ten-year old alcoholics undergoing rehabilitation. And we wonder why this country's families are going to the dogs!

I see a paradigm shift in the role the community and government played in socialising families. Never would your village have allowed you to drag your children to a makuti jam rescue as a form of family entertainment. Never would the village have allowed you to transform your children into your friends. Society would have reminded you that your children need to behave and play fair; that a rod a day kept alcoholism at bay. Society would have punished you harshly for destroying your family's future by indulging yourself.

Today, the government is busy self-destructing and community no longer exists. We are all busy struggling to survive life to bother with your life. If you screw up, that is your own damn fault. Will your siblings pick-up the slack? Hell no! Your brother or sister is busy scheming on how to cheat you out of your inheritance to really have your welfare in mind. Your pastor is busy scheming to defraud the church and deflower your daughter (or son, if he is a Roman Catholic). The local cops are busy colluding with their kindred spirits in the Mungiki to rob you blind-literally.

Where do you turn? Whom do you turn to? The answer, unsurprisingly, is yourself. As parents you have no choice but to grab the bull by the horns and address this crisis. Else, you will not have children living under your benign direction, but revolutionaries on the warpath of change. Teenage hormones simply complicate matters. Remember how difficult you were at that age. Now just alcohol and whatever drug of choice is available to the mix, and stare in awe at the results!

Recently a family was shocked to discover that their innocent-looking daughter was not only promiscuous but on her way to full-blown alcoholism. That they didn't know is no surprise. It is time parents remembered that money is not everything; its pursuit can ruin you in other more devastating ways. Look after your real investments and enjoy retirement at the right age. Ignore them, and your will suffer whirlwinds such as have never been suffered in family histories.