An African adage used to have it that, "every child is everybody's child”. This adage was the basis for everybody's participation in the supervision and guidance of any child. Because of this, a child was always afraid to engage in any form of societal misconduct as the punitive measures could be implemented from any place and would often go as far as getting the child parents involved resulting in further consequences.

Within that time, say a period spanning up to the late 80’s, parents were seen in the fully involved in the guidance, support and supervision of their children with keen efforts towards ensuring that they are brought up in line with values, morals, standard and discipline. To a reasonable extent, remarkable achievements were made to the extent that integrity, honesty, resilient spirit and hard work were the order of the day as recognitions, importance and emphasis were laid on families with values and good moral upbringing of children. Unfortunately, many societal misconducts that were tabooed then are now points of celebration and recognition hence ‘’centres are no longer holding’’.

The fact is that major factors to the causes of deviant and truant behaviours in our children are often not considered till things go wrong. The home is the immediate environment of any child and is pivotal to any child’s development and growth. A child learns virtually everything primarily from the home.

This brings the issue of parenting to the front burner. What was parenting like then and what is it like now? Are there any changes in patterns and processes of raising children? Why the sudden deviation and development. Parenting has always been and should still be a serious business and plays a crucial role in child development and general well-being but in the 21st century, it has remained a challenge due to a myriad of pressures be they natural, social, man-made, environmental, religious amongst others. Parenting, like every other business endeavour ought to be undertaken by those who are passionate about child upbringing with right frame of mind, mentality and discipline. When parents don't play their child-development role effectively, there is always a responsibility gap which creates room for some behaviours which will be counterproductive to the effective implementation of our goals. Parental hypocrisy, ignorance, moral bankruptcy, relationship issues / failures, lack of discipline, commitment and dedication, and so on are all factors that pose challenges and limitations to parents in the upbringing of their children in our contemporary society.

A strong relationship between parents and their children sets the foundation for the child’s emotional, social and cognitive development. Good parenting involves providing nurture, support and guidance to help children develop into confident and independent individuals.

Family system and parenting in our present-day society have been faced with severe challenges such as relationship break-ups, marriage failures (dysfunctional families), single parent pressures, death of partner, lack of credible parent-support programmes that aid parental responsibility such as child welfare programmes like health, education, free transportations, free education and other empowerment programmes. These challenges usually leave children vulnerable and leave parents struggling for survival and existence while also carrying out these relevant tasks for their children resulting in various emotional and mental health challenges due to fear and anxiety, anger and overthinking. Some parents without a resilient mindset may become vulnerable and navigate to negative options and pathways to survive. Since the future of any society is predicated on the children there must be an enabling framework to aid parenting for them not to misstep.

The vulnerable parent with negative emotions and mental health issues, instead of being a good parent will rather be a conduit for negative parenting which in turns impacts the child’s overall well-being negatively leading them to develop behavioural problems, low self-esteem, emotional problems, substance and drug abuse use, lack of trust, inability to form healthy relationships and truant / delinquent behaviours. Bad parenting occasioned by negative emotions casts a long shadow over a child’s emotional and psychological wellbeing. The point here is that the mental health of children is dependent on the mental health of parents. If the mental health of parents is not in good shape, the child will suffer it more and will become a serious challenge to the society. Let’s join hands to together to achieve a society devoid of mental health challenges and with negative emotions.

Treasure your mental health.