An Exploration of the African Family.

God creates the human race but man creates the human person.

The sciences do possess their laboratories, an artist has his studio, the thespian has his theater, but what does a thinker possess? The critical thinker has a hunger for the truth about reality. He is concerned about the ultimate reality and a crucial aspect of that reality is society.

I had a conscious consideration of society and it brought swaying thoughts to my mind. It came to my thoughtful notice that though God did create the human race, man creates the human person! Our personality/person is a creation of society/man. 

Though as individuals we are responsible for our choices and they shape our lives, nevertheless our society influences our options and consequently choices. The great existentialist, writer, and exponent of individuality Jean-Paul Sartre said, “I grew up amidst books hence I always knew I would end up amidst books.” Even he could not deny the influence of one’s environment.

Our society is a major factor in determining our personality and going by this premise, it becomes crucial and necessary to ponder on certain questions. 

WHAT KIND OF SOCIETY DO WE HAVE IN AFRICA? CONSEQUENTLY WHAT SORT OF PERSONS WILL OUR SOCIETY LIKELY CREATE? 

According to psychology, an individual’s personality is shaped by the events that constitute his/her childhood and early teenage life. Thus, I choose to address the above-mentioned questions from the angle of the family. 

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Activities from the basic unit of society, i.e the family has proven to contribute immensely to poor human personalities. We exist in a society where clueless teenage girls get pregnant and give birth to children they are incapable of catering for. 

Consequently, they abandon these children with their aging parents and off they zoom. These children grow up without parental love and care. Their grandparents are too inactive to be fully part of their lives and they are sometimes taunted as bastards or abandoned properties by their peers. This is cruel but true. 

We live in a society that has come to normalized birthing children to secure the bag (money).  Being a baby mama for a celebrity is the new cool. As long as money is involved the conscious deprivation of a child from having a regular family doesn’t count. 

Life in this society is marked by hardship thus parents often give away their children to relatives or even total strangers with the hope of securing a better future for them.  Sadly, quite often these children are raised with an iron rod devoid of love. They are raised with unkept promises, bitterness, hardship, and resentment for society. Instead of education, they are given commodities to hawk. Those who manage to go to school do so under terrible conditions. Soon they join and form gangs/cults in the streets, in a bid to obtain power or morale that can protect them from the cruelty of their lives. In the end, they rain havoc on society and sometimes eventually waste their lives.

This is a society devoid of conscience and regard for family. It is a society where fathers spend more money and time with their side chicks than their own family! It is one in which people give birth to more children than they can care for. One in which parents are indifferent towards their children’s psychology. They feel being a parent is simply bringing children into this world and provide their material needs.

It is a society in which young ones are pressured to be successful either by hook or crook. It is a society where children are forced to leave their dreams for that of their parents. It is one filled with religious fanatics that attribute everything to the devil without taking responsibility for their actions. Families in this contemporary society are marked with broken homes, estranged relationships, poor parenting, busy and lazy parents that leave their children in the hands of their housekeepers, and often these children are abused and violated. 

Domestic violence plagues families in this society. All these have hurt the human people in today’s African society.  

Consequently, society has created mostly sociopaths, crooks, exponents of immorality, and desperate individuals that will do anything for money. Therefore, prostitution, theft, kidnapping, corruption, suicide, drug abuse, fraudulent activities, and crimes are flourishing dangerously.

This society is like a baker who baked a cake with sour ingredients and expected it to be sweet.  Factually, the products of our sick society are biting us all today!

Indisputably, the African society has produced remarkable persons but the ratio is way too poor. There is therefore a need to change our society to create better persons! This change starts with the family! Be a better Mother, Father, Brother, Sister, Aunty, and Uncle today! Create better personalities!

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