Death of the family
Dumisani Ncube | Friday September 12, 2014 14:54
In short, a family is where everything starts and ends.
Everyone of us was born into a family and we learnt our speech, first steps and almost all the basic things from our families.
The family’s function is not only to socialise, but it forms the basis of one’s life and identity. It probably shapes the future of an individual by nurturing, teaching them and preparing them for the future.
The obvious assumption is that families prepare us to become responsible members of society, though this at times does not turn out to be true.
Scholars have argued that the family plays a major role on an individual’s life and in the society.
However, other factors seem to have crept in and diluted both the meaning and the role of a family unit.
In modern time, however, the observations is that families have disintegrated into “conventions for people of the same blood”.
Children grow like fish in water, with parents paying little or no attention to changes taking place in their behavior or physical structures
Although some people argue that modernisation and industrialisation are to blame for the breakdown of the family structure, clearly this is often used to divert attention.
Yes, in our modern society both the mother and father are career people who spend very little time together or with their children but even in instances when families get the rare chance to socialise, such is not made a priority.
The media, especially social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, also play a role in the breakdown of our families. The rise of technology has been a huge contribution to the ‘death of the family’.
In the evening when the parents are back from work and children return from school, it is common to find each deeply immersed in their gadgets (cell phones, laptops, tablets or television games) hence there is little time to at least chat.
Back in the days, the elders would make it a point to give their children advice especially when the children have reached adolescence.
With such events taking place, children do not grow up recieving adequate advice from their parents, they do not take the proper path of life.
Because of this ‘negligence of duty’, children are exposed to the danger of religiously following and believing what the media feeds to them.
So it becomes easy for youngsters to lose their identity in the process. Because relationships have not been fostered with their parents, some children choose the easy way out by seeking advice from the internet.
This leaves children unsure about the advice and they end up doing what they think is best.
The time for socialising as a family has also been ‘stolen’ by television.
The loss of family values has resulted in juvenile delinquencies, high school drop-outs and notorious gangsters.
While it can argued that every family has its own black sheep, the carefree attitude of our society towards the family structure has played a major role in littering our communities with immorality and other social ills that could have otherwise been contained if the family unit was kept intact.
The increase in the number of single headed families, most of which are headed by women, has given children a lot of ‘freedom’.
By nature, women are soft on their children and find it hard to give them tough love.
When you factor in other issues such a cohabitation, which seems to be gradually worming its way into the hearts and minds of many in our society, you have a society that has lost its nucleus, the proper family unit.