By David Maillu
Published September 18, 2023
There are destitute parents abandoned by the children they sold everything to bring up. Likewise, there are old parents who are preciously taken care of by the children for whom they sold every pint of blood to bring up. The question to ask is, “How many parents fall into those two categories and where does the balance tip?”
In traditional society parents could bank on the social help of their
children in old age. Those were the times when midwives asked just for a token for the job, unlike today when maternity hospital bill is almost out of reach of many mothers. Today getting a child is a very expensive affair that starts with the pregnant woman’s care during gestation. The arrival of the child instantly screams for money for clothing, food and medical care. Soon the child goes to nursery school. It is there when the contract of almost endless costly education is signed.
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Woe unto you if you are a single parent. Grief unto you if you have no income. Bitter consequences for you if you have a small salary. Sleepless nights if you have more than one child. The cost of life is
frightening. You are a parent, but on the other hand you are serving prison sentence to bring up their children. You live meagerly, eat poorly and go through many sleepless nights worrying about where to get money. It is a prison sentence of many years until the children graduate from school
and get employment. By that time, as parent, you are is awfully spent, having used up your youthful time.
The disaster begins when the children have graduated from school but don’t get employed. That is a misfortune of nearly every home today. In the meantime, some of the daughters begin to give birth out of wedlock, the burden falling on the grandparents. A new chapter of responsibility has erupted.
Eventually the boys get married to women demanding a pound of flesh of care from the husband. This is the stage at which parents lose their sons to the wives. Any parent should count himself lucky if the son doesn’t get grabbed by his wife completely, determined to make sure he is disconnected from his parents. She comes to destroy but not to build. At that stage, the son has been challenged to realize what he now needs is not his parents but his wife. After all, his parents lived their own life; it is now for him to live his life with his family.
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Kenya is full of destitute parents yawning day and night with desperation, some of them wearing tattered clothes and eating just ‘things’ instead of food; thinking about the good old days when they had resources and were surrounded by their beloved children. Today they can’t afford a doctor when they fall sick as often happens in old age. Their beloved children are nowhere in the empty home except a chicken and a dying skinny dog which has given up any hope of barking due to hunger. The stories of suffering rejected parents can be told in many ways. It is a social breakdown. It is a human catastrophe.
It is at that stage that the suffering parents begin to wonder whether it was worth anything to have children. They were used by the children as transport to take the children from one point to the other. The children had arrived and alighted at their destination. Why should they think about the transport?
It is at this stage the abandoned parents live with the lamentation, “If only I knew…” However much they pray to God for change, that change doesn’t come. It is as if the God they are praying to is telling them,
“I’m sorry, the choice was in your mind; time for helping yourself has finished. The best for you is to die and come home. I am waiting.”
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Now they realize the stupidity of having kept all their eggs in one basket. They realize the importance of, while bringing up the children, they should have thought objectively by investing in building a private social security for the old age demands.
While the children are being brought up, they do everything to prove to parents that they love the parents so much and that they will never abandon them. It is true, some children mean that lifetime commitment and they live to their promise.
But, a lot depends upon what kind of parents children have. In most cases, children grow up with the behavior of their parents. The problems among children who abandon their parents may have been caused by the parents. Bad parents bring up bad children; good parents bring up good children.
But the problem is that, naturally, every parent thinks he is good. The killer disease is in the manner in the psychology of the parents and how he evaluates himself. Often enough, many parents are subject to
self-overvaluation, in which they would think they are doing the best for the children. But they get surprised when the children grow up in another direction.