YOUTH SPEAKS GIVING CHILD ABUSE A NEW MEANING

Someone has said: “Nearly every man is a firm believer in heredity until his son makes a fool of himself.” But why take chances or risk the shame of witnessing your son make a spectacle of himself when you can do something to forestall it?

For this reason, fathers go to great lengths to rear their sons and prepare them for a predetermined path. Like father, like son, that oft repeated phrase suggests that it is only natural for a son to follow in the father’s footsteps. On the other hand, “like daughter, like mother” is rare; it is the exception rather than the norm.

Society is replete with instances where sons have followed in their fathers’ footsteps and ended up pursuing the same profession, career or vocation. Others have been groomed to take over the family, read the father’s, business.

It is worth noting, though, that for the most part, boys wished to better their fathers in their various careers. Where one’s dad was, say, a clinical officer, the son would want to be a full medical doctor and where one’s dad was a technician, the boy dreamt of becoming an engineer, etc. I would say that had there been an opportunity, we would gladly have followed in our fathers’ footsteps, the interest and or passion for the particular vocation notwithstanding.

I also once harboured ambitions of toeing my father’s line though he was not a professional but at least his job put bread on the table for the family.

I remember that when we were almost through with high school, particularly after we knew our examination results, we were brought these career books that appraised us of a wide range of courses available in the country’s public universities as well as at tertiary learning institutions. And this happened not only in our family.

My own father would in later years, reinforce the view of sons following in their father’s footsteps. As we chatted one time, he related the misfortune of an old man in the village who, he said, had been forsaken by his offspring. A man of the cloth, none of his sons had seen fit to follow in his footsteps. Well, not strictly, because one did, only in a diametrically opposed direction. Another had shown only lackadaisical keenness.

Unfortunately, all the sons are themselves now almost old men with grown children. It would probably be too late to turn the tide and start afresh. The result? Alienation, almost estrangement, from his offspring! What was my dad’s conclusion? It was most likely the old man’s fault! He had not applied himself to his vocation with such excellence as to attract his sons’ admiration. If he had, at least one of them would have ended up a man of the cloth as well. And he would be enjoying a closer relationship with him. But that is only my father’s opinion.

Interesting. Maybe this responsibility of starting early to acquaint children with what they do for a living that some fathers in the developed world have mastered makes a difference. Quite possibly, the problem the old man of the cloth had is not lack of a good record but the fact that his sons did not have the opportunity of watching him closely. He did not give them the chance!

Looking at it in this light, the Australian zookeeper, crocodile hunter and animal expert, Steve Irwin, was perhaps not taking it too far when he dangled his baby son within a meter of a four meter-long crocodile while feeding chicken to the crocodile with the other hand.

This was in full view of the public, even a TV public and the reporter gasped while imagining a worst-case scenario. One little mistake and the zookeeper’s baby son would have ended up being the reptile’s lunch, along with the chicken. This has landed Steve Irwin into trouble and child rights activists are up in arms, terming it a case of child abuse. They want him duly charged.

However, if you want to incur the wrath of a parent, especially a father, you have but to fault his parenting skills and question how he is raising his children. No parent welcomes other people’s suggestions or wishes to hear that they are being bad parents. After all, father knows best; not only does he know exactly what he is doing, but he also feels in complete control. And so Steve Irwin was unapologetic; insisting in fact that he would actually be a very bad parent if he did not help his son to grow up to be crocodile-savvy!

Terry Irwin, the zookeeper’s wife, was surprisingly not even galled; she rushed to her husband’s defense and stated, rather peevishly, that the “heir apparent” quite enjoyed the experience and that, in fact, he smiled when he was put back in his crib.

The question may naturally be asked: how far should parents go to ensure their children’s success. How early ought parents to begin charting a course that will cause their children to excel? To be sure, the world is getting increasingly competitive and cutthroat. For this reason some parents will do anything to put their children a cut above the rest. But the success they are seeking for their children is of course measured by the parents’ own yardstick!

Are those punishing backbreaking schedules children are sometimes subjected to, leaving them with no time at all for recreation, worth their while? Sometimes it becomes so bad that, as soon as children are old enough to have a mind of their own, they rebel, wanting to lead their own lives and not that which their parents prescribe for them. The straight jacket life they are made to begin leading so early, essentially turns out to be their parents’ own, which they were not able to live but would have wished to lead if had they been given the opportunity. We have also all read or heard of cases where so much pressure is brought to bear upon children to make them follow a prescribed path that they are considered failures if they choose a different road. Some end up committing suicide because they have fallen short of dad’s standards!

But then again, society is full of people who owe what they are today to their parents, read, fathers! It is as if society is constantly asking who should be held responsible for a son’s failure. Was it not said “Diogenes struck the father when the son swore?”

And yet occasionally, and thank God it is repeated with encouraging regularity, there are those who break this barrier of child abuse (what else can we call it?) to become history makers! And they did not have to be anything-savvy at three months!