By PASCAL Mwandambo
Family facet is experiencing a major acid test because of challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The “stay at home, work from home” order by the government to curb the spread of the disease brought family members that virtually lived apart due to modern lifestyles together.
Change from the traditional family unit where parents and their children spend most of their time together to the modern lifestyle where children attend boarding school and parents go to work in towns has resulted in disjointed family relationships.
In some cases the young children have more intimate and emotional contact with house helps than their mothers and at times even refer them as their mums.
That is because the real mums have become familiar strangers to their children who hardly find quality time for bonding.
A joke was doing rounds that following the stay at home order due to Covid-19 pandemic, some parents began learning the behavior of their children for the first time while the latter also had the time to appreciate their parents looks.
That is a serious challenge to the family fabric that should not be trivialised because the parental role of inculcating proper moral and ethical behavior in their children cannot be gainsaid.
A lifestyle where children and their parents live together as familiar strangers is setting a dangerous precedent that could have far reaching repercussions.
When we were growing up discipline was a shared community responsibility and any villager could punish you if they caught you misbehaving.
However, things have changed drastically and children rights activism has stolen the thunder from parenting and children are now ruling the roost in most homes because they dictate terms and parents have to oblige.
This liberalism has contributed to rising cases of indiscipline in our learning institutions, largely because some students want to enjoy the same freedom and leeway they get at home while in school.
The ban of corporal punishment in schools added the challenges facing teachers as they struggle to correct the bad mannered children due to poor parenting.
Imparting discipline in learners should be viewed as a multipronged issue, where several approaches should be applied depending on the nature of the case.
Where counselling fails other approaches such as corporal punishment should be exacted, given that there are students who cannot reform unless the cane is applied.
On the other hand, parents have learnt their lessons during the long break after realising the tough challenge of containing the restless youths.
They have realised and appreciated the fact that teachers go through a lot of difficulties performing the roles of teachers and parents at the same time.
Parents can however not shirk away from their responsibilities and dump children in school for teachers to mold them into responsible citizens, because schools are neither correctional facilities nor dumping sites for miscreants.
After school, students will either go back home to live with their parents or join the outside world and depending on how they behave, the world out there will deal with them accordingly.
Whichever way, parents cannot run away from shouldering the responsibility of ensuring that their children are molded into role models for future generations.
