Parenting plays important role in development of children and their future. Broken homes and poor parenting have remained a serious burden to families, communities and society at large.

Broken families or families where parents neglect their primary responsibilities can have many adverse effects on child’s development including social, emotional and educational functioning which can truncate foundation for strong overall development of every child.

Parents and family responsibilities to children do not end with provision of basic needs of shelter, food and clothing. Children look up to parents to define and orientate them on values and boundaries of life and the consequences  if one crosses boundaries. When parents fail to provide these needed guiding principles, such children will be left to fend for themselves and could easily become victims of negative peer group influence and other available agents of socialization.

Positive parenting requires nurturing, support, and guidance to help children develop into confident and independent individuals, while  bad parenting can lead children to  struggle with emotional and behavioural issues, have trouble forming healthy relationships, and may have difficulty succeeding in school and in the future.

These could result to psychological conflict, low self esteem and lack of self confidence which could also lead to anxiety, depression and mental health issues. Again, children with poor or negative parenting often suffer relationship crisis not only as children but also as adulthood and at old age. Some of them are always aggressive and find it difficult to maintain healthy relationships even in their homes and among relatives. People of poor parenting are sometimes source of disunity, rancour and acrimony in organisations and associations they belong as they strive to attract attention make and hardly respect constituted authority.  Because of fear of unknown, negative self perception and feeling of inadequacy, people of poor parenting background often fall back to substance abuse including addiction to alcohol and other intoxicants which further erodes their sense of reasoning and tilt them more towards negative lifestyle of greed, exploitative tendencies and avarice.

Unfortunately many parents and families because of unbridled quest for material wealth, have totally shifted parenting responsibilities to house helps who in most cases have no moral values or any value at all to offer to children under their care.

Parenting is an ongoing process and often challenging, which requires patience, honesty and hard work. There is need  for parents to be positive role models to their children because children often learn more from what their parents do than what they say. Parents should also make conscious efforts to listen to the thoughts and feelings of their children but not necessarily agreeing with them always. There is equally need to enforce strict discipline when necessary but without anger or resentment.

It is important to stress that showing love and affection to a child should not be encouraging him or her to toe a path of self destruction and disrupt the child’s opportunity to attain full potential through hard work, dedication and perseverance.

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