Challenged parenthood

In traditional society, the authority of parents was unchallenged. It was assumed that parents possessed knowledge and wisdom which children could not claim to have.

And not so long ago, the parents’ religion was unquestioned. If the parents were Catholics, it was taken for granted that the children would also grow up as Catholics and pass the Catholic faith on to their own children. Similarly, if the parents were Protestants their children were also expected to be Protestants and to worship in the denomination of the parents.

It is true that when Christianity came to Africa, many children were converted to the new faith and rejected the religion of those parents who remained loyal to traditional African religion. However, the authority of the parents in many other areas of life remained intact and largely unquestioned. When people of my generation were children, one knew that one had more “school education” and might have a different perspective on matters of faith than one’s parents, but one never doubted the wisdom of parents and their knowledge in matters relating to culture, tradition and morality.

In today’s world, the authority of parents is challenged by children in a number of respects. I will confine myself to three areas of life: religion, technology and morality.

In matters of religion, many children over the age of 21 begin to question and reject the parents’ beliefs and practices. Some children will simply desert the denomination in which they were brought up by their parents often in favour of newer churches. This does not only affect Catholic parents, but would seem to include parents from other mainline churches whose services are perceived by young people to be boring and uninspiring.

I was interested to hear two parents commenting: “We are staunch Methodists, but none of our children are Methodists. They go to these new churches which they find exciting”. Perhaps Catholic parents are even worse off than Methodist parents in that many Catholic families do not read the Bible, and young Catholics find themselves joining Bible study groups with Evangelical Protestants who have a deeper knowledge of the Bible.

Some children even go beyond the rejection of the parents’ denomination and opt out of Christianity altogether, choosing to either embrace religions such as Islam or becoming atheists. Our modern pluralist society encourages this kind of development. Freedom of belief and worship is an essential human right, but it also encourages the development of relativism where every belief, every religion is viewed to be equal to any other, and children growing up in this kind of environment may reject their parents’ religious beliefs.

The second area in which the authority of parents is challenged concerns information communication technology. Children generally acquire the skill to use computers, cellphones and other technologies much more easily than their parents, so much so that many parents have to depend on their children to learn how to operate these gadgets. This subverts the traditional authority relationship between parents and children as parents can no longer claim to be more knowledgeable in all areas of life than their kids.
The third area is the province of morality. Many young people of today seem to look at the issue of morality very differently from parents who are in their 50s and 60s — or even 40s. For example, it seems to be a common practice among young people (both black and white) to cohabit and even have children before they go through a church wedding. Whereas 30 or 40 years ago parents would find it unacceptable for a boyfriend and a girlfriend to go on a trip or adventure together without other company, these days dating young couples do this as a matter of course. This has implications for pre-marital sex and the morality associated with it.

Next month I will explore how parents, as Christian leaders in their families, can deal with these challenges to their authority and moral convictions.