Parents Should Spend Quality Time To Salvage Future Of Teenage Daughters
Written by Odhiambo Shem on February 8, 2022
By Simon Onyango:
Parents are the most important people in the lives of young children. From birth, children rely on parents to provide them with the care they deserve. It’s their duty to protect their children’s rights until they are old enough to make their own way in the world – more so, girls.
This has not been the case in Sub – Saharan Africa where most parents have forgotten their social role in the society. They no longer spend much of their time with the children, unlike in the past, where fathers would spend much of their time with their boys and mothers with their girls. This helped in inculcating morals in our parents and therefore, we ended up having a beautiful society.
What went wrong, is the thing disturbing you and me. Our society is filthy. Boys and girls are engaging in immoral activities, instead of parents to chip in and salvage our society, they play the blame game.
In this article, I will narrow it to girl – child. Have you ever asked yourself why girl – child’s health and education is deteriorating nowadays? According to the current data, majority of the out – of – school children in Africa are girls. What does this indicate?
Are we aware that girl – child education is an indicator of a country’s social and economic development? Girl – Child education is threatened by numerous factors; poverty, economic deprivation, traditional misconceptions, abuse, gender inequality, violence, conflict, social norms – name them, but who will listen to save our girls from this quagmire?
Mothers have forgotten their social roles, they have forgotten that their roles affect the growth and survival of future generations. But do we even have relevant bodies to stand for these girls? Early Pregnancies and Early Marriages are destroying the future of our girls – shall we even find a few responsible mothers in the future?
In Kenya alone, out of eight adolescent girls, one is either pregnant or has delivered, a report by National Council For Population and Development shows. In the report, between January and October last year, Nairobi County led in teen pregnancy among adolescents aged 10 – 14 years .
Yesterday, Narok county Health Department, revealed that more than 13,000 girls aged 10 -18 are pregnant – a data compiled between January and November last year. This represents 27% of the total pregnancies recorded nationally.
According to Narok Health Officer – Toroitich, it is an impending crisis. He says that girls who would be in Universities and Colleges are now mothers at a tender age. The County’s First Lady Mrs. Tunai on the other hand, called upon all government departments to come together to end teenage pregnancy. She stressed that if this trend continues then the future of the girl-child is at risk.
I therefore urge parents, especially, mothers – be at the forefront by exercising your roles of nurturing girls, inculcate morals in them, let them know that they are the future of this country and future needs responsible mothers.
