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NJOKU: We Need To Redeem Our Families

By Chuks Nwanne
11 July 2015   |   11:56 pm
Dr. Celine Njoku is a counseling psychologist and national PRO of the Counseling Association of Nigeria. In this interview with CHUKS NWANNE, the HOD Counseling, Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos, spoke on the need for the society to go back to family and rebuild the values. How important is family unit to the society in general?…
Njoku

Njoku

Dr. Celine Njoku is a counseling psychologist and national PRO of the Counseling Association of Nigeria. In this interview with CHUKS NWANNE, the HOD Counseling, Catholic Archdiocese of Lagos, spoke on the need for the society to go back to family and rebuild the values.

How important is family unit to the society in general?
You cannot talk about the society without first talking about the family. Whatever situation we found ourselves in today, as a country, is as a result of the decay in the family system. I always focus on women because I realise we’ve left our domestic church, which is the family. Consequently, there are many issues springing up. But my concern is how we can redeem the family.

What are the specific roles of women in the family and do you think they’ve done well in that regard?
When God created Adam, He said, ‘I will get you a helper…’ So, as women, we are there to help our husbands. A woman cannot just allow her family to collapse, simply because she is who she is. In the past, our mothers and grandmothers would not eat until their children have eaten. These days, however, mothers even eat before their children. This affects what we turn out to be because the family is where we all come from; our attitudes, lifestyle and relationship with one another started from the family.

So, mothers have a lot to do in rebuilding values, which are fast disappearing these days. Children can no longer differentiate between what is good and what is bad. What that tells you is that many of us are coming from houses and not homes, where there are rules and regulations. Therefore, we need to go back to the family for the society to be in order.

Don’t you think it is the economic situation that is responsible for this seeming neglect on the part of women?
If you want to be happy, you surely will be. God made us in His image and gave us the ability to understand and manage complex situations. Take for example such women as Okonjo-Iweala and the late Dora Akunyili among others. They prepare their husbands’ meals.

Taking care of the family and home should not deter a woman from being what she desires to be. Really, it does not reduce her. Rather, it gives her internal peace. As a female boss, a woman would then be able to tell her subordinates to go have food or take care of themselves because she does the same for her family.

What actually went wrong with the value system and at what point?
There’s a missing link somewhere. It started when schools were taken away from the missionaries. You can see that majority of those doing well today, passed through these religious schools. So, when these religious groups were removed, people were now being taught to only pass exams. Attitudes and morals were relegated to the background. And now that this has eaten deep into us, they started introducing civic education and moral lessons. The women folk especially need to be urged to go back to our natural responsibility, which is the home.

Many parents now seem to have left the responsibility of their children’s upbringing to caregivers. What’s your take on this?
Parents need to be called back. If you have a child in school, you should also have a guardian, who should be called often to know about the well-being of your child. Intermittently, you should also be going over to see the child yourself. If the child knows that you are always coming and that you relate with the teachers, he/she will sit up because he knows that you can come at anytime. And of course, you will know what the child needs.

Unfortunately, some children have been indirectly abandoned. When a child goes back to school at the beginning of an academic session, the parents do not bother to find out who the class teacher is. Women now feel this is a burden, which they’d rather share with their husbands and would ask, ‘what of my husband?’

But I encourage women to always go ahead and find out what is happening to their children at school. There is this joy and internal peace that come from knowing that you are taking time to know about the well being of your child in school. And I think that’s why some parents come down with certain ailments caused by the sin of omission. Both parents should try to visit their children in school. If a child comes home with something that does not belong to him/her and you didn’t bother to ask, that act could develop into stealing.

When parents do not instill the right values in their children, when they grow up and start their own homes, what will they teach their children? Some parents leave the care of their children entirely in the hands of housemaids and they don’t even bother to treat these housemaids very well. A housemaid can be so mean as to even urinate and give to your children to drink. And when the child now falls sick, you take him/her to the hospital.

The joy of motherhood is teaching your children good manners, playing with them and sharing experiences with them. All this doesn’t stop a woman from doing her work. But where that is missing, all the money you get from work is spent in the hospital and that is nature for you.

How should parents treat their housemaids/caregivers?
These housemaids/caregivers are also some people’s children. They only come to help you and thereby save you time. It is impossible to do two things at the same time; that is being in the office and at home simultaneously. And so, the housemaids should be your first children. You should always care about their welfare and well-being. Ask them if they have eaten, regularly buy good and comfortable dresses for them and make them godly. If you treat them very well, then you have a second mother in your home and they will always defend you and treat your children kindly. But if you treat them anyhow, you will not be at peace with your Creator.

There’s a certain woman, who owns a restaurant. She pays her housemaid N2, 000 monthly out of which the housemaid buys her food and dresses. She wakes up at 4am daily to cook in the restaurant and goes to pick her madam’s children from school. The girl lives with her madam. You can see there is so much that is unhealthy in this. If we rightly understand the mundane nature of this world, we would endeavour to do the right thing all the time. Who knows tomorrow?

There’s another example. A housemaid who was trying to prepare noodles for her madam’s child mistakenly spilled it. The madam got so angry that she prepared hot noodles, asked the girl to open her skirt and then poured it in her navel region. It peeled her skin immediately.

In the past, these things never happened. House helps were happy and even got married from their madam’s homes. But these days, the story is different.

Do you think having maids in the home affects the children in any way?

Because there is a maid in the house, many of these children do not know how to do house chores. I met a lady in the market recently. She was well dressed. She came to me where I was buying fresh meat and asked what I was buying. I told her it was raw meat and she asked me to teach her how to prepare it. I took time to explain to her, but it was obvious she wasn’t taught from childhood and was now probably getting married.

What was her mother doing?
I feel the domestic church should go back and rectify these things and make it what it is supposed to be. The Trinitarian love flowing from the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit should flow down to the housemaids, stewards, driver and anybody else in the house as well. Once everyone is happy, then you see the society turning out fine.

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