Parents are to blame for early pregnancies in Kenya

  

Date Posted: 11/8/2018 6:07:22 AM

Posted By: Refjak  Membership Level: Silver  Total Points: 122

---

In the recent years the number of girls getting pregnant at a tender age has been increasing at an alarming rate, especially in remote areas. In spite of all the existing awareness programs in learning institutions, churches, mosques, over the radios and televisions, write ups on newspapers, social media and even the homes they come from, a good number of girls have failed the test of maintaining purity and manoeuvre their way to marriageable age before dispatching to their new homes to start life. Instead, young girls of fifteen or below are currently carrying babies as they roam the village looking for casual jobs from which they earn a few coins to feed the babies; babies that belong to them. And as if there was nothing wrong, a simple research should have introduced you to a great number of infant girls with protruding bellies which told volumes of stories about their sexual behavior. If it is not lust, then there must be another problem whose remedy, our girls think, horizontal business is the best way to go. Corrupted reasoning!

It is pathetic to witness the harsh lives our young daughters face as a result of becoming mothers at a teen age. Offering them with financial assistance, buying clothes for their young ones or taking their kids to school may not be a lasting solution. Cases of early pregnancies should be cut down to hearsay in the near future. Believe me you, parents are the problem. Parents need to see where they have gone astray because they are the major source of all the fouls that end into their own girls getting pregnant. Over thirteen thousand girls, for instance, were reported to sit for the 2018 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) while pregnant. A minute investigation will tell you it

is only negligence of the parents towards their responsibilities that accounted to this number.

As parents, are we responsible of the behavior of our children? Do we monitor their movement, dressing mode and friendship? Do we provide them with their basic requirements? Are we their role models? Or we are the parents whose main work is to give birth into a large number of children and dump them with no one to take care of! The following are a number of areas where parents have to review for the purpose of reducing teenage pregnancies.

Discipline
The way children keep themselves, where they go and what they do matter a lot in their lives. Parents need to be careful with what they say and do in presence of their children. Remember that the discipline of a child will depend so much on the discipline of the parent. Children learn a lot by imitating what they see. As parents therefore, we need to reinforce good behavioral practices which we see in our children and punish the bad ones to stop them immediately.

However, a good number of parents have failed to do this. You will find a whole family housed in a single room, especially those in towns. Why shouldn’t children copy and replicate what the father and mother do in the house at night? Don’t they have eyes? Don’t they hear? We should stop sharing the same mad house with our children in the rural area for one day they will peep us through those small holes across the walls.

Parents have failed to monitor the movement of their children. And even worse, that of a girl child. It is in those places they go after school in the evenings or over the weekends where they get the fake lovers who impregnate them. Youthful girls cheat their parents by seeking permission to either go to visit an Aunt or Grandma. They often do it because they are sure there will be no follow up after the permission is granted. The reality is that such visits are usually done to very different individuals. And if for any reason they must be done to the respective Aunt or Grandma, they choose the ones who normally do not administer any restrictions over them so that they are free to accomplish their ill mission.

Parents have also failed to monitor the dressing mode of their young girls. Tight and transparent garments which expose private parts may attract men and end into having sex with these teens. The risk of this is unwanted pregnancies and diseases.

Basic needs
The responsibility of parents is to provide their children with what they require. Primarily, parents ought to always ensure that there is food on the table. The bitter truth is that the basic three meals a day; breakfast, lunch and super, is still a dream to some families. Children suffering of hunger go around begging in the villages and in towns. For the girls, opportunistic men promise them heaven in return for sexual intercourse. Have you ever imagined who buys clothes for these poor girls if food is a problem? Where do they get private needs like sanitary towels, perfume, powder and lotion? The iron our parents have is that they sit back and watch the beauty of their daughters without questioning as if it is an investment by angels. Men are there ready to assist. But they do it with a price. The price is the burden they gift our beautiful young girls by converting them to mothers in their young age.

Role model
In any society there must be some people who possess desirable characteristics which the young can copy as an example. The first people to display such features are parents. Children emulate most of their parents’ characters. Where we fail as parents is that we behave badly ourselves. Father has a fleet of lovers out there. Mother is in love with a number of men out there. The society is watching. Remember, the society talks about our bad qualities to our children in our absence as parents. So, when they see us they think there is no reason to behave differently from them. Molding children to behave well may prove futile.

It would be something to admire if the girl child would be given a good environment to grow into a mature lady before getting married or conceiving an offspring. Let us provide our young girls with their basic needs. Let’s monitor them and show them good example. Parents, it is high time we trace back our responsibilities and save the suffering of the millions of young girls in Kenya and the larger world. For this shall not be in vain, it is a seed of happiness for all us in future!

---

Next: Five key elements to effective class management.
Previous: Best job sites for every job seeker in Kenya