Parenting in Times of Social and Cultural Change

Book Abstract

Moreover, parenting was not just a couple?s assignment but communal and all societal structures were aligned in such a way that there was parenting everywhere. However, given the realities of our chang-ing times, the promise of an enjoyable and easy time in parenting has highly been curtailed by many factors. Parenting in the African context has been challenged from many quarters. Many parents are grappling with the question of errant and extremely independent breed of children. Part of the problem has been Africa?s alignment to globalizing forces. For example, the decades of the 90s saw crusadesin advocacy for Africa to adopt more alien styles of families. With this came smaller families mimicked and modeled more from Western and global conceptualiza-tions of family. Parenting has been left to nuclear parents, and single parents.Opportunities for parenting have been minimized and this has complicated the equation for a balanced African society. This chapter explores imperializing factors that have complicated parenting in Africa contributing to continued loss of African communality and proposes superlative imperative as a method of decolonizing and neutralizing this tide of influence without reverting to the extremely traditional styles of parenting. It particularly places the African Christian church at the centre of the decolonization process.