Grandmothers In Focus

In the traditional African setting, Nigeria to be precise, grandmothers make at least 50% contribution in raising the child because according to a popular Nigerian proverb, ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child.’

In most cases, parents send their children to live with their grandparents for reasons such as:

i. Work

ii. School

iii. Better moral upbringing

iv. Demise of the child's parent(s)

v. Health problems

vi. Financial problem

vii. Secure environment

viii. Divorce

ix. Domestic Violence

x. Safety/protection of mother or (and) child.

Among others.

Grandmothers also come in handy when children are born outside wedlock, especially by teenagers and they need someone to care for the child while they return to school or get their lives back.

As much as many believe that grandmothers instil better morals in children, there have been many reported cases of children suffering one form of abuse or another while in the care of their grandmothers with deaths recorded in some cases.

The downside

As much as having grandmothers fill in the gap, it is imperative to also look at the downside of this which includes:

a. Harmful practices: most grandmothers still engage in harmful practices that affect the children such as force-feeding, tribal marks, self-medication instead of visiting a health facility, use of traditional methods of treatment in place of prescription drugs, female genital mutilation, application of heat balm to the child's nose to clear catarrh or the anus for stooling etc. Mr Ade lost his 9-month-old baby boy after the child’s grandmother applied heat balm to the child’s anus to enable him to stool.

b. Physical abuse or child labour: many children have been abused & tortured to death by their grandmothers in the process of disciplining or correcting them.

Someone told me how many years ago, an 11 years old girl ran to her when she was about to return to Lagos after her visit to the village for Christmas. The girl begged to go with her because her grandmother was beating her too much. The woman said she asked a relative to speak to the grandmother about the abuse but sadly a few months after, she was informed that the girl died from pneumonia following weeks of exposure from sleeping outside at night for many days as a way of punishing her.

How about the recent one that happened in Anambra state where the woman pictured below was alleged to have tortured her 3 years old grandchild to death? We await the result of the investigation to ascertain the true story.

picture credit: instablog9ja

c. Exposure to predators: grandmothers inadvertently expose the children especially girls to predators that rape or kill them by sending them on errands alone and at odd times of the day or night without considering the risks involved especially with the growing number of rape cases.

d. Unhealthy environment: grandparents living in an unhealthy environment has resulted in children having diseases that led to their deaths while living with their grandparents.

e. Religious beliefs and affiliations: there have been reported cases of children accused of having spiritual problems or being possessed and tortured because the grandmother’s spiritual leader said so. The video below offers a better explanation.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/90940c_ac6b81a0af80431eb383c138b84a3fba/360p/mp4/file.mp4

video source unknown from the internet

Final note

Grandmothers are amazing and their role cannot be underplayed or disregarded but parents are advised not to cede their responsibilities to the grandmothers if they don’t have very good reasons to do so.

If unavoidable circumstances lead to the child living with the grandmother, it is important for you as parents to still check on the child.