Parenting and Child Welfare in Nigeria
Abstract
In this era of moral decadence, armed robbery, kidnapping, teenage pregnancy, drug abuse, school dropouts, Almajiri vs Boko Haram recruitments, money rituals, cybercrime, house breaking, criminal gangs to mention but a few are prevalent. This is an indication of aberration by the parents having difficulties which jeopardizes the health and well-being of their children. This paper examined the factors constraining the effectiveness of parenting and child welfare which are to be found in the large societal matrix of the child’s welfare system. The system supposed to provide substitutes for family functions, provide services to improve family functioning and ensure that the children are protected. The paper made use of in-debt interview survey to examine these factors as well as secondary sources of data from the existing literature, books and journal articles. It was revealed among others, that participation in school work, child-parent relationship and household characteristics are contributory factors. Also, poverty has a very weak response to child welfare. The paper recommended that incidence of street children is a response to poverty. Parental interest, child labour etc. are all responses to the socio-economic environments. Also regular survey on child labour and street children to monitor the trends with policies aiming at improving child welfare in Nigeria with respect to child-parent and household relationship as well as characteristics in their policy formulations.
