By Joseph Akim Gordon
Almighty God has encouraged humanity to reproduce and fill the earth; this means that parents should produce as many children as possible. But how to care for them is another question, given the economic situation in the country.
The children you have, the more resources you should have for their livelihood and education. To have more children is a good idea, but how do you support them without adequate resources without creating problems to the community or to the society, is another matter altogether.
Children need good livelihood and education. Currently, we have food insecurity, education and health is very expensive.
In a polygamous marriage, a man can marry as many wives as he likes, a father with more than twenty wives or more to the extent that they do not know the names of their children, only they know the number of their children. A child comes to the father and introduces himself or herself with the name of the mother so the father will know that this is his child.
In some of our culture, when the father cannot satisfy all the wives sexually, his elder sons are permitted to have relationship with their stepmothers. Children that produced in such a relationship are given the father’s name; this often is an open secret.
In other culture, it is also allowed when the husband becomes impotent or because of old age unable to satisfy the wives sexually, a close relative will do the work to support his brother. The husband can travel elsewhere to give opportunity for the brother or old son to take this responsibility this is a guarded secret the wives are aware of this arrangement.
In another scenario, the elder wife will ask the husband to marry a young woman in order to expand the family. The elder wife becomes the head all the co-wives but responsible in the distribution of family resources to other wives and she is respected by other wives.
The aim of marrying more wives is so that you have many children, who will be engaged to look after family cows while others engaged in farming.
The most important function is to be responsible for the security of the area, for instance when you go to festival, other youth groups are scared not to cause problem with this family, because the repercussion or revenged, will be destructive. The response from this family may result to more fatality.
In some occasions, when you gather to resolve conflict; be it marriage or any other social gathering, a man with one wife and few children will not be allowed to give advice, as he has only one wife with few children, he has no experience to give advice he is angrily told to sit down.
The situation is now changed completely; the parents with many children cannot satisfy their children in a situation of food insecurity and the inability of parents to provide education to all the children.
In many cases girls are disadvantaged; they are not offered educational opportunity, only prepared for marriage in which the family expects to become wealthy when their daughters are married off.
Another fact is that as parents are unable to support, the children are forced to the streets to collect food from garbage and will gradually be exposed to criminality. Many children abandon their parents to live in the streets where they are exposed to learn criminality, and this is a shame to the family.
When they enter in criminal activity, they are exposed to dangers and on the process of committing crimes; they can become a target and be killed in the process.
The community will blame the parents to have not taken proper care of the children that is why they got engaged in criminality.
Young parents should be aware of the danger of having more children than you can support. Bring to the world, children that you can afford their livelihood and education so that they can stand on their own.
Education is the best gift to the children. They will be able to support themselves and their families; they can become responsible people in the community.
Parents should not only focus their attention to support male children, but also girls; if given proper education and training, will become employable and in addition when they get married the family also get the dowry.
So, parents should not ignore their daughters. Many have proved that girls when married will not forget their family but do everything possible to support them.
It is proved that when boys get married, they will forget their parents and concentrate support to their own family.
In the past, parents believed in having many children, with no support when they grow up, however it is necessary that number of children should be minimized to receive full attention of their parents and become responsible members of community.
We should be thinking of quality rather than quantity.
The author can be reached through e-mail: akimgordon222@gmail.com