Are family morals shifting, or is it just a decay of our long-held values?

Express Daily’s assessment of today’s moral decay is worrisome. “More than half of us have seen younger people being rude to the elderly. And two-thirds of those questioned in a new poll say that the UK is sinking into a moral decline as parents fail to raise their children with decent values” according to the paper.

Instead of putting the blame at the doorstep of the parents, Judy Reith, of the website Parenting people says: “We shouldn’t blame parents for immorality in society, instead we should find the best way to help them.” What went wrong?

Faced with the riots of 2011, The Guardian while discussing Tony Blair’s comments reported his fierce attack on widespread claims that the riots reflected the British society, which was in “moral decline”. The former prime minister warned that rash talk of a broken society threatened to harm the country’s reputation abroad. So one wonders what needs protection. Is it the nation or the people that make the nation?

According to the former PM, there were many more young graduates who were struggling to find work and persevering against all the odds, and many other youngsters who are from highly disadvantaged backgrounds where his Sports Foundation worked in the north-east.

His verdict was that today’s generation is

a) more respectable

b) more responsible and

c) more hard-working than his was. The true face of Britain is not the tiny minority that looted, but the large majority that came out afterwards to help clean up, he said.

SOCIAL FABRIC

Americans are becoming increasingly more liberal across several moral issues. According to a new Gallup study, a record high percentage of Americans are now accepting of same-sex relationships, having a baby outside of marriage and premarital sex between men and women.

About 63 per cent of Americans now say they are accepting of same-sex couples. Only 40 per cent felt that way in 2001. The 23-point jump in just 14 years marks the greatest shift in opinion to the left out of any issue Gallup measured in the survey. On having a child out of wedlock, 61per cent report that they are comfortable with the idea, a 16-point increase from 2001. When it comes to premarital sex between men and women, 68 per cent of Americans now see it as morally acceptable, compared to 53 per cent in 2001.

If media reports are anything to go by, there is definitely something wrong with the family relationships in Kenya today. Range Mita argues that:

“Earlier in time, the traditional African morality served as a critical element for promoting social fabric. Charity, honesty, hospitality, generosity, loyalty, truthfulness, solidarity and respect for elders were celebrated elements of our daily lives. These values helped individuals acquire social values such as peace, harmony, respect for authority, respect for and fear of supernatural realities which in turn helped society to remain integrated.”

Today, we are experiencing behaviours among young people that are utterly shocking: sexual immorality, addiction to various intoxicating drugs, crime, violence, dishonesty and corrupt behaviour among others. The recent  behaviour reported among the teens in a matatu mini bus and in a club in Eldoret indicate that we have a problem in our hands, which will last as long as we continue to point fingers; it will keep growing and one day suffocate us all.

As our society embraces and promotes these negative values, they give us a false sense of identity and belonging. However, our commitment would be to have strong personal values based on integrity of character.

Values stand at the very core of human existence, decision making process, and proper relating. When we don’t embrace the right values, the old saying is made true, “Asiye funzwa na mamaye, hufunzwa na ulimwengu.” Since our society lacks values with which to identify, we are invariably drawn to what seems to align with our desires. Therefore, positive or negative beliefs and practices can become a liberating force or stronghold and prison in which we find ourselves locked.

The result of this is that if we do not learn or teach values based living, the prevalent pop culture, particularly among our youth and teens becomes the principal source of behaviour. In the end, the culture an individual or a people adopt will drive them towards the desired fulfillment while guaranteeing a sense of satisfaction. What we need to know is that although we never choose the family we get born into, we still have the choice on what we want to believe, to practice, who we associate with, and so forth.  It is the values we hold that will determine these choices.

POSITIVE VALUES

Media has become a great avenue for teaching and learning. Whether electronic or print, media is taking the teenage world by storm—  teaching new ways of dressing, relating, expressing sexuality and many more.

Much of learning and copying behaviour has happened here. Of importance is whether we realise that there is a disconnect between the expected behaviour among our teens / youth and their day to day practices vis-a-vis the moral investment we made in their lives?

How can our impact on their lives be so effective, that they will withstand the pressures and trends that draw them away from the morals that we value as families and societies?  Perhaps the question here is our involvement in their lives during their formative stages and in their daily lives.  A child learns most during the ages of four to fourteen, this is the best time to inculcate positive values in their lives.

It does not end there; we must be actively involved in their lives even when it bothers them.  Wrong behaviour must be reprimanded with love and good behaviour praised and rewarded.  We must set the examples that we expect our children to follow and offer mentorship to them, if we want them to grow into responsible adults.

In addition to these, responsibility should come at a cost; for instance access to internet must come with a caveat or lesson on the negative aspects of the World Wide Web.  This will teach them to take responsibility for their actions and not pass the blame, or evade it altogether.