It takes a whole community to raise a child

Lionel WIJESIRI

President Mahinda Rajapaksa in a message to mark World Children’s Day, commemorated a few days ago, said it is the ultimate responsibility of adults to understand children’s needs and their interests to help them grow into good citizens with confident personalities.

The stories come from cities, suburbs and rural areas. A child is found hungry, homeless, abused or abandoned. How can such hurt and sadness be eliminated?

According to an African proverb, it takes a village to raise a child, a village of people, not just parents, who work together to help and support the children. The sage who first offered that proverb would undoubtedly be bewildered by what constitutes the modern village. Until recently in our own culture, the ‘village’ meant an actual geographic place where individuals and families lived and worked together.

For most of us, though, the village doesn’t look like that anymore. In fact, it’s difficult to paint a picture of the modern village, so frantic and fragmented has much of our culture become. Extended families rarely live in the same town, let alone the same house. In many communities, crime and fear keep us behind locked doors. Where we used to chat with neighbours on stoops and porches, now we watch television in our darkened living rooms.

Instead of strolling down Main Street, we spend hours in automobiles and at anonymous shopping malls. We don’t join civic associations, temples, churches, union or even benevolent societies the way we used to.

New world

The horizons of the contemporary village extend well beyond the town line. From the moment we are born, we are exposed to vast numbers of other people and influences through the media. Technology connects us to the impersonal global village it has created.

To many, this brave new world seems dehumanizing and inhospitable. It is not surprising, then, that there is a yearning for the ‘good old days’ as a refuge from the problems of the present. But by turning away, we blind ourselves to the continuing, evolving presence of the village in our lives, and its critical importance for how we live together.

The village can no longer be defined as a place on a map, or as a list of people or organizations, but its essence remains the same: it is the network of values and relationships that support and affect our lives.

The true test is the consensus we build on how well we care for our children. For a child, the village must remain personal. Talking to a baby while changing a diaper, playing airplane to entice a toddler to accept a spoonful of food, tossing a ball back and forth with a teenager, are tasks that cannot be carried out in cyberspace. They require the presence of caring adults who are dedicated to children’s growth, nurturing, and well-being.

What we do to participate in and support that network - from the way we care for our own children to the jobs we do, the causes we join, and the kinds of legislation we support - is mirrored every day in the experiences of our children. We can read our national character most plainly in the result.

How we care for our own and other people’s children isn’t only a question of morality; our self-interest is at stake too.

No family is immune to the influences of the larger society. No matter whatever we do to protect and prepare our children, their future will be affected by how other children are being raised. We don’t want our children to grow up in a country sharply divided by income, race, or religion.

Child friendly society

We can minimize the odds of their suffering at the hands of someone who didn’t have enough love or discipline, opportunity or responsibility, as a child. Raising children is an important calling and in the environment of today’s popular culture it is a very challenging calling requiring parents’ total commitment.

The job of raising responsible children is not a solo job. Parents and their children need to be part of a community which shares their beliefs, values and traditions.

Communities are made up of families; all kinds of families. A community that supports parents and cares for children - that looks after families - is a stronger and better functioning community.

It benefits both families and our society when raising children is supported at a community level. There are some great examples of communities thinking differently to help support parents and children. These include new ways of sharing information and partnerships that make children’s services widely available.

What is a child-friendly community? It is a community that takes responsibility for family and child wellbeing where children are: (1) valued as members of society who need care and support, (2) allowed to play a part - by including children in community decisions that affect them, (3) encouraged to participate in community activities and to express themselves, (4) protected as much as possible from harm, all forms of abuse and neglect and (5) helped to reach their potential - with good as a key focus.

If parents want to keep their children from being overly influenced by a shallow and often harmful popular culture, they need to provide a counter culture in which they find like-minded parents and children who will help their children to develop into mature and responsible citizens.

Community needs

If we are to achieve the goal of our country’s productivity, namely, that every child be given the fullest opportunity possible for the development of whatever aptitudes or abilities he possesses, we must look to the community to find the forces that thwart personality development and keep it from achieving its maximum development.

For example, a sense of belonging to the locality (having positive social relationships within the locality) will be associated with more pro-social behaviour amongst children. Some studies have reported that children growing up in localities characterised by deplorable conditions were more likely to experience negative social relationships than those living in neighbourhoods without these characteristics.

Social relationships

Social behaviour and the ability to develop positive relationships with others were traditionally conceived as skills which would develop naturally. However, there is an increasing recognition that social behaviours are learned and that children must be taught pro-social behaviour.

Children learn from their social environment, for example by mimicking (or challenging) the social behaviour of their peers, and thus what they see in their day to day environment is likely to influence their social behaviour.

Social skills can also be actively taught, for example when a parent, elder or teacher reinforces and encourages good behaviours, the probability of these behaviours occurring is enhanced.

Teachers and parents may also actively encourage children to apply social skills learnt in one social setting (e.g. the classroom) to other settings (e.g. home or the playground).

When working together, families, schools and communities can successfully make a difference to improve child learning. In fact, evidence from numerous studies confirms what educators have long known: families can and do have a positive influence on how well their children do in school. In fact, family involvement appears to have a protective effect on child learning.

Studies also show that communities, too, can have a positive impact on school effectiveness. Although less abundant, research on community engagement has found that when communities mobilize around school improvement efforts many positive outcomes can be achieved, including improved child achievement.

Other factors

It takes more than engaged parents to produce high child achievement. Many studies of high-performing schools identify several key characteristics associated with improvement.

These include high standards and expectations for all children and curriculum, as well as instruction and assessments aligned with those standards.

They also include effective leadership, frequent monitoring of teaching and learning, focused professional development, and high levels of parent and community involvement.

We can take together, as parents and as citizens of this country, united in the belief that children are what matter - more than the size of our bank accounts or the kinds of cars we drive.

Jackie Kennedy, the wife of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, once said, “If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do matters very much.” That goes for each of us, whether or not we are parents and for all of us as a nation.

Whether we harness our children’s’ potential for the greater good or allow themselves to drift into alienation and divisiveness depends on the choices we make today.