TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY OF FAMILY VALUES IN THE SOCIETY
David Imhonopi (Ph.D) & George Tayo (Ph.D)
Senior Lecturer
Department of Sociology
Covenant University,
Canaan Land, Ota.
tayo.george@covenantuniversity.edu.ng
davidimhonopi@gmail.com
INTRODUCTION
As the International Day of Families (IDoF) 2015 rolls in, we are once again reminded of the
pivotal role the family institution plays even in the twenty-first century. The International Day of
Families, which is observed on the 15th of May every year, was proclaimed by the UN General
Assembly in 1993 with resolution A/RES/47/237, and reflects the importance the international
community attaches to families. The IDoF provides an opportunity to promote awareness of
issues relating to families and to increase the knowledge of the social, economic and
demographic processes affecting families. The Day comes with a series of awareness-raising
events, including national family days. In many countries, the day is used to highlight relevant
themes concerning the family through channels such as workshops and conferences, radio and
television programmes, newspaper articles and cultural events.
The family is a small-scale version of the society and the oldest of the human institutions from
the Biblical perspective. It is the basic core on which society is choregraphed. This is because we
are born into one family or the other and some of the most important social memories we have
stem from the relations and affections we have had and have given to others within this
institution. Even though there might have been scars and hurts inflicted on us by some members
of this family (or perhaps that we have inflicted on others within this social unit), the family
institution, by and large, helps to form our basic self-identity as human beings and is the first
human cocoon that protects our frailty, vulnerability and childhood dependence. As the most
intimate social unit, the family offers a bastion of hope, love, confidence building, shelter,
warmth, provisions and protection. These qualities, services or benefits are needed for the wellrounded development and confidence of the young members of this awesome institution.
Without gainsaying it, the family is the hope of the world’s citizens. Its exponentiation is what
constitutes the global community as we know it today. When families are rightly functional, the
future of its members are more secure than when families are divided, unstable or alienated.
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WHAT IS THE FAMILY?
The family has traditionally been defined as a social group consisting of one or two parents and
their children. Although a Western idea, this definition fails to capture the true picture of family
structures in many societies and especially in these modern times. This is why, as a safe bet,
family might refer to a social group consisting of parents, children, relatives and extended family
members who are bound by marriage, blood or love or share the same goals and values in a
relationship with long commitment to one another whether dwelling together or not. This
definition attempts to describe the state of the family today.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE FAMILY IIN THE SOCIETY
The family performs important functions in the society. It is the institution that assists in the
production and reproduction of young members of the society. Without the family, the human
race may disappear if this function ceases. The family also assists in the socialization and
enculturation of children. These processes include helping children to learn to be responsible
human beings by adopting the right behaviors, observing the right norms and customs, and
developing the right personality traits that help them fit into the society. Through marriage, the
family provides an opportunity for adult members to meet their sexual needs. Satisfaction of
these sexual needs in a desirable way helps in the normal development of the personality of the
adult family members. The family also provides a home or dwelling place where adults and
children bond and where the latter are raised. Through the family, economic cooperation and
division of labor are achieved. Care, supervision, monitoring, and interaction are also common in
the family. The family is a place where every member receives care, affection and guidance. This
helps in developing healthy, secure and confident personalities in the society. The family is also
the first “school” that the child knows. Children learn the first lessons about life and their
environment from their parents or from the older members of the family.
FAMILY STRUCTURES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Far from the traditional nuclear family orientation of a father, mother and children, the 21st
century families show different varieties and complexities. These various family units are as
follows:
Nuclear Families
This family unit consists of two parents and children. The nuclear family was long held in
esteem by the West as being the ideal and idyll for raising children. Although in many nonWestern societies this family type does not preponderate, it certainly has become the typical
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family structure in many modern societies whether as a result of the economy, religion, personal
preference or legislation.
Single-Parent Families
In the single-parent family units, one parent is seen raising one or more children on his or her
own. Often, it is a mother with her children, although single fathers too exist. The single-parent
family is the one of the biggest changes society has seen in recent years. Not only is this caused
by divorce, or wilful negligence on the part of one of the parents, but many single-parent homes
were created by war situations, pandemic diseases such as HIV-AIDS, Ebola Virus and others,
and are the backlash of a rising terror climate in most parts of the developing world.
Extended Families
This family structure has two or more adults who are related, either by blood or marriage,
whether dwelling together or not. This family unit includes many relatives living together and
working toward common goals, such as raising the children and keeping up with the household
duties. Many modern extended families do not necessarily have to live together but consist of
uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, and grandparents. This type of family structure may be
created because of financial difficulties or because older relatives are unable to care for
themselves alone. Extended families are becoming increasingly common all over the world.
Childless Families
While most people think of a family unit as including children, there are couples who either
cannot or choose not to have children. The childless family has been described as the "forgotten
family," because it fails to meet the traditional standards set by society. Childless families consist
of a husband and wife living and working together. Many childless families take on the
responsibility of adopted children, pet ownership or have extensive contact with their nieces and
nephews as a substitute for having their own children.
Stepfamilies or Blended Families
In the society, today, over half of all marriages end in divorce, and in many of these failed
marriages, individuals choose to remarry. This creates the stepfamily or blended family system,
involving two separate families merging into one new unit. It consists of a new husband and/or a
wife and their children from previous marriages or relationships. Stepfamilies are about as
common as the nuclear family today, although they are exposed to challenges such as adjustment
periods, discipline issues and others.
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Grandparent Families
Many grandparents today are raising their grandchildren for a variety of reasons. It could be as a
result of the death of one or both parents, due to war, disease or accident, or it could be that the
parent or parents of the child are still teenagers or young people who lack the experience or the
economic wherewithal to raise the child. It could also be because of abandonment of the child by
one or both parents. Some grandparents have been known to ably raise healthy and successful
young members of the family.
LGBT Families
Today, a growing number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) families have arisen.
Some of them because of their high social and economic status have been able to secure the
permission of the law to raise children. The argument has been that rather than allow these
children suffer on the streets or suffer neglect and abandonment, they could be raised by their
loving adopted “parents”. While this logic may be convincing to some because of the numerous
challenges faced by abandoned, homeless and orphaned children, the moral and social questions
this family structure raises force some groups in the society to see LGBT families as an
aberration and an inappropriate family structure for the healthy upbringing of children. This
controversy still rages on.
RE-THINKING VALUES IN TODAY’S SOCIETY
Values in its simplest form refers to those things (tangible/intangible) that are cherished, held in
high esteem, worth striving for and considered important by a group of people, organization or
society. Typical examples of values includes: Hard work, time, discipline, integrity, etc. Value is
a major component of a people’s culture. According to Kluckhohn and Kelly (1945), ‘culture
are those historically-created designs for living which could be explicit or implicit. Rational or
non-rational and which exist at a given time as potential guides for behaviour of men and
women’. For Tylor (1891), culture is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art,
morals, law, custom, and any other capability acquired by man as a member of the society”.
From this definition, culture embraces both material (tangible) and non-material (intangible) as
aspects. There is no known society or people without culture. This perhaps informs why Andah
(1988) states that “…people are products of culture and culture is equally the product of a
people”. Value, as an integral aspect of a people’s culture, has become a topical issue and matter
of concern today. The family as the first and primary social institution in the society has
responsibility in inculcating the right values into its members through the socialization process.
The family cannot afford to compromise her critical role of ensuring that its members are true
and worthy ambassadors of the acceptable values, norms, virtues, customs that can foster the
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progress of the society. Experts have traced the major cause of the social problems (crime,
terrorism, corruption, unemployment, etc) confronting the society in recent time is worrisome.
These have been attributed partly to dwindling values blamed on the failure of the family and
the society at large. The role of the family is today compromised by other agencies such as the
school, mass media, and technology. The Information Communication Technology (ICT) with its
advantages is not without some demerits in eroding societal values and family functions.
Additionally, globalization, western cultures, environmental, internal and external factors are
equally guilty of eroding our value system. As members of our respective families, we owe it a
collective responsibility to ensure that we show good examples in terms of promoting positive
values that can further enhance the progress and development of our society. Let us remember
that if we fail, posterity and the future generation will not forgive us. The time to act is now.
Delay or procrastination may be inimical and dangerous.
CHALLENGES FACED BY FAMILIES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
There are many challenges facing families in the 21st century. First, there still exist obnoxious
cultural practices that promote gender discrimination including the genderization of labor, and of
social and economic resources, androgenization of political, economic and social rights, forced
and child marriage, among others. Other related challenges targeted at women and children by
other members of the family and society include domestic violence, child abuse, women
trafficking, glass ceiling facing women professionals, and many others. Second, the high rate of
divorce is so alarming that some escapist ideas to address it have been to have cohabitation
between two consenting adults without marital obligations or civil or domestic partnerships. The
marriage union is far fading away in some cultures and children and other vulnerable members
of such societies are worse off for it.
Third, the number of single parents has also distended. For various reasons, many families today
are managed by a woman or a man as the sole parent. More often than not, this tells on the
quality of life of the members of such families whether economically, emotionally or socially.
There is increasing precarity in the world today arising from the global economic crises and misgovernance ongoing in many developing states. This precarity spells lack of predictability or
security, which affects the material or psychological welfare of the masses of the people. This
forces people to vices, such as youth restiveness and violence. And within a context of withering
moral and social values, violence is preferred to peaceful and legitimate means of conflict
resolution. Precarity has also led to child labour, women trafficking and prostitution.
Unfortunately, the same youths, children and women are the victims of these violent situations.
Fifth, the rise of terrorism, inter-ethnic conflicts, wars and outbreak of pandemic diseases such as
HIV-AIDS and Ebola, for instance, has resulted in the deaths of many parents leaving their
children homeless, orphaned and vulnerable. Lastly, the growing popularity and population of
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the LGBT families, their prime social and economic status and the wealth some of them
command have contributed to the acceptance that they be allowed to raise orphaned or homeless
children.
THE FAMILY AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
The family has been attacked gravely by a concatenation of Satanic influences, demonic
doctrines and humanistic teachings which have tried to remove the subject of God from this
institution. The increasing secularization of society and the infiltration of teachings, thoughts,
philosophies, tendencies, orientations and newfound modus vivendi which contradict sound
Christian doctrine have sustained the climate of withering family values of chastity, faithfulness,
sacrifice, untainted love between couples and other members. The family institution like other
institutions is now sitting on a tinderbox that might go up in flames anytime soon. Of course, its
backlashes are already seen in examples such as morally loose children, youths with the wrong
value systems, youth violence and vices, rising cases of teenage pregnancies, irresponsible
parents who are swooning on drugs and banned substances, adultery, divorce, social unrest and
leadership crises.
The Christian faith offers hope in these dark times. It offers the hope of salvation to the sinful
natures of mankind which are immoral, deceitful, unfaithful and wicked. It offers forgiveness
and healing to those who have messed up their lives, the lives of their spouses, children and other
family members. It offers the hope of a new beginning with Christ being the head of such
families, giving direction and illumination in a morally bankrupt world with no conscience or
moral compass. It promises guidance to wayward children and adult members of families who
have strayed and need to return to the path of sanity, chastity, and responsibility.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The family is not just the oldest of the human institutions, it is also a divinely ordained matrix
through which the human young comes to life and finds love, support, socialization and
enculturation. The challenges facing it, just as the challenges facing mankind, are spiritual,
Satanic and manmade. Rescuing families from the ongoing crises facing it will involve all
stakeholders. Government needs to provide the enabling environment that supports men and
women. It needs to provide adequate jobs with decent wages. It needs to make the necessary
amenities available which can increase the quality of life of families. It needs to govern justly in
fairness and justice. Government must discourage actions that lead to violence, war and killings
of the innocent. It must also provide a clean environment free of disease and invest in its health
infrastructure. The church has to continue to play its interventionist and mediatory roles. It must
continue to provide the moral suasion that does not condemn the wayward but that guides the
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wayward to the path of truth and love. God is love. It must support initiatives that seek to
establish homes for homeless and orphaned children and must use its status and influence in
society to compel business and government to contribute to such initiatives.
The church must continue to speak the truth of moral chastity in love, advising people that want
to go into the marriage union to understand the importance of such a step before going forward
to the altar for solemnization. The educational institution must continue to research into ways to
make living more pleasant to citizens. It must provide the information and research findings that
can address the social ills in the society. As a social actor, Covenant University has a role to play
by lending a voice to moral rebirth in the society. It must direct its faculty and researchers to
focus on problem-solving research findings that can address the ills of society. As a Christian
missionary university, it must subtly but firmly espouse the family values that the sound
Christian faith it subscribes to teaches by inculcating these values in its students and by helping
its staff to share these values with their families. Making the necessary U-turn to the crises facing
families today may require more efforts than these, but starting somewhere in proffering the
needed solutions will halve the burden.
References
Andah, B. (1988) African Anthropology. Ibadan: Shaneson.
Kluckhohn, C. & Kelly, W.H. (1945) “The Concept of Culture” in R.. Litton (Ed.). The Science
of Man in the World Crisis, New York: CUP.
Tylor, E.B. (1942) Primitive Culture. New York: Murray.
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