Uche B. Osuagwu.
2 August 2008
Teenage and Youth upbringing is as fundamental as child upbringing, and luckily how to go about it is also time-tested. And one book that audaciously addresses the issues involved and their solutions is Teenage Upbringing... The Issues That Barrage Their Morals. The author, Uche B. Osugwu, himself a just gone past teen and freshly graduating from university of Abuja, feels it and as such knows it. The book is in 2 parts: Part 1 is titled Fundamental Issues and Part 2, Social Issues.
Of all the endeavours in which the wise excel, nature's chief masterpiece is writing well. This book on youths and their upbringing is such out-and-out, and serves as a reference material to both the youths, parents and policy makers/government. Though presumably his first book, the young author already harbours the competences akin to masters and those predestined to be. Teenage Upbringing... is so refreshing, razor-sharp, concise, and so simply written that you can hardly pick holes in it. Of course it is not a perfect book; there are errors but pardonably far in-between. The young author shares his personal experiences and used them as practical examples to guide the teens/youths as they ride the tides of life. He just does not pontificate, as many motivational writers do. Many writers of his genre assume so much conceit as if themselves fell from the sky and, as such, perfect and larger than life.
The book is made up of 17 Chapters: Part 1 dwells essentially on teens and morality, friendship and relationships, love and dating, among other issues. Part 2 dwells on social roots of negative behaviours in teens, sex education and who should take it up, sexual harassment (who is harassing who), rape, premarital sex, pregnancy, abortion, prostitution, HIV/AIDS among teenagers. Other issues effectively handled in Part 2 are: Child labour, human trafficking as modern-day slavery, developing self-esteem to guide choice of career, child's right Act, etc.
As Gabriella Mistral, a Nobel Laureate from Chile, once lamented, psychologists have proof that of all the evils of mankind, abandoning the child and, by extension, young adults, is the worst. Let us face it: youth upbringing cannot wait, especially addressing the issues that assail their daily existence. Society including government has left them to their fate. They daily go through immeasurable hassles and pressure; Pressure from peers to measure up, pressure from even their families to contribute to family income yet they know they have no jobs to raise legitimate incomes. A typical case of what psychologists call means-end-inversion.
Many young girls fend for themselves in schools and by extension, their younger ones. How? As Uche's book also shows, such families help appreciably in recruiting their wards into the swelling ranks of prostitutes and violent criminals. But what do you expect with the all-time high levels of debilitating poverty, unemployment and debasement of our society? Mothers have sold their children even to ritualists, so, asking their daughters into the profession of easy virtue should even be seen as relatively honourable and, therefore, preferred option!
The society also wants them to be well-behaved, even when the adults are not themselves wonderful models. Sugar Daddies and Sugar Mummies are not normally teenagers/youths, and we know who is pressuring who, and who should lead the example. Indeed, today's youth is almost an endangered species. He is so hopelessly and helplessly submerged in a web of social forces that offers neither respite nor escape. And worse still, the prime victims - the teenagers/youths - almost know it not. And in an attempt to belong, so that one is not left behind or get lost in the shuffles altogether, they can only sink deeper into the mire. This inertia of social forces has created ever-widening latitude for confusion for these young and they live as if swept along by evil forces they cannot resist. Take what they call fashion now for example. Male and female now see dressing to show the buttocks and navels as the fad and it is not as if most of what they show is worth showing. They are really depraved.
Signposting more of such degeneracy, according to Uche's book, are issues that range from sexual immorality, battered economy, unfairly globalizing world and the resultant culture confusion, general poverty of both material and intellectual kinds and so on. Things unheard of in less than 2 decades ago are now almost normal in our society. For example, premarital sex, adultery and other forms of sexual immorality some of which are really heinous are no longer a big deal with us. The teenagers/youth is growing in this and the negative effects also increasingly manifesting.
The book recognises the decadence in the system. For example, virginity, which used to be a highly cherished virtue, is no longer sacrosanct even in our secondary schools. Truly, sexual immorality has now become norm amongst the teenagers/youths in our society, regardless of the myriads of its negative consequences, ranging from VVF, HIV/AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, abortion and death occasioned by it especially through quackery, name it. But the new book clearly shows how you can zip up and be respected for it; how the young girl or boy can say no and still smile.
Sexual immorality is, however, not a Nigerian thing; it is part of the global craze that has brought the calamity called HIV. There is little doubt that HIV - Human Immune Deficiency Virus - came from sexual intercourse by man with animals such as dogs, donkeys and even snakes. These damaging un-African practices that long gained grounds in the West are now permeating African societies. As if that is not enough, many 'men of God' (as they chose to address themselves!) are now proudly gay and getting married in US and Britain. Bishop Gene Robinson of Hampshire, just said, 'I am unashamedly a homosexual and unashamedly a Christian'! We cannot but agree with him on the count of loss of shame. Clinicians finger lack of shame when they check out serious psychological ailments and you do not have to be a loony to share in such psychotic ailments.
Uche Osuagwu points to the ways Nigeria can keep resisting the suffocating osmotic pressure of useless and damaging cultural imperialism, as even men like Bishop Robinson is forcing down our throat. The West has lost the moral war and their loss is now haunting them. They call it freedom, but is it really freedom, to have a child grow to whim and without morals and restraints? What makes disastrous indulgences as doing drugs, lesbianism and homosexualism freedom? Rather than call such freedom, we must acknowledge it as a social failure that it is. And the fact that it is from Britain or the US does not make it right either. Yet, Nigeria can champion moral regeneration of mankind, as Nigerian priests rejected gay priests' marriage and ordination in Anglican Commission.
This new direction is the thrust of this new book: Uche Osuagwu took it from the cradle, tracing how best to raise a child, through authoritative childrearing methods and proving why we must all reject absentee-parenting and resist authoritarian upbringing, which seems native to Africa. The book says those raised under the latter are not half as socially competent as those raised under authoritative methods. Parents need to see why, by reading the book because he did not do so on impulse. He aligned his position with that of psychologists who expect no radical change in adulthood, to paint the sober picture of how and why childhood is the foundation of life and, therefore, the substratum of happily teenage/youth life or troubled one, when not properly handled. Relying on researches to bring forth how, he admonishes both the teenagers/youths and their caregivers, especially parents to face the reality or be faced with dire negative consequences in no distant future.
Examining the issue of sexual immorality, Osuagwu believes that parents have left much to chance, and teenagers/youths just tramping on, with little or no efforts to take responsibilities for their future. He gave a long list of both psychological and physiological calamities that have befallen the segment due to avoidable social mistakes, lack of sufficient parental and governmental attention and succumbing to peer pressure just to belong. Osuagwu, heavily came down on the youths, berating them for the failings. But he also stubbornly insists that hope is not lost at all and that they can be whatever they want to be, regardless of how the society has turned out. To the author, therefore, life is what you make of it, and never a bed of roses. So, for the teenager that all the time screams, 'it is not easy o'; should now know: 'life is not supposed to be easy, it will be so boring without its challenges!"
Indeed, the book is a un-put-down-able; buy two; give one to a teenage friend or someone dear to you. This moral, intellectual enterprise that Uche Osuagwu has undertaken may be what his life has been waiting for all the while to turn around.
Mefor is an Abuja-based consulting psychologist and journalist. Tel.:234-8037872893; email:
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