Five books to deepen family values

I have watched with great interest the depletion of family values across the world leading to the collapse of societal values. The family is the number one socialisation institution anywhere in the world but today it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what a family unit looks like. The rise in single motherhood, female headed […]

I have watched with great interest the depletion of family values across the world leading to the collapse of societal values. The family is the number one socialisation institution anywhere in the world but today it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine what a family unit looks like. The rise in single motherhood, female headed households and violence in many family spaces has led us to a place that we never thought could exist in the past. Here are five books to deepen family values.

1) Families continue to be the bedrock of societies. Increasingly, the changes are not only in the outlook of families today but the very way in which families are perceived in modern society has affected the larger society in more ways that can be counted. These changes have given rise to more research on family values and confused children all over the world. Is my mother my father? a question children would often ask if they live with a lesbian couple, is my father my mother? If they live with a gay couple and where is my father? If they live with a single mother. Psychologically, this affects children and it gives them a different prism on what families should be like. An interesting book – Changing family values by Gill jagger and Caroline Wright offers comprehensive introduction to contemporary debate and new research surrounding the family. It explores how we define traditional family values and how these values are perceived as been under threat in contemporary society. Topics looked at include, men’s changing roles within the family and the future of the nuclear family.

2) Any book on families at war, families that are estranged, families that have come unhinged. Any such books are useful for appreciating our own family if all is well. In today’s world, where families are threatened by Television content that is not so stellar, social media and globally minded children, it is a tough call to raise a normal wholesome family. So reading a book about families that are falling apart, about drug induced children who have killed their parents immediately sets alarms for any parents or family to take a cue from whatever led to the catastrophe. The loss of family values in the African continent has led to the rise in dysfunctional families. They have been battling this for a long time abroad and heaven help us so we do not get to their level where one needs to call his sister before one visits and it is easy to be thrown out by a cousin if you overstay your visit. Modernity, western values is slowly wiping out communal living. For a classic tale of dysfunctional families, read Terry McMillan’s A day late and a dollar short.
3) Family values: The ethics of  parent-child relationships-This book written by Harry Brighouse and Adam Smith provides a major new theoretical account of the morality and politics of the family, telling us why the family is valuable, who has the right to parenthood and what rights parents should and should not have over their children. Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift argue that parent-child relationships produce the “familial relationship goods” that people need to flourish. Children’s healthy development depends on intimate relationships with authoritative adults, while the distinctive joys and challenges of parenting are part of a fulfilling life for adults. Yet the relationships that make these goods possible have little to do with biology, and do not require the extensive rights that parents currently enjoy. Challenging some of our most commonly held beliefs about the family, Brighouse and Swift explain why a child’s interest in autonomy severely limits parents’ right to shape their children’s values, and why parents have no fundamental right to confer wealth or advantage on their children. Family Values reaffirms the vital importance of the family as a social institution while challenging its role in the reproduction of social inequality and carefully balancing the interests of parents and children.

4) Any biography or autobiography by a Nigerian or even an African brings to the fore, the nuclear family setting in the African society where a child is brought up by his grandmother or by an aunt or by a cousin. My late mother, the lovely Mrs. Josephine Amodu was sent off to live in a completely different state away from her family with a family friend because it was felt that as an only child of her mother in a polygamous home, she was bound to be spoilt. What is considered punishment today by the younger generation was considered training by the older generation. And what my mother benefitted from that experience made her one of the hardest working women I know-waking up at dawn everyday of her life and multitasking permanently without a complaint was part of the legacy of that experience. She told adventurous stories with relish of her experience in this other state away from her parents and continued to send gifts to her mentor over the years. There is so much to learn from biographies of Africans particularly Nigerians. You do not know a man’s success, challenge, until you know his family history and his story.

5) Chicken soup for the Christian family soul: Stories to open the heart and rekindle the spirit- Like the original Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, this second volume celebrates wholesome, traditional values and principles. Themes of forgiveness, faith, hope, charity and love will lift readers’ spirits and warm their hearts. The stories in this collection will deepen readers’ faith and expand their awareness of how to practice Christian values in their daily lives–at home, at work and in the community. This book will remind readers of the miracles they can discover when they welcome Christ into their everyday lives. Powerful stories will deepen readers’ compassion for others, inspire them to greater acts of charity, lead them to forgive others and themselves, encourage them to stand up for what they believe in, and, most of all, remind them that they are never alone or without hope–no matter how challenging and painful their circumstances may seem. Today’s family is under attack by all manner of things-finance, how to earn to sustain the family, which has meant that most parents are out of the home most of the time and the children are left to the devices of  maids and helps. All families must take a new and critical look at how they have been bringing up their children and all children must take a critical look at how they have been treating their parents. An understanding and rejigging of these processes will improve family relationships. Do you listen to your children or do you just hear them? Are you rude to your parents or are you patient with them?

Bonus books
 –Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe introduces the various aspects of any civilisation-an economy, family, a system of justice, language, socio-cultural relations, foreign relations, warfare, sports etc. He also introduces the many values of traditional and modern African society: honesty, self-determination, hard work and humility.
-Ake: The years of childhood a memoir by Wole Soyinka on his childhood before and during World War II in a Yoruba village in western Nigeria called Ake. It paints the picture of Wole Soyinka’s family.