By Douglas Anele

Obviously, in spite of the  social system in a given country, particularly in advanced societies with welfare programmes for taking care of infants, parents are duty-bound to provide for their children until the latter can live on their own; likewise children are expected to help their parents and look after them in old age.

Thorough investigation of the nature of family relationships throws up certain important questions. These include: Are obligations to children more important than other family obligations? Is blood relation stronger than a relation acquired through marriage? Whatever their origin, do family obligations supersede obligations to friends, neighbours, and other citizens? On what ground(s) may friends, neighbours and the state violate family privacy? What is the connection between love and loyalty, on one hand, and family feeling and moral ties, on the other? Finally, is the traditional heterosexual family morally superior, and hence preferable, to families formed by single, remarried or homoerotic parents, or with the help of gamete donors or gestational (maternal) surrogates?

The complexity and incredible diversity of family life indicates that none of these questions has an easy, straightforward answer. Scholars that approach some of these issues from a metaphysical cum religious point of view, such as the Neo-Thomists, posit either the overarching commands of a deity as the foundation of familyhood. For others, it is the biological attributes such as physical resemblance, blood or genes that have preeminence. Marxists give primacy to economic factors like family property, inheritance, income, and division of work and resources.

A political approach to the problem typically attends to the power relations within the family, together with their regulation by the state, whilst a psychological approach considers affection, identification, intimacy and emotional needs as morally decisive. Even, there is a narrative approach which stresses the role of remembering and revision of family stories as the cornerstone of moral education and definition of family ties.

These perspectives are not incompatible, but they tend to favour different moral theories. For instance, the economic, political and psychological perspectives complement one another and may blend well with consequentialist ethical theory, whereas there is nothing that prevents an exponent of the religious approach from accepting the narrative approach both of which are compatible with different versions of deontological moral theories.

It is generally accepted that the family constitutes the first socialising unit for a human being. Similarly, after the emergence of psychoanalysis as a respectable school of thought in psychology, the importance of family in the character formation of a person cannot be overestimated, given the recognition that early childhood experiences provide the foundation upon which character is built.

This means that the kind of family in which a child is brought up goes a long way in determining the kind of adult that child would become later in life. Thus, it is very important that parents should have the right balance of good health, knowledge, moral and spiritual insight to rear their children. Any dysfunctional family, a family in which there is constant vitriolic quarrels among the parents, one in which the atmosphere of peace and love is lacking, whether polygamous or monogamous, is not good for children.

This is because children exposed to such situation will be adversely affected by the polluted psychological atmosphere in the home. Because children naturally and spontaneously absorb important cognitive, psychological and spiritual cues from their parents, they are likely to assimilate patterns of behaviour exhibited by the latter. In a home where the parents are at peace with each other and have the requisite knowledge about how to inculcate the right thought-habits and moral values into their children, the probability that the latter will grow up and become responsible citizens of the community is high.

In conservative homes, some parents still use corporal punishment in training their children. However, it has been shown by experts in childhood education and psychology that excessive use of that method is counter-productive and could harm the child physically, mentally and emotionally. Children brought up in a highly restrictive and rigid environment tend to become either excessively rebellious ortimid and hypocritical adults lacking in self-confidence and critical attitude.

This is particularly true in a hyper-religious family where both parents are devout believers convinced that strict adherence to the authoritarian morality contained in either the Holy Bible or the Holy Koran, rather than acceptance of a rational moral code based on scientific knowledge of the human condition and love, is the best way to bring up a child.That excessive use of the rod associated with authoritarian upbringing hardly produces the kind of children parents would be proud of does not imply that discipline is not necessary in the upbringing of children.

It is generally acknowledged that children, left to themselves, will not cultivate the habits required for a happy and fulfilled life.  As a result, some degree of discipline must be inculcated in the young so that they would grow to become responsible citizens. The habits and mode of life a child imbibed, and continues to imbibe, from the family are consolidated, complemented, and modified by education, both formal and informal, which constitutes an important component in the total personality and character structure of the child.

Still the family is fundamental, because it provides the substructure on which further learning is based. That is why children from families where the appropriate physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual environments for the unfolding of their latent productive powers are absent usually do not do well in school.