By Tahna Weston
There continue to be concerned calls for parents to play a more critical role in the lives of their children, taking into account the unruly and sometimes violent tendencies of young people in Antigua and Barbuda.
The most recent calls come from MP Richard Lewis, who said that parents have a key responsibility in the nurturing, guiding, protecting and development of their children in order to ensure that they follow the right path.
However many parents, some say, appear to have abdicated their responsibility and MP Lewis has expressed the opinion that the family structure needs to be fixed.
“We need to fix the family. Socialisation begins in the home; that’s where it starts. And if there is a breakdown in the home, if there is a breakdown in the family structure, then we have a serious problem,” Lewis said.
He is commending those parents who instil discipline and values in their children and lead them down the right path.
He said also, as a result of parents such as these, there are a number of children who are walking the straight and narrow and should be applauded and encouraged to continue along that path.
The St John’s Rural West MP noted that those young people who are not living up to their responsibilities should also be encouraged to do the right thing.
Lewis said that too many children are left unattended, especially during mornings when parents often leave them home to go to work. Even after school ends for the day, many young people return home and are unsupervised because parents are still at work, he said.
He made mention of single parent households, which many have expressed is a root cause of miscreant behaviour in youths.
“There is a situation where we have too many single parent families. When I was growing up we had a lot of single parent families, but we had the extended family – we had the grandmother, the grandfather, we had the village that raised the child.
“Today it’s a different story. Many folks, they don’t even know who their neighbours are. They don’t know, and so we have a situation where we have to ask the parents to step up to the plate,” Lewis said.
He continued, “Some single parents are going to need a little assistance with their situation, and as a father I have to call on all of us…to ensure that you do your part in guiding your children along the right path so we can deal with this youth violence, this crime among young people and instances where they are wreaking havoc on our society,” he said.
The MP said that when children do not feel loved and are searching for something they tend to go where they can find it, which they believe is found among their peers and within gangs.
Director of Education Clare Browne, his deputy Jonah Greene, and Prime Minister Gaston Browne have all weighed in with regards to the responsibility of parents in the proper rearing of their children.
