IT WAS not so long ago that elders in general were respected in the Guyanese society, with village heads being more patriarchal.

Within the constructs of families or communities the words of the elders once carried weight and the very high standards they set prevailed. Today, however, the elders in many families are sidelined and discarded like so many old shoes and apparel that have outworn their use.

The extended family once hallmarked life in Guyana and grandparents’ care was considered the best in the world.

But this is the age of daycare, where professional child minders are preferred to old grandparents who fuss too much and whose advice no longer seems logical but are treated as an affront by modern day parents, whose thinking has advanced way beyond the parents who brought them up.

To the modern parents, a trained child-minder with responsibility for a roomful of dozens of infants and toddlers is preferable to doting grandparents who would enclose a child with protective, even doting love and provide individual attention to its nutrition and general care.

The elderly in society are seen as discardable and their little idiosyncracies driven by their old world standards are considered irritants not worthy of tolerance.

The ocean of all-encompassing love of grandparents for their grandchildren and the absolute trust of a child in its loving and tolerant grandparents is a phenomenon that could only add to a child’s sense of security and build memories of emotional warmth that could last a lifetime, and many persons recall days spent and experiences shared with their grandparents as uniquely special and beautifully-memorable episodes in their lives.

Yet some ungrateful parents encourage their children to shun and be disrespectful to their grandparents, which is a loss of immense proportions to both child and grandparents, because both can offer each other so much emotional and other security through a priceless bonding unique only to grandparents and grandchildren.

Society is in decline because the elders are being cast by the wayside, when they should be accorded the highest honour and respect.

The new moral and ethical codes of society have been restructured by a generation that has no use for the wisdom and love of their elders and the traditional constructs within families and communities no longer prevails over the mores of present-day practical considerations, which are the determinants that guide society’s morals and behaviorial patterns.

October has been designated “Month for the Elderly”, but unless and until society restores the elderly to their traditional patriarchal and matriarchal positions within the constructs of families and communities, the nation’s moral fibre will continue to retrogress, even though it may acquire an overabundance of material wealth.