WE really need to stop and pay attention when raising children. First, we must understand that they will not be copies of ‘us’, their parents, whether good or bad. There are cases where bad parents will bring into this world children or a child that will walk away from the family culture of bad values while seemingly good parents will produce shocking opposites. Either way, it isn’t love, or the absence of material abundance, that some misconstrue as love- alone that is responsible for what our children will become in the interim between young adult and maturity when the world intrudes and friends and other characters usurp parents. But yes, there are things that we do, that contribute to setting the stage for permanent damage through a custom of practiced philosophy.

The world in 2018 has fallen on Guyana whether we are ready or not, so systems must evolve to enable change from the grassroots level to reach the nation’s next middle-class cadre. Because regardless of those who have forgotten, about 100 years ago, there wasn’t too much of social class, it was social engineering that instituted the colonial dividing line. Eliminating pretentions through rational fact-finding is crucial today. I do have an idea of the creed of family ethics derived from social and religious structure inherited and learned in the Guyana context among both the matriarchal and patriarchal humanity that comprise our nation and in both groups, the consequences of the delinquent mother or father does summon the custom of the surrogate adult-child.

The following falls upon the male and with so-called ‘can’t help situations’- if the eldest is female, she too is in-line. I have witnessed this in my family and with people I know. The eldest boy or boys are taken out of school to become contributors to the family income. He, like most children, is thrilled by the challenge of becoming a big boy, so he doesn’t view his obstructed education as a problem and he is assured by his mom that ‘boys can always find something to do’. The job he ventures into is mainly labour intensive, at that time he’s about 14 to 15 years old, handling some of his earnings is good enough, until he finds a young woman about three years later, from a not much different background. She will most likely challenge mom’s authority on his income, by 24, his income is adequate and he is ready to try anything to feed his own three children.
Here, the reader can summarise his options in any direction, semi-literate and without a skill, but smart anyhow. His guardian angel should have been the school inspector. They existed once, and his legal interception would have steered the young man to industrial training or to remain in school.

On the other side of the coin, the young woman would have been told that ‘Woman don’t fall’. I know a young lady who attended Saint John’s nursing facility in Eve Leary. She was on her way to a career in nursing. A suitor came along, wooing her and had mom’s support as well. He bought a living room suite as a present for the home. The mother urged the young lady to the arms of this nice man with ‘cheese’; not too concerned with where the cheese (money) came from, who could look after her (or ‘we’ according to mom). She aborted her career dream, mothered a lively group of kids. Then she later separated from the ‘nice’ man, took a chance as a ‘Narco’ mule, ended up in a foreign prison and life goes on.

But society has lost a ‘mind’ that would have become an excellent nurse. With males rest the added burden of his ancient responsibility as the warrior, hunter and natural member of the council of leadership. To him, tears are a weakness. He should not plead, beg or grovel and he must conquer. Rise above pain- both physical and emotional – and ‘be a man’ and defender of his female kin.

So he hides himself in alcohol, drugs and buries the fears of his limitations in the pursuit of counterproductive conquests like alternative relationships that add demands and take a physical toll on his body. He is now torn mentally and emotionally between commitments to those that were and still are and the new placebo of the ego. I have paid attention to death announcements of males in their early 50s. In many cases, they fathered nine and ten accounted offspring (real and alleged)- a tribe in our age that would take a blue collar worker three lifetimes to educate.

I had a ‘grow mate’ (childhood friend) who passed in 2016. He was taken out of school very early and placed in the strata of supported income for his younger brothers and sisters. He and I branched off as teenagers into the state organised Youth Development Corps and eventually, he diverted into the political stream as a security-man/bodyguard. He told me that he had fathered 27 children, to which his connection actually existed with only about five. But strange about his dilemma was the emphasis he placed on clothes and relationships with younger women. Does the privation of naturally evolving through the youthful experience damage men to the point that we try to recapture past worlds? It would seem so to me from practical observation.

That the male dilemma is real rests with the evidence that reaches no national debate. More males are sleeping on the streets; are homeless and unemployed; are in prison; are drug addicts; are security guards; are not in the public service; are not mentioned in the slogans about empowerment; are collective targets of pseudo interest groups. The male primordial culture lacks insufficient attention as it combats the customs of modern society and the opportunistic creeds that they are fitted into from juveniles.