Marriage is the oldest sacrament in the world where a man and woman are joined together by law, tradition and/or religion to become husband and wife. Different people go into this union for different purposes. For many, time is running out and they need to settle down with the first available marriage-ready person. It is a comfort zone to get over disappointments and undue pressure from family and friends. And some people marry for the sake of companionship through to old age.
A major reason for which most people marry is in order to procreate and have a lineage. Children are seen to be the sustaining power for many marriages. They are seen to be the reason why many individuals decided to come together to become a family. They are also the basis for continued relations between estranged parents. Talking about a marriage which should ideally be the environment that brings forth a child, it is not uncommon to hear a parent make statements like: “But for the children, I would have walked out of this marriage; or, but for the fact that there is a child between us, there would have been no need to continue in this relationship.”
The question which has pondered many hearts is: since children play such significant roles in marriages and other relationships which begat them, should they therefore be the primary focuses or the most important elements of the relationship? What happens in cases where there are no children or with older couples whose children are grown and out on their own? What happens to the union from where they came?
“Theologically,” said Reverend Fr. Patrick Alumuku, a catholic priest, “the basic reason for a marriage is not the company or the union between husband and wife, it is for procreation. God created man and woman and asked them to go out and multiply.
“Not every marriage brings children. For some reason, some women are unable to conceive and have kids. In Africa particularly, that becomes an issue, and more often than not, she takes the blame whether it is true or not. More recently, you have young men who insist that the woman must be pregnant before any marriage can take place. Some men discover they can’t have children and send their wives out to get the children.
“Children are important in a union, but the relationship which produced that child or children is also important. It should be such a loving and caring one, so that even without children, the couple should be able to live happily and joyfully together. If the rapport between couples is sour, they will not be able to sustain the children,” he said.
Mr. Abraham Anyebe insists that his children are more important. “My wife is important, but the children are more important. When my marriage was in crisis, they were my consolation and the reason I didn’t file for divorce. I owe the success of my marriage to them, because they continuously spoke to and encouraged me. If the marriage didn’t have children, it would have been history already.
“It is only now we are making an effort towards the most important part of our marriage. When we started having kids, she used to be all over them fretting and worrying and giving them all the attention. I know that the only reason it did is because we maintained good friendship all the way. It will be a herculean task to achieve for a couple who have no friendship base.
“Looking at African homes, it is clear that the father is first, then the children before the mother in terms of importance. So automatically, the child is the most important. As a wife, the children come first and then the husband. When they are grown and out of the house, the husband becomes priority in a case where you have a good rapport. Otherwise, you invest your energy in other things,” Anyebe said.
The ideal situation is for the man and woman to enhance their marriage and enjoy it as they raise their kids, not put it on hold for the sake of the children and resume when they find themselves home alone. Without knowing it, they would have built a wide gap between each other that they would not have realised that for the better part of their marriage, everything revolved around their kids. Now that the kids are no longer living with them, there is no basis to relate.
Children come into a home and leave the parents who started it to go on with it. If you haven’t made an effort to build up your relationship and had focused all your energy on the kids, what would become of you when they go off to boarding house and university?
Pastoral counsellor and author of ‘Should Parents Put Their Marriage Before Their Kids?’, David Code, sums it up. “Child-centred families create anxious, exhausted parents and demanding, entitled kids who act out. In my pastoral counselling as an Episcopal minister, I see many troubled children from families in which the parents believe their marriage is strong because they seldom argue.
“But in reality, their relations are characterised by distance: The husband may work long hours or perhaps he goes out with friends three or four nights a week. It’s almost as if he’s checked out of the marriage. The wife often fills this void by focusing her emotional energy on her children, typically on one child in particular. Mum and this child may become best friends or else Mum constantly worries about the child. Either way, it’s trouble,” he said.
When a child becomes the central focus of the family, it interferes with the natural weaning process essential to the child’s healthy development. Most parents would never dream that putting their children before their marriage could be wrong. They believe they just don’t have the time for their spouse. But the truth is they often feel more love for their kids than for their spouse. Parents convince themselves that putting their kids first is child-friendly, but in doing so, they make two mistakes.
First, when a child is the centre of the family, it becomes harder for parents to establish and enforce the boundaries the child needs to shape his character. So he simply badgers his parents until he gets his way. Future bosses and spouses, however, will not be as patient with this behaviour.
Second, the children face tremendous pressure to fulfil the parents’ emotional needs, which may lead the kids to act out. What had been a molehill then quickly becomes a mountain, as the anxious parents seek a diagnosis from physicians who are increasingly likely to medicate the children. These steps can cripple a child’s development and, when played out in families nationwide, they threaten the future of our citizenry.
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