FAMILY COUNSELLING AND THERAPEUTICS FOR A
LASTING GLOBAL PEACE FOR ALL FAMILY UNITS
by
Dr Jideofo Kenechukwu Danmbaezue, D.Sc.
Mrs. Alice Nwakego Chineme Mbaezue, Ph. D.
Sri Andrew Okoliwkwu Awuka Okeukwu, KSJ
PSYCHOMETRIC
FAMILY
COUNSELLING
A Kenezian Approach
A TRIANGULAR
PERSPECTIVE FROM THREE FAMILY HEADS AND SEASONED GRANDPARENTS BELONGING TO A
WELL-KNOWN
GENERATION OF IGBOLAND
· Dr Jideofo Kenechukwu Danmbaezue
· Mrs.
Alice Nwakego Chineme Mbaezue
· Sir
Andrew Okoliukwu Okeukwu
Published and printed in 2007 by
Mbeyi & Associates (Nig.) Ltd
Okota, Isolo, Lagos
Tel: 01-7749829, 08033316235
E-mail: mbeyi_associate@yahoo.com
ISBN:
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this
work may be reproduced or transmitted, in
any form or by
any means; electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or
stored in any retrieval system of any nature,
without the
written permission of the author.
©
DANMBAEZUE J. K.,MBAEZUE A.N.C.,OKEUKWU A.
O.
2007
DEDICATION
To all lovers whose hearts had
been broken before,
All religious leaders, whose
pastoral careers had been dented,
And all prospective bachelors and
spinsters of this global village.
PSYCHOMETRIC FAMILY COUNSELLING
Is an original research work done by
HAPPY FAMILY NETWORK INTERNATIONAL
THE FAMILY WELFARE DIVISION OF
KENEZ INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN
ORGANISATION LINKAGE
An inter-ethnic NGO for creating good neighbourhood parenting
units in urban cities for the development of healthy, successful and happy
families in all countries of the world.
Contact:
Dr Jideofo
Kenechukwu Danmbaezue
Danis Family
Villa, Umuelechi, Umuezeawala,
P. O. Box 139
IHIALA, BIAFURU
AMAMIFE ND’IGBO NIME R.O.B
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The Holy Spirit of the Almighty Creator wrote this book using us
only as chosen instruments to edify the marriage institution. The procreative
activity we engage in was designed by Him and we are eternally grateful that
humans are permitted to participate in His awesome machinery of replenishing
the earth.
The authors appreciate the contributions of all our counselees in
the past decade. These were mainly engaged couples who were attending the three
months mandatory marriage course organised by the Catholic Church. Others who
came from Protestant, Islamic and Pentecostal backgrounds were couples referred
to our clinic by professional colleagues who knew of our expertise in family therapy. Married couples who had their marital
problems resolved by heeding the marital counselling or the family therapy of
the authors constitute the raison d’etre of this book. Without resolving their
crises successfully, we could not have decided to write this large prophylactic
book. Prevention is better than cure. This is what the book is all about:
teaching new entrants and old practitioners of family life that knowledge
prevents conflicts!
We want to thank all the Bishops, Imams and Overseers whose parishes
were visited weekly or monthly since 1990 to date and whose parishioners were
used as the experimental subjects for producing this book. They encouraged us
at the initial stages of writing simple pre-marital counselling booklets for
adolescents. In like manner, all the prelates in the English speaking dioceses
of West
Africa , (AECAWA) deserve special thanks for taking the
psychological tests across Nigerian borders. Our course co-ordinators and
liaison officers take the greatest credit for reaching out to all those who
needed the family counselling or therapeutic services of our team. They were
the ones who actually distributed, administered and retrieved the psychological
tests, which formed the base of all therapeutic interventions.
If we made a list of names of all those that contributed to the
success of this book, it would take more than ten pages and we will surely omit
some dear ones who may feel marginalised. We do not want that to happen. We
know and appreciate all of you. All members of Mbeyi & Associates (Nig.)
Ltd merit our sincere gratitude for printing this excellent book in record
time. We also thank our wives and children who had been very supportive. We
have read and re-read the whole book twenty times. We apologise for any typographical
errors anyone might still find in it. It
only proves that we are still only mortal beings with human frailties.
Therefore, we pray that the Founding Architect/Engineer of the marriage
institution, the ALMIGHTY GOD, the Creator of us all, will always bless us all
and equally prosper the work of our hands and provide divine guidance and
protection for our spouses and children. We wish all our readers happy
anniversaries of their wedlock.
***N/B: Due to lack of statistics on families in Nigeria Africa as a
whole, we were forced to rely heavily on examples/statistics we downloaded from
Encyclopaedias and the Internet. We thank all our oversea collaborating
authors whom we quoted as resource persons. We hope you appreciate our labours.
We wish you all happy reading!
FOREWORD
I was a co-founder of the Department of Psychology, University of Lagos England Nigeria University College Hospital Ibadan
Jude Kenechukwu Mbaezue was his full name, if my spelling is still
correct. He made an indelible mark on my mind, for he was not only precocious
and far ahead of his peers in academics, but he was equally an unorthodox
divergent thinker that challenged every new theory thrust upon him. Initially
he irritated me in class. Later, by his third year I admired and respected him
when I saw the benefits I gained from his stubborn stance of ‘not swallowing
every novel concept churned out by neo-colonial psychologists,’ as he called
them. He never stopped amazing me with insightful questions. However, when I
learnt he was the only direct-entry student with a Second Class Honours degree
in Classical Philosophy, the mystery was resolved. As a committed social
psychologist, I perceived he was going to turn into a pragmatic research fellow
in the future.
I returned to Britain Great Britain
I agree totally with the analyses the authors proffer on the
immediate and remote causes of infidelity in marriage that eventually lead to
unfaithfulness, adultery and divorce;
In today’s world, adolescents rarely know what marriage is all
about before venturing into it. Unprepared and inexperienced, they dabble in
and out as often as the laws allow them to! To stem the tide, parents, pastors
and counsellors need to re-educate the youth if we hope to reverse the trend of
increases in divorce rate globally. What then, are the remote and immediate
causes of divorces? They are: social
prejudices inculcated in the child through wrong child-rearing customs;
emotional immaturity caused by incomplete resolution of the developmental tasks
of adolescence; warped attitudes or negative perceptions picked from print and
electronic media; and finally, myopic expectations from the marriage
institution that eventually lead to infidelity or adultery.
Whoever reads, studies, digests, understands and assimilates what
is contained herein, may confidently regard him/herself as a professional
marriage or family counsellor. I must, however, quickly add that to become a
family therapist requires earning at least a Master’s degree in that special
field of medical knowledge called: clinical psychology. The effective use of a
variety of therapeutic methods with his psychological tests as described in the
manuals: demands competency in non-parametric statistics. This involves
accurate procedures regarding their administration, scoring, evaluation,
analysis and application in existential/client-centred therapeutics dealing
with individuals or groups.
I recommend the three-part textbook to any institution: religious,
government or non-governmental organisation that desires to train out a
preventive workforce that can reverse the current trend of divorce worldwide.
This is the ultimate objective of the three authors.
The Kenez I knew had the knack of influencing others to become
involved in prophylactic programmes. He had always had the skill of easily
transferring his knowledge to any enthusiastic friend. I am certain that was
how fifty couples became freelance family counsellors within ten years under
his tutelage. One, therefore, wonders how only two earned his admiration and
subsequently merited being chosen as co-authors with this brilliant research
fellow, a committed revolutionary and a radical psychologist. Anyone who knows
Sir Kenez well knows that he is a perfectionist and it is very hard to meet his
standards or satisfy his ideals.
I will advise childless couples to start reading the book from the
last page to peruse Appendix B entitled: INFERTILITY IN HUMANS,
PROPHYLAXIS AND THERAPEUTICS.
Inspect the entire book and choose where you need help most.
Prospective partners and newly married couples can read from page one till they
get to the end over a five-year period.
Encourage your lovely kids to seek and consult family counsellors
to benefit from pre-marital counselling before settling down to a happy married
life.
Prof.
R. P. Bundy,
Emeritus
Professor of Social Psychology,
Email: robby_jennybundy@yahoo.co.uk
PREFACE
This is a condensation of twenty-five years of practice in
existential family counselling engaged by the authors. It started in 1970 and the research
findings you are about to peruse are the same all over the globe.
Many parents are ill-prepared to groom their offspring on the
roles and duties of responsible parenthood. They were not tutored on how best
to rear the fruits of love-making. Therefore, they rear another generation of
ill-equipped fathers and mothers. Whereas reproductive skills are innate in
Homo sapiens, proper attitudes towards the basics of family engineering are
not. One does not go to
school to study how to fall in and out of love. One does not learn how to
copulate. However, one must
imbibe the right perceptions of the objectives of family institution to ensure
a healthy, successful and happy married life! These facts bring to our
consciousness the remote causes of the high rates of divorces and separations
globally.
In today’s world, adolescents rarely know what marriage is all
about before venturing into it. Unprepared and inexperienced, they dabble in
and out as often as the laws allow them to! To stem the tide, parents, pastors
and counsellors need to educate the youth if we hope to reverse the trend of
increases in divorce rate globally. What then, are the remote and immediate
causes of divorces?
They are: social
prejudices inculcated in the child through wrong child-rearing customs;
emotional immaturity caused by incomplete resolution of the developmental tasks
of adolescence;, warped attitudes or negative perceptions picked from print
and electronic media; and finally, myopic expectations from the marriage
institution that eventually lead to infidelity or adultery.
It is the ardent wish of this existential therapist and his team
of concerned para-counsellors, that have assisted him over a quarter of a
century, that all parents make the reading, studying and assimilation of the
contents of this textbook on pre-marital counselling compulsory for their
children if they really want their precious kids to live better lives than they
did. For engaged couples, this is a must-read! It will consolidate their
wedlock if they can practise what they learn. This is their undergraduate
curriculum: their lecture series on the theory and practice of responsible
parenthood.
Three booklets that are fore-runners to this comprehensive one
are:
1. AM I QUALIFIED FOR MARRIAGE?
2. FAMILY COUNSELLING, A
Psychometric Approach and
3. AM I PREPARED FOR RESPONSIBLE
PARENTHOOD?
This innovative and timely textbook will make the training of
family counsellors simpler for tertiary institutions that already have school
guidance counselling programmes. For religious leaders who are concerned that
many weddings they officiated at crumble in less than six months after, now
have this enriched self-tutorial handbook they can use to train pastoral
counsellors in their various congregations.
This work, which took twenty five years to assemble, is actually
three books in one. The common denominator in the three sections is that the
entire textbook, in a cyclic manoeuvre treats “The Theory and Practice of …
· MARRIAGE / FAMILY COUNSELLING
· EXISTENTIAL FAMILY THERAPY and
· PSYCHOMETRIC SKILLS IN FAMILY
COUNSELLING
This is done in such an inter-related manner that a good student,
who assimilates all, ends up becoming an eclectic counsellor, as well as a
competent therapist on graduation.
Part I covers the biological,
physiological and other scientific grounds on which the professional training
of marriage and family counsellors is built.
Part II introduces the
non-philosopher, theologian or psychologist to the building blocks on which
existential therapy is constructed, as well as emphasizing the need for
eclecticism.
Part III wraps up the entire
comprehensive textbook with the use of current psychometric tools that a
skilled modern counsellor or therapist can use instead of merely doing
guesswork or religious preaching.
This is definitely a scientific practitioner’s manual for
effectiveness and efficiency in injecting family health, social success and
optimum happiness into all families. Essentially therefore, what our objective
has been all this while is to elevate FAMILY COUNSELLORS AND FAMILY THERAPISTS
to the scientific era of standing shoulder high in any health institution as
professionals. However, this elevation can only be realistic if one
internalises what is graphically deposited herein.
Like I had noted in FAMILY
COUNSELLING - A Psychometric Approach, printed by Mbeyi & Associates
(Nig.) Ltd, Okota, Lagos that preceded this comprehensive one; “Family Counselling in Nigeria is
new, when viewed as a professional job involving the formal face-to-face
consultations between a counselee and a competent marital counsellor.” See p. x (1995).
My people say that one does not ask an adult to step out of the
scorching heat of the sun! And ‘the words of our elders are words of wisdom’. Sir A. O. Okeukwu recaptured the ideal
African concept of a family in his introductory expose. Enjoy it. Good luck!
Dr Jideofo
Kenechukwu Danmbaezue,
Professor of
Psychometrics,
saintkenez@yahoo.co.uk
PART
I
THE
THEORETICAL BASE FOR PROFESSIONAL PRACTITIONERS OF FAMILY COUNSELLING
*AM I
PREPARED FOR
RESPONSIBLE
PARENTHOOD?
The
Role and Duties of Parenting
*This
was what the back cover of one of the earlier publications looked like.
IN BIAFRA ,
TRADITIONAL WEDDINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN IMPORTED RELIGIOUS SOCIETY
WEDDINGS AS IS SHOWN BELOW
CHAPTER ONE
MARITAL CUSTOMS AND LAWS IN IGBO LAND
Sir
Andrew Okoliukwu Okeukwu, KSJ
A form of marriage has been found
to exist in all human societies, past and present. Its importance can be seen
in the elaborate rituals and complex laws that surround it. Although these laws
and rituals are as varied and numerous as human cultural organizations are,
there are some universals that do apply in each society. The legal function of
marriage is to ensure the sexual rights of the partners with respect to each
other and to define the relationships of children within a community. Marriage
has historically conferred a legitimate status on an offspring. It entitles him
or her to the various privileges set down by the traditions of a particular
community, which includes the rights of legitimate participation in the
activities of the kindred, ownership and inheritance of properties and
privileges accruing to the family lineage. In most societies, marriage
establishes the permissible social relations allowed to bona fide members,
including the acceptable selection of future spouses. Until the late 20th
Century, marriage was rarely a matter of free choice. In Western societies,
romantic love between spouses came to be associated with marriage, but in most
other developing nations of the world, this was not the primary motive for the
choice of spouses in matrimony. One's marriage partner was carefully chosen. In
Igbo land for example, many norms and mores determine the legality of each
marriage!
Endogamy, the practice of
marrying someone from within one's own ethnic group is the oldest social
regulation of marriage. When the forms of communication with outside groups are
limited, endogamous marriage is a natural consequence. Cultural pressures to
marry within one's social, economic, and ethnic group are still very strongly
enforced in some societies in Nigeria
Exogamy, the practice of
marrying outside the group, is found in societies in which kinship relations
are the most complex, thus barring from marriage, large groups who may trace
their lineage to a common ancestor. Once there is any blood relationship, the
engagement is cancelled. This is where the Igbo surpasses other ethnic groups
in enforcing pre-marital genetical counselling.
In our traditional societies in
which the African extended family system remains the basic unit, marriages are
usually arranged by elders in each concerned family unit. The assumption is
that love between the partners comes after marriage and more thought is given
to the socioeconomic advantages accruing to the larger family from the marriage
than romantic love. By contrast, in modern societies that have accepted western
lifestyles where Christianity and nuclear family predominates, educated young
adults now opt to choose their own mates. It is assumed that love determines
proper marriage, and less thought is normally given to the socioeconomic
aspects of the match. However, this has increased divorce rates due to
misconceptions of the traditional values attached to the pre-literate marriage
customs that ensured the longevity of marriages.
What is a family
in Igbo land?
The answer is simple.
“Ezi-na-ulo”, is what the Igbo call it. Literally, it simply means “members of
a compound and a house”. Therefore, a family comprises those members who share
their lives together within a household located in a compound. Naturally,
there is a father plus a mother of the home and a compound in which they live
in and happily interact. The father is the king of his domain. He has married a
wife or wives and has subsequently produced children. He takes responsibility
for all their needs:
· Shelter, Food
and Clothing
· Hospital Bills
and School Fees
· Defence and
Transport
· Loans and
Investment
In short, our people are right by
calling him “DIBIA-ULO” - the doctor who diagnoses and treats all the problems
in his house. To be a ‘dibia’- implies a protracted training as apprentice,
internship and housemanship before freedom to start one’s own medical practice.
So it is implied that a teenager or an adolescent who has not endured the long
tutelage under his father can never be a good dibia-ulo.
Another saying of our people brings out the real job of a husband: “Okokporo anaghi ama mgbe ogara na
ama ogo ya” (a bachelor
hardly knows when he has passed the road that leads to the homestead of his
father-in-law). What I think this implies is the need for keen observation of
the local norms and mores of the community, the absence of which translates
into an irresponsible husband that is not good as future son-in-law.
To be a dibia-ulo therefore:
· One must have a
compound he calls his own before contemplating marriage.
· The bachelor
must make his own nest as a fowl does when it is preparing to lay eggs.
· A prospective
husband must not only have a place to call his “ezi” but must also build a homestead,
“ulo,” where he hopes to pack in with his future bride and begin to produce
babies. So he must be self-reliant, independent and buoyant enough to settle
all the hospital bills surrounding pregnancy and child birth.
· It is only
then that he is qualified to seek a bride. But today, what do we find; sons
still living under the roof of their parents marrying. It is a shame. Some even
impregnate a girl and run home to beg daddy to foot the bills for formal
engagement and marriage rites.
In summary: A Family in a
traditional Igbo setting comprises;
A. A responsible man that
builds a home,
B. At least a man and a
woman with their children,
C. The wife or wives are
dependent on him,
D. He is the mechanic, the
plumber and doctor of the family,
E. He shoulders the good,
the bad and the ugly in his home,
F. His failure to take good
care of the wife spells divorce and a broken home.
In societies with arranged
marriages, the universal custom is that someone acts as an intermediary or matchmaker. This is very true in Igbo
communities, whereby the intermediary's chief responsibility is to arrange a
marriage that will be satisfactory to the two families represented. Some form
of dowry or bride price is almost always exchanged in
societies that favour such arranged marriages. This is more like an insurance
policy that preserves the life of the marriage when problems arise! On the
other hand, among the educated class, especially those that want to exhibit
their acquired western education, youths are allowed to choose their own mates.
Dating is permitted so that spouses-to-be meet and become acquainted with their
prospective marriage partners and members of their families. Successful dating
may result in courtship that usually leads to formal traditional marriage rites
and religious weddings.
In Igbo land, marriage is a
village affair or in the least, a kindred affair, whereby it is not only the
bridegroom that is the husband of the new bride but all his kinsmen and women.
The woman is called: ‘our
wife’ by the people.
Therefore to marry in our culture entails pre-marital investigations or
research into the family backgrounds of both bride and groom. This is the
unique aspect of traditional marriage that benefits the couple. It is the most
advantageous aspect of Igbo wisdom. Whereas Western societies resort to
professional marriage counsellors and family therapists, we have this
pre-marital counselling done for the couple before their formal wedding.
It has so many advantages:
1. It excludes
genetic diseases if properly conducted,
2. It pre-empts
anti-social behavioural traits in the offsprings,
3. It protects most
of the community’s religious taboos,
4. It enforces
traditional norms and mores,
5. It protects the
newly married bride from inordinate jealousies, and finally
6. It publicises
that one is no more a bachelor or a spinster.
In our culture, the first is the
most important parameter for the marriage to get the blessings of parents and
members of the African extended family system. One really wonders how our
ancestors were able to fathom the need for this PRE-MARITAL GENETICAL
COUNSELLING long before the arrival of the first white man on the shores of Africa and prior to the arrival of Western
medicine, psychology, sociology or anthropology and Christianity.
Some of these shall be the focus
of our discussions in this comprehensive textbook on scientific family
counselling. As an existential family therapist of thirty-five years standing
and the father of seven married sons and three daughters, let me share my
varied experiences of counselling them with fellow parents-to-be. We need to go
back to our roots to reduce the current increase in divorce rate and failed
marriages.
CHAPTER TWO
THE
SOCIOLOGY OF FAMILY LIFE
Mrs.
Alice Nwakego Chineme Mbaezue
Introduction
Family as a sociological
construct is the smallest social relationship that identifies those united
through bonds of kinship or marriage. This simplest version of the concept of
‘family’ is represented by the nuclear variation and is present in all
societies, primitive or civilised. Even the sub-human species, our closest
cousins on the evolutionary tree: chimpanzees and gorillas have nuclear
families.
Ideally, a family provides its
members with protection, companionship, socialisation and security. The
structure of the family and the needs that the family fulfils vary from society
to society. The nuclear family—a husband, his wife and their children is the
main unit in some societies. In others, it is a subordinate part of an extended
family, which also consists of grandparents, uncles, brothers and other
relatives. This is the commonest variation in Africa , especially among the Igbo of the South-East of Nigeria
A third family unit variation
that has forced its presence on us is the single-parent family. In this
aberration, men and women who are incapable of maintaining marital
relationships arrange to have children without legal or formal marriage. In
some others, children live with divorcees, a widowed mother or father who caters
for them without the help of the opposite mate. The latest in the country’s
capital is concubinage with children reared by ‘live-in lovers’, without
formalising the co-habitation by either traditional or religious rites of
marriage. In Nigeria Abuja
The Historical
Development of Families
Social scientists, especially
anthropologists, have developed several theories about how family structures
and functions evolved.
· In prehistoric
hunting and gathering societies, two or three nuclear families, usually linked
through bonds of kinship, banded together for part of the year but dispersed
into separate nuclear units in those seasons when food was scarce. The family
was an economic unit: men hunted, while women gathered and prepared food and
tended children. Infanticide and expulsion of the infirm that could not work
were common.
· Some
anthropologists contend that prehistoric people were monogamous, because
monogamy prevails in non-industrial and ethnocentric forms of family
organisation in some contemporary societies to date.
· Social
scientists believe that the modern nuclear family structure developed largely
from that of the ancient Hebrews, whose families were patriarchal in structure,
while later some cultures changed to matriarchal versions due to economic
adversities whereby an impoverished man could not singly fend for nor care for
a pregnant woman. (For details, see Patrilineage and Matrilineage). The family
resulting from the Greco-Roman culture was also patriarchal and bound by strict
religious precepts. In later centuries, as the Greek and then the Roman
civilisations declined, so did their well-ordered family life.
With the advent of Christianity,
marriage and childbearing became the central concerns of moral theologians and
canonists, usually regarded as experts in religious teachings that deal on
family life and the rearing of children. The purely religious nature of family
ties was abandoned in favour of civil bonds after the Reformation, which began
in the 1500s. Most Western nations now recognise the family relationship as
primarily a civil matter.
The Modern
Family
The modern family differs from
pre-western forms in its composition, size, functions and the roles of husbands
and wives. The only aspect of the family that continues to survive all change
is the provision of affection and emotional support by and to all its members,
particularly infants and young children. Specialised institutions now carry out
most of the duties performed by the agrarian family: economic production,
education, religion and recreation. Early education, career prospects and
professional jobs usually separate members of the family. This is because
family members often have to get employment and so work in different
occupations and in locations away from the home.
Primary, secondary and tertiary
education is often provided by the state, by religious organisations or private
groups. Religious training and recreational activities are available outside
the home, although both still have a place in family life. The family is still
responsible for the socialisation of children. Even in this area of family life
orientation, the overwhelming influence of peer groups, current electronics
gadgets and the print media have assumed a larger role than is necessary, most
being diversionary and non-beneficial.
©
Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Marital Status
in U.S.
This chart shows
the percentage of American women and men in various age groups who are married,
divorced, or widowed, or who have never been married. Only a small fraction of
the U.S. Africa .
Microsoft
® Encarta ® Encyclopaedia 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation.
Family Sizes and
Economic Emancipation
Family composition in industrial
societies has changed dramatically. The average number of children born to a
woman in the United States of America Europe , some couples do not want any children at all,
while in Africa and other Third World countries it is a crime not to marry
and have as many children
as God permits a couple, and
this results in very large and unmanageable families. The remote causes of
poverty and economic adversities stem from this primitive and naïve emphasis on
‘having as many children as God allows’
Consequently, the number of years
separating the births of the youngest and oldest children has declined. This
has occurred in conjunction with increased longevity. In earlier times,
marriages normally dissolved
through the death of a spouse before the youngest child left home. Today, husbands and wives potentially
have about as many years together after the children leave home as before. Some
of these developments are related to ongoing changes in women’s roles.
Women in all stages of family
life have joined the labour force. Rising expectations of personal
gratification through marriage and family, together with eased legal grounds
for divorce and increasing employment opportunities for women, have contributed
to a rise in divorce rate worldwide. The frequency of divorce cases is
not peculiar to advanced countries. The increase in broken marriages, single
parenthood and widowhood is now so high that most religious groups cannot cope
with pastoral counselling. In the 20th Century, extended family households
declined in prevalence. This change is associated particularly with increased
residential mobility and with diminished financial responsibility of children
for ageing parents, as pensions from jobs and government-sponsored benefits for
retired people became more common.
The Rise of
One-Parent Families
By the 1970s, the prototypical
nuclear family had yielded somewhat to modified structures including the
one-parent family, the stepfamily and the childless family. One-parent families
in the past were usually the result of the death of a spouse. Now, however,
most one-parent families are the result of divorce, although some are created
when unmarried people bear children. In 1991, more than one out of four
children lived with only one parent. Most one-parent families, however,
eventually became two-parent families through remarriage.
A stepfamily is created by a new
marriage of a single parent. It may consist of:
· A parent and
children and a childless spouse,
· A parent and
children and
· A spouse whose
children live elsewhere, or
· Two who
collaborate to end their one-parent families.
In a stepfamily, problems in
relationship between non-biological parents and children may generate tension: the
difficulties can be especially great in the marriage of single parents when the
children of both parents live with them as siblings.
The Arrival of
Childless Families
For many years, the proportion of
couples that were childless declined steadily as venereal and other diseases
that cause infertility were conquered. In the 1970s, however, the changes in
the status of women reversed this trend. Couples often elect to have no
children or to postpone having them until their careers are well established. Therefore,
the novel preponderance of childless families may be the result of such
deliberate choices by the concerned couples. In addition to this is the
availability of birth control measures and easy access to professional
counselling and appropriate contraceptive drugs.
Since the 1960s, several
variations in the family unit have emerged. More unmarried couples are living
together, before or instead of marrying. Some elderly couples, most often
widowed, are finding it more economically practical to cohabit without
marrying.
Homosexual couples also live
together as a family more openly today, sometimes sharing their households with
the children of one partner or with adopted or foster children. Communal
families, made up of groups of related or unrelated people, have long existed
in isolated instances (see Communal
Living). Such units began to occur in the United States
The variation is not possible in Africa for close-knit kinship system forbids
it. Some norms and mores prohibiting inter-marriage between consanguineous
relatives are enforced here more than in any other area.
Worldwide
Innovations
All developing countries,
especially in Africa and Asia are
witnessing innovations that are not only nauseating but also sacrilegious to
the average traditionalist and debilitating to the ethos of the rural dweller!
Industrialised nations are experiencing the shift in family lifestyles similar
to those found in France United Kingdom United States of America Middle East are
secluded from these anomalies because they accept polygyny and women accept
their place in the home. China Japan
The value system of the younger
generation looks down on the marriage institution and religion does not play
the crucial roles it did before now! Consequently, marital breakdowns,
separations and divorces are rising astronomically in every country worldwide.
Moreover as celibacy is flagrantly flouted by so many, paedophilia is equally
now in vogue, increasingly, sexual immorality exists even where religious and
legal impediments to them are strongest.
Today, smaller families in terms
of numerical strength and a lengthened post-parental stage are found in most
industrial societies. Urbanisation and social anomie combine forces to
denigrate stability in marriages and stable family life. Unchecked population
growth in developing nations threatens the family system. The number of
surviving children in a family has rapidly increased as infectious diseases,
famine and other causes of child mortality have been reduced. Because families
often cannot support so many children, the reduction in infant mortality has
posed a challenge to the nuclear family and to the resources of developing
nations.
A
Large family size contributes to the impoverishment of most rural African
communities. But the greatest cause of poverty in third world countries is poor
governance by insensitive political leaders who pilfer their countries natural
resources. There are cases where a nuclear family has as many as thirteen
siblings! In some Igbo communities, as well as other nation groups in Nigeria
A UNIQUE
MATRILINEAL LINEAGE AMONG IGBOS OF AFIKPO
In Ehugbo, an agrarian community,
the hoe ogu and its smaller sister uwelle rank
second to the machete oge in farm work. In Ehugbo cultural life, the woman is
the hoe handle the egu while the man is the iron piece the ogu. Without
the female-folk the male-folk cannot perform effectively. At birth and
during the ululation okokoriko, the final chant for a female child ends with
ulo mue my own house. Because of the matrilineal relationship ikwu in Ehugbo,
all the children delivered of one woman are of the same ikwu as the woman.
On the other hand, a male child’s
ululation chant ends with onye oke mue – literally, the one who stands for my
share. The full meaning of this expression is manifested in adult life when he
gets married and has children. Though he is the biological father of the
children, they are related to their mother. Thus in a nuclear family of five
offsprings, they and their mother are of the same ikwu, while the father is
alone, making a ratio of 6:1. So as the woman’s family roots increase through
her, the man’s root remains stagnant. For a better clarification, let us assume
that the woman of this write-up is of the Ibe Awo kindred and the man (husband)
is that of Ibe Okwu. At present, there are thirty such matrilineal
relations ikwu in Ehugbo.
In summary, in this ancient
community, inheritance of land and some other items of property, landed or
movable, is generally matrilineal among the Afikpo people of South-East of
Nigeria. It is not very common in other rural areas.
For more
information and Cross References in Parenting Duties, read these:
• The parenting
instinct, see Instinct
• Neglect or harming children, see Child Abuse
• Deficient family settings, see Family (sociology); Single Parents; Homosexuality; Foster Care
• For how parents negligence affect children’s behaviour, see Child Development; Personality / Disorders
•For legal duties of parents to children, see Parent and Child
•For social programmes for children’s well-being, see Child Welfare
• For comprehensive commentaries on Child Psychology by writers and experts on parenting and child development, see Benjamin McLane Spock; Anna Freud; Maria Montessori; Donald Woods Winnicott
• Neglect or harming children, see Child Abuse
• Deficient family settings, see Family (sociology); Single Parents; Homosexuality; Foster Care
• For how parents negligence affect children’s behaviour, see Child Development; Personality / Disorders
•For legal duties of parents to children, see Parent and Child
•For social programmes for children’s well-being, see Child Welfare
• For comprehensive commentaries on Child Psychology by writers and experts on parenting and child development, see Benjamin McLane Spock; Anna Freud; Maria Montessori; Donald Woods Winnicott
CHAPTER THREE
THE PARENTING INSTINCT AND CHILDCARE
Dr Jideofo
Kenechukwu Danmbaezue
Instinct, in zoology and psychology, is
the innate programming characteristic of a particular animal species that
organises complex patterns of behaviour, enabling members of a species to
respond appropriately to a wide range of situations in the natural world. Such
behaviours are usually involved patterns of responses to particular stimuli and
are often permanent patterns of feeding, mating, parenting, and expression of
aggression. In each species, these characteristic behaviour patterns are
developed and refined by the forces of natural selection in the process of
evolution.
Some
scholars make careful distinctions between learned behaviours and instinctive
behaviours. In recent years, however, researchers have generally agreed that
such distinctions are not particularly useful and that learning and instinct
interact to direct an animal’s behaviour in appropriate ways. Instinctive
behaviours are inherited from parents and are vitally important in helping an
animal adapt to and survive in any and every ecological environment it finds
itself. Thus, an animal transferred from one zoo to another in a different
climate learns to adjust like others that were there before its arrival and so
still lives a normal life!
Instinctive
behaviours can be extremely complex even in relatively simple animals, for
example, the remarkable navigational and communication skills possessed by
honey bees. A worker bee may fly a quarter of a mile or more from the hive in
search of flowers that are a good source of food. The sun usually serves as an
indicator of direction, but the bee can navigate accurately, even in a moderate
breeze, when a cloud hides the sun.
When
it finds a good source of food, the bee has the capacity to calculate a true
course back to the hive, allowing for wind and for apparent movement of the
sun. Upon returning to the hive, it communicates the location of the food
through a “dance” that conveys information about distance and direction. Other
bees use this information to go directly to the food. In this example, learning
and genetically coded patterns of behaviour each play an important role.
Instincts permit an animal to show highly adaptive and often very complex
behaviours without the necessity of learning those responses through trial and
error.
The
role that instinct plays in human behaviour is not yet clear. Some researchers
feel that human behaviours such as aggression and territoriality may have
instinctive components. Others feel that such a conclusion is not warranted by
the available data and that human behaviour is qualitatively different from
that of other animals. There is some danger of over generalising to human
behaviour from animal research; however, many of the same forces that direct
the behaviour of other animals are likely to influence human behaviour.
The
term instinct can also be applied to several constructs developed by Sigmund
Freud and other personality theorists (see Psychoanalysis).
Freud theorized that there are instincts for life and for death, and that the
sexual drive is essentially instinctive. This specific application of the term instinct is unrelated to the way in which behavioural
scientists use the term.
The Stock
Market/Rob Lewine
A Couple without
Children
Many
couples remain childless by choice or due to biological problems. Often they do
not want children to disrupt their lovemaking! They marry for companionship!
Childless families make up an increasing number of households in developed
countries like France and the United States.
Microsoft
® Encarta ® Encyclopaedia 2004. ©
1993-2003
PARENT AND CHILDCARE
Parent and Child is a branch of the law of
domestic relations that determines the legal rights and obligations of fathers
or mothers to their children and of children to their parents. The legal
relationship is distinguished from the natural relationship; for example, two
persons may have a legal relationship of parent and child although there is no
natural relationship, as in the case of an adopted child.
In common law, in the United Kingdom United States
MODERN
LAW
The legal relationships
of parent and child established under common law have been modified by statute
in Britain U.S.
Children
who are physically or emotionally abused by their parents may be the subjects
of legal action in order to protect the children. Parents' rights to custody of
their children may be limited or, in extreme cases, terminated because of
failure to provide adequate care. Laws require a father to support his minor
children if he is able to do so, whether or not he has ever been married to
their mother. Failure to provide support may result in civil or criminal
proceedings against him. If paternity has been admitted or established, laws
permit children to inherit from their father's estate unless specifically
excluded in his will.
SURROGACY
Surrogate motherhood has
become one of the most difficult problems in modern family law. The term surrogate mother was first used in connection with in
vitro fertilization (see Infertility)
in the late 1970s. The newest use refers to the introduction, by artificial
insemination, of the sperm of a man whose wife is infertile into a woman who
has agreed, often by contract, to bear the child conceived because of the
insemination and then relinquish it to the couple after birth.
One argument against surrogacy
is that it is little more than formalized baby selling. The counter-argument is
that surrogacy is not baby selling because the husband of the couple receiving
the child is that child's biological father. Many state legislatures are
considering bills that would either make surrogate parenting entirely illegal
or strictly regulate it, for example, limiting or prohibiting the payment of fees
to the surrogate or to intermediaries. Most would require psychological
counselling for the prospective surrogate mother, legal representation for all
parties, and court approval of the contract.
CURRENT
ABERRATIONS IN PARENTHOOD
There has been a desecration
of family values over the centuries, so that today we have un-wed mothers and
unfit parents being tolerated in some permissive societies. This is an
irresponsible aspect of parenthood. Join in the crusade for campaigning against
it. However, since it has become a recurring decimal even in urban cities of
Africa, one cannot avoid treating its demerits, in the least, and condemning
the immaturity of those who fall prey to such unplanned families that are very
disadvantageous to raising good children.
Photo
Researchers, Inc./Vanessa Vick
Lesbian Couple
and Child
In
recent years, gay and lesbian couples have become visible participants in
traditional family pursuits. This lesbian couple is raising a son together.
This has not reached Africa for
now, and when it does, it will be regarded as an anathema.
One such aberration is
lesbian couples adopting children and raising up such unfortunate children in
the absence of parents of both sexes. Of course, such kids will definitely have
deformed personality traits and socially, their peers will discriminate against
them! They will forever live with the scorn of the community! They may grow up
and hate their lesbian ‘parents’ since they were fake ones!
Tony Stone
Images/Dan Bosler
Single-Parent Family
In a single-parent family,
children live with an unmarried, divorced, or widowed mother or father. In the United States Biafra and most other African countries. In
all Africa ,
offspring of such families are regarded as ‘bastards’ a.k.a. social outcasts. Microsoft
® Encarta ®
Encyclopaedia 2004. © 1993-2003
Another similar and in fact the
most common aberration is the unwed mother, which is directly the consequence
of indiscipline among the youth. Such indiscriminate indulgence in pre-marital
sex is an aberration that results in single parenthood, and unfortunately, it is
the children that suffer emotionally as their personality will definitely be
deformed. Join this team of Happy Family Network crusaders to nip in the bud
the laxity in morality that is the remote cause of such aberrations in family
life!
If present day parents shirk
their responsibilities of being the primary educators of their offspring in
matters of morality and social ethics, then we shall have failed in one of the
very fundamental duties of responsible parenthood. What legacy will such
parents leave for their posterity? Will they be happy to have all their sons
and daughters become fathers and mothers without courtship, engagement and formal
marriage? We cannot fold our hands and pretend that there is nothing we can do
about it!
THE
ORIGINAL SATIRICAL DEDICATION
THAT
THE PUBLISHER THREW OUT
To
all lovers whose hearts had been broken before.
It is definitely not the end of
the world as they would soon find out. Adam’s heart was the first to be broken!
He survived it even though he lost his composure and therefore refrained from
naming any children his wife bore until the arrival of the one “in his likeness
and in his own image“; whom he quickly named; Seth. Joseph, the Carpenter, also
survived his marital crisis when he listened to a midnight divine counselling from an angel and
implemented what he was told in the dream. Your broken hearts can also be
mended by this book.
See
KJV of the Bible
To
all Religious Leaders whose pastoral careers had been dented.
The fact that they witnessed the
collapse of marriages; whose ceremonies they presided over barely three months
after their high society celebrations; does not make news. It is common all
over the globe. That the wedding was the talk of the town did not preclude the
crash because the personalities of the partners were not evaluated by
psychological tests and so they were not matched socio- economically nor
psycho-politically. This book provides alternative remedies!
To
all prospective bachelors and spinsters of this global village,
Who deserve better pre-marital
counselling that should correspond with the emerging trends in romantic love.
Physical attraction alone that leads to indulgence in pre-marital sex spells
social insecurity for those lacking emotional maturity. This is one of the
remote causes of the current desecration of the marriage institution that
precede separations and divorces in most countries of the world. This
psychometric book is a prophylactic approach to remedy the social malaise
whereby couples are enduring their marriages instead of enjoying them. Buy and
give copies to your loved ones. Good Luck!
INTERDISCIPLINARY
PEER-REVIEWS
The psychological tests developed
by my professional colleague deserve annual reviews in our ever-changing world.
They definitely need enculturation for those communities whose socio-cultural
milieus differ significantly from the Igbo world-view in which they were
synthesized. Besides this extraneous variable, I congratulate this
revolutionary clinician, Flt Lt Dr J. K. D. Mbaezue (rtd), who rejected so many
teaching appointments and settled for the tedious job of providing indigenous
inventories, scales and tests for the counselling world. I was the first to get
his psychological test on marriage compatibility, which he developed in
Abakaliki in 1984. He has come a long way. He belongs to the second genre of
Nigerian-trained clinical psychologists after Prof. P. Omoluabi of the University of Lagos University of Nigeria
Prof.
Bernice N. Ezeilo, Professor of Clinical Psychology, UNN.
Sir Kenez 007 was my admirer way
back in 1973 without my knowledge. I only got to know this after his numerous
visits to our alma-mater to seek my counsel in all his research efforts many
years later. I have followed his clinical career since 1979 when he gained
admission into the School of Medicine College of Medical
Sciences University of Benin Medical College Africa authenticates his ingenuity in private
practice. I had the unique privilege of criticising, modifying and shaping his
standardisation methods. We disagreed occasionally. He understood and
appreciated them in good faith. Enjoy the fruits of our academic rigmaroles.
They will make your marriage and family life happy self-fulfilling. He also has
three career psychological tests for school guidance counsellors.
Prof.
Peter Omoluabi, Professor of Clinical Psychology & Dean, Soc. Sciences,
UNILAG
Dr J. K. Danmbaezue is my
military mentor and an elder brother. We confide in each other. For years, I
wondered why he refused lecturing in academic institutions as his peers did,
where he could have reached the professorial position that he deserves. Today,
I am wiser. I quartered him for the ninety days he spent in Lagos
Pastor
Nicholas Mbaezue-Daniel, General Overseer, Evangel Chapel, Lekki Area, Lagos
This book can be divided into
three sections as we have in medicine, namely;
Part I in our
medical parlance is the same as ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE,
Part II in like
manner is exactly the THEORY& PRACTICE OF FAMILY THERAPY, while
Part III is
CLINICAL IVESTIGATIONS, DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS AND PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS.
I can now say that we have a new
profession midwifed by this radical psychologist who never ceases to amaze me with
alternative ways of looking at everything. He animates his environment and
turns a depressive occasion into a vibrant one with his creative jokes and
anecdotes. I assure you, he has a bagful of them at anytime. ‘Laughter is
the Best Medicine’ is his gospel, furthermore his presence in any gathering
turns into a hilarious one punctuated with therapeutic vibes from all branches
of knowledge. The DEDICATION page of this book proves me right. However, don’t
take him on religious diatribes unless you have made up your mind to become an
apostate. He was dreaded as a reincarnation of Martin Luther and so he left the
seminary.
Prof.
Alexius C. J. Ezeoke, Emeritus Professor of Chemical Pathology, UNEC / UNTH, Enugu
“Dr Danmbaezue and his colleagues
have shown that Marriage & Family Counselling can be scientific like other
branches of medicine. It is to our credit that our continuous interaction with
him throughout our ten-year research on HIV-AIDS has paid off. He has shown his
ability to transform a profession many regard as a subjective one into an
objective, quantifiable and replicable one. The psychological tests he
developed and standardised over a period of twenty five years are the tools
that have raised the Counselling Profession into an enviable one.”
Prof.
Bede C. Ibeh, Professor of Paediatrics, Fmr. DVC UNEC & Dean of Medicine,
UNTH, Enugu
“I
didn’t know what the word ‘workaholic’ implied till the third year of my
marriage to Dr Kenez. Now, I am a professor when it comes to explaining it.
Combine a divergent thinker and a perfectionist, mix the result with a radical
revolutionary and add a pinch of enthusiasm in academic excellence, what you
get is a workaholic. Workaholics do not look at the clock when deadlines
are to be met. A page is read and re-read a hundred times if that is what it
costs to have an error-free script. God save any secretary that marries such a
human machine. Thanks to the arrival of laptops, I have been relieved of taking
shorthand notes at midnight and transcribing them before noon the next day! I doff my hat to the
wizards who invented these secretarial gadgets called; computers. They
came to my rescue. However, the
silver lining in our home is that he is very humorous when the task is
finished. He then becomes human once more by metamorphosing into a
laughter-machine churning out jokes that are not only sarcastic and romantic
but at times heretical and sacrilegious. This book is his seventh, whereas we
have only three children by choice. May be when other women count their children,
I’ll have to add seven to the three human beings to give me a winning number of
ten.” He has no bank accounts and insurance policies. I gave him this title;
‘Ph.D in everything’ when he expounded his theory, ‘a man who has five mouths
to feed 7760 hours annually is already operating five bank accounts’. Do you
agree?
Oyiridiya
I of Umuelechi a.k.a Mrs. A. N. C. Mbaezue, HOD, Business Education, ESCE (T) Enugu
The eagle has landed. The
publication of this masterpiece is a realisation of my utmost dream. Neophyte
parents and grandparents can now give their progeny a wedding gift more
precious than gold and silver. I know that some cellular phones cost more than
two hundred thousand naira, yet young adults buy them. Our book forestalls all
the errors such youth often make in selecting marriage partners. They are
easily misled by the glittering appearances and sex appeal of their would-be
spouses. They are mistaken. I know, because I have ten such youths from my
groins. Incompatibility in thoughts, words and deeds are the foundation stones
of an insecure marriage destined for heartaches, heartbreaks and eventual
divorce. The older generation hadn’t the opportunity of using psychological
tests to evaluate their choices of life-partners. Now, the younger generations
have no excuses. “Had I known; blab – blab – blab” is only for fools who refuse
to use the contents of this book on the issue. Avoid the mistakes we made. Use
them to select the best option of a life-time partner and make the necessary
psycho-socio-economic adjustment you need before signing on the
dotted lines. Among the Igbos, the words of elders are often the words of
wisdom. God guide you if you heed my advice.
Sir
Andrew Okoliukwu Okeukwu, KSJ International, DURURAKU I of Oru West LGA. Imo State
A hunter shot down an eagle in a
typical tropical forest in 1969. Fate, however, still led him to the nest of
the female eagle he had shot. He rescued the hatchlings, three in number, he
saw in the nest. He took them home and asked his wife to rear them as other
semi-domesticated hens they had. The mother-hen taught the eaglets to feed as
her chicks did.
Of the three, only one survived
for two years. One was carried by a kite. The other was lost in a torrential
downpour during the rainy season. The sole survivor turned out to be a male at
a year and half and wrestled to death another kite that swooped down to steal
another chick. The hunter dotted on it for that bravery, but he never regretted
being the murderer of its mother.
The brave eaglet fed by
scratching the ground and eating worms or insects as the mother hen had taught
her brood. One day, a
white-headed real eagle swooped down cackling; you don’t belong there, look at
your wings, come off the ground, you belong to the sky, I’ll teach you to fly
and feed like a royal eagle and hunt like me.
The brave eaglet swung into
action. After five minutes of stampeding and fluttering its wings, hopped onto
a nearby log of wood and took its first flight in two years of captivity and
soared into the sky. He looked down on the hunter, his wife, the mother-hen and
its chicks as if bidding them goodbye.
That brave
eaglet that flew off to independence is Dr Kenez, the Hunter is Nigeria, the
hunter’s wife is Nigerian Universities Commission, the mother-hen is NAP,
Nigerian Association of Psychologists and the chicks are the numerous
classroom, chalk and blackboard professors. You
can win two hundred dollars if you mail to us the correct identity of the
mother eagle. Use our e-mail or telephone numbers shown in this book. Attach a
scanned copy of your purchase receipt.
Barr.
James Mmegwa, LLB (London Anambra State
“Ägunabu
Umuelechi, Dr Kenez, is my protégé and a war veteran of Degema Strike Force of
the Biafran Commandos (BA 6532) during the fratricidal civil war in Nigeria
He sees alternatives
where others do not. That is his trade mark. For example; The Igbo say that a baby sitter
employed to carry a newborn has no need to stay any longer when the infant
dies. Most people agree, but
Dr Kenez disagrees! He has two more alternatives; the babysitter more often than not,
is a female and so she can wait till another baby is born. If the waiting
passes five years and there is none, then she can rightly depose the madam of
the house and bear a child for the man who employed her. Don’t laugh!
Psychometric
Family Counselling, a Kenezian Approach” is
the actualisation of that Kenezian philosophy of life. Since our Ministers of
Education and other Educational Administrators have refused to play their roles
and duties as regards the ever-increasing rates of divorce nation-wide and
internationally, a solution has been provided by this original thinker after
twenty-five years of research. This type of textbook has been long overdue in
our Colleges of Education and Universities, because there was no standard book
for lecturing, training, examining and producing competent Marriage and Family
Counsellors. That excuse is
now history!
The curriculum
for training out scientific counsellors and efficient therapists is here at
last. Therefore, the ball is now in the courts of the NUC, our Educational
Administrators and our Commissioners for Social Development, Youths and Sports
to canvass for a unit in every tertiary institution to stem the tide of family
disintegration worldwide. The era of no pre-marital counselling for our beloved
children is gone. All Government and NGOs as well as Religious Organisations,
now have the appropriate instruments and tools to slow down the pandemic of
pathological marriages resulting in separations and divorces. Here, I rest my case.
Onowu Dr
Christopher A. Ezike, FRCS (London
The production cost of this comprehensive textbook
is; 991.000 man-hours plus $180 per copy of the coloured ones. So, our cover
price of $200 is very cheap when compared to the cost of wrist watches,
ear-rings, wedding suits or gowns and cakes or the benefits new couples derive
from its well-researched content that ensures a stable and happy marriage. This
is the best birthday or wedding present for your lovely children. For students
who want to become professional counsellors, it is a worthwhile investment that
will earn them a living.
MAY
THE ALMIGHTY CREATOR REWARD EACH OF US WITH PEACE AND LONG LIFE!
CALL
FOR FOUNDATION MEMBERS OF FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE
After several
years of conducting family counselling and therapy services, we have decided to
tackle the problem head on by establishing an institute where the youth can be
given the opportunity of learning first hand what marriage is all about every
long vacation for ages 15 - 25. Join us today.
THE MISSION STATEMENT OF FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE
Every individual
nature is part of the cosmos. To live virtuously means to live in accord with
one's nature, to live according to the natural and eternal laws the designer of
the universe intended by employing truth and right reason in all we do. Because
passion and emotion are considered irrational movements of the soul, the wise
individual seeks to eradicate the passions and consciously embrace the rational
life. “True law is right reason in agreement with Nature; it is of universal
application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands and
averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. . . . There will not be
different laws at different countries or communities, or different laws now and
in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all
nations and for all times.” The laws governing all living things; birth,
growth, respiration, movement, nutrition, excretion, reproduction and finally
death hold sway in every place on planet earth under normal temperature and
pressure. Humans have the same anatomy and physiology despite our differing
languages, child-rearing practices, skin colour, racial differences and social
statuses. We are the offspring of the Almighty Creator of the macrocosms and
microcosms we share. Our survival in our variety of physical environment
follows the same laws. No man is an island. We need each other!
Rev. Prof. J. J.
Kenez also contends that natural laws are sacrosanct for they were made by the
Almighty Architect and Engineer who created every being on planet; EARTH. They
are divine and eternal; because they are universal and are no respecters of
places and times of birth, parentage, race, educational level or religion!
There are so many self-evident examples; the movement of the sun and moon
regulate the hours of day, night, weeks, months and years; so also do gravity,
temperature, pressure, emotion, motivation, conception, pregnancy, labour and
birth regulate family life. If anyone disagrees, let him provide evidence to
the contrary. The founders of FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE
· ONE ALMIGHTY
CREATOR, ONE CREATED UNIVERSE, ONE HUMAN FAMILY,
ONE GLOBAL FAITH and ONE MODE
OF WORSHIP; is our creed
· SERVICE TO
HUMANITY INTERNATIONALLY, is the lifestyle of all members,
· LOYALTY TO THE
ABSOLUTE TRUTH, in every thought, word or deed is our ethics &
· OBEDIENCE TO
NATURAL & ETERNAL LAWS OF THE CREATOR, is our gospel
If
you want to be a foundation member of the board of directors for this
humanitarian FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE send us a proposal of what you can contribute
and attach a brief CV, your contact addresses and a current passport sized
photo of yourself.
FAMILY COUNSELLING AND THERAPEUTICS FOR A
LASTING GLOBAL PEACE FOR ALL FAMILY UNITS
by
Dr Jideofo Kenechukwu Danmbaezue, D.Sc.
Mrs. Alice Nwakego Chineme Mbaezue, Ph. D.
Sri Andrew Okoliwkwu Awuka Okeukwu, KSJ
PSYCHOMETRIC
FAMILY
COUNSELLING
A Kenezian Approach
A TRIANGULAR
PERSPECTIVE FROM THREE FAMILY HEADS AND SEASONED GRANDPARENTS BELONGING TO A
WELL-KNOWN
GENERATION OF IGBOLAND
· Dr Jideofo Kenechukwu Danmbaezue
· Mrs.
Alice Nwakego Chineme Mbaezue
· Sir
Andrew Okoliukwu Okeukwu
Published and printed in 2007 by
Mbeyi & Associates (Nig.) Ltd
Okota, Isolo, Lagos
Tel: 01-7749829, 08033316235
E-mail: mbeyi_associate@yahoo.com
ISBN:
All Rights Reserved.
No part of this
work may be reproduced or transmitted, in
any form or by
any means; electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or
stored in any retrieval system of any nature,
without the
written permission of the author.
©
DANMBAEZUE J. K.,MBAEZUE A.N.C.,OKEUKWU A.
O.
2007
DEDICATION
To all lovers whose hearts had
been broken before,
All religious leaders, whose
pastoral careers had been dented,
And all prospective bachelors and
spinsters of this global village.
PSYCHOMETRIC FAMILY COUNSELLING
Is an original research work done by
HAPPY FAMILY NETWORK INTERNATIONAL
THE FAMILY WELFARE DIVISION OF
KENEZ INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN
ORGANISATION LINKAGE
An inter-ethnic NGO for creating good neighbourhood parenting
units in urban cities for the development of healthy, successful and happy
families in all countries of the world.
Contact:
Dr Jideofo
Kenechukwu Danmbaezue
Danis Family
Villa, Umuelechi, Umuezeawala,
P. O. Box 139
IHIALA, BIAFURU
AMAMIFE ND’IGBO NIME R.O.B
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The Holy Spirit of the Almighty Creator wrote this book using us
only as chosen instruments to edify the marriage institution. The procreative
activity we engage in was designed by Him and we are eternally grateful that
humans are permitted to participate in His awesome machinery of replenishing
the earth.
The authors appreciate the contributions of all our counselees in
the past decade. These were mainly engaged couples who were attending the three
months mandatory marriage course organised by the Catholic Church. Others who
came from Protestant, Islamic and Pentecostal backgrounds were couples referred
to our clinic by professional colleagues who knew of our expertise in family therapy. Married couples who had their marital
problems resolved by heeding the marital counselling or the family therapy of
the authors constitute the raison d’etre of this book. Without resolving their
crises successfully, we could not have decided to write this large prophylactic
book. Prevention is better than cure. This is what the book is all about:
teaching new entrants and old practitioners of family life that knowledge
prevents conflicts!
We want to thank all the Bishops, Imams and Overseers whose parishes
were visited weekly or monthly since 1990 to date and whose parishioners were
used as the experimental subjects for producing this book. They encouraged us
at the initial stages of writing simple pre-marital counselling booklets for
adolescents. In like manner, all the prelates in the English speaking dioceses
of West
Africa , (AECAWA) deserve special thanks for taking the
psychological tests across Nigerian borders. Our course co-ordinators and
liaison officers take the greatest credit for reaching out to all those who
needed the family counselling or therapeutic services of our team. They were
the ones who actually distributed, administered and retrieved the psychological
tests, which formed the base of all therapeutic interventions.
If we made a list of names of all those that contributed to the
success of this book, it would take more than ten pages and we will surely omit
some dear ones who may feel marginalised. We do not want that to happen. We
know and appreciate all of you. All members of Mbeyi & Associates (Nig.)
Ltd merit our sincere gratitude for printing this excellent book in record
time. We also thank our wives and children who had been very supportive. We
have read and re-read the whole book twenty times. We apologise for any typographical
errors anyone might still find in it. It
only proves that we are still only mortal beings with human frailties.
Therefore, we pray that the Founding Architect/Engineer of the marriage
institution, the ALMIGHTY GOD, the Creator of us all, will always bless us all
and equally prosper the work of our hands and provide divine guidance and
protection for our spouses and children. We wish all our readers happy
anniversaries of their wedlock.
***N/B: Due to lack of statistics on families in Nigeria Africa as a
whole, we were forced to rely heavily on examples/statistics we downloaded from
Encyclopaedias and the Internet. We thank all our oversea collaborating
authors whom we quoted as resource persons. We hope you appreciate our labours.
We wish you all happy reading!
FOREWORD
I was a co-founder of the Department of Psychology, University of Lagos England Nigeria University College Hospital Ibadan
Jude Kenechukwu Mbaezue was his full name, if my spelling is still
correct. He made an indelible mark on my mind, for he was not only precocious
and far ahead of his peers in academics, but he was equally an unorthodox
divergent thinker that challenged every new theory thrust upon him. Initially
he irritated me in class. Later, by his third year I admired and respected him
when I saw the benefits I gained from his stubborn stance of ‘not swallowing
every novel concept churned out by neo-colonial psychologists,’ as he called
them. He never stopped amazing me with insightful questions. However, when I
learnt he was the only direct-entry student with a Second Class Honours degree
in Classical Philosophy, the mystery was resolved. As a committed social
psychologist, I perceived he was going to turn into a pragmatic research fellow
in the future.
I returned to Britain Great Britain
I agree totally with the analyses the authors proffer on the
immediate and remote causes of infidelity in marriage that eventually lead to
unfaithfulness, adultery and divorce;
In today’s world, adolescents rarely know what marriage is all
about before venturing into it. Unprepared and inexperienced, they dabble in
and out as often as the laws allow them to! To stem the tide, parents, pastors
and counsellors need to re-educate the youth if we hope to reverse the trend of
increases in divorce rate globally. What then, are the remote and immediate
causes of divorces? They are: social
prejudices inculcated in the child through wrong child-rearing customs;
emotional immaturity caused by incomplete resolution of the developmental tasks
of adolescence; warped attitudes or negative perceptions picked from print and
electronic media; and finally, myopic expectations from the marriage
institution that eventually lead to infidelity or adultery.
Whoever reads, studies, digests, understands and assimilates what
is contained herein, may confidently regard him/herself as a professional
marriage or family counsellor. I must, however, quickly add that to become a
family therapist requires earning at least a Master’s degree in that special
field of medical knowledge called: clinical psychology. The effective use of a
variety of therapeutic methods with his psychological tests as described in the
manuals: demands competency in non-parametric statistics. This involves
accurate procedures regarding their administration, scoring, evaluation,
analysis and application in existential/client-centred therapeutics dealing
with individuals or groups.
I recommend the three-part textbook to any institution: religious,
government or non-governmental organisation that desires to train out a
preventive workforce that can reverse the current trend of divorce worldwide.
This is the ultimate objective of the three authors.
The Kenez I knew had the knack of influencing others to become
involved in prophylactic programmes. He had always had the skill of easily
transferring his knowledge to any enthusiastic friend. I am certain that was
how fifty couples became freelance family counsellors within ten years under
his tutelage. One, therefore, wonders how only two earned his admiration and
subsequently merited being chosen as co-authors with this brilliant research
fellow, a committed revolutionary and a radical psychologist. Anyone who knows
Sir Kenez well knows that he is a perfectionist and it is very hard to meet his
standards or satisfy his ideals.
I will advise childless couples to start reading the book from the
last page to peruse Appendix B entitled: INFERTILITY IN HUMANS,
PROPHYLAXIS AND THERAPEUTICS.
Inspect the entire book and choose where you need help most.
Prospective partners and newly married couples can read from page one till they
get to the end over a five-year period.
Encourage your lovely kids to seek and consult family counsellors
to benefit from pre-marital counselling before settling down to a happy married
life.
Prof.
R. P. Bundy,
Emeritus
Professor of Social Psychology,
Email: robby_jennybundy@yahoo.co.uk
PREFACE
This is a condensation of twenty-five years of practice in
existential family counselling engaged by the authors. It started in 1970 and the research
findings you are about to peruse are the same all over the globe.
Many parents are ill-prepared to groom their offspring on the
roles and duties of responsible parenthood. They were not tutored on how best
to rear the fruits of love-making. Therefore, they rear another generation of
ill-equipped fathers and mothers. Whereas reproductive skills are innate in
Homo sapiens, proper attitudes towards the basics of family engineering are
not. One does not go to
school to study how to fall in and out of love. One does not learn how to
copulate. However, one must
imbibe the right perceptions of the objectives of family institution to ensure
a healthy, successful and happy married life! These facts bring to our
consciousness the remote causes of the high rates of divorces and separations
globally.
In today’s world, adolescents rarely know what marriage is all
about before venturing into it. Unprepared and inexperienced, they dabble in
and out as often as the laws allow them to! To stem the tide, parents, pastors
and counsellors need to educate the youth if we hope to reverse the trend of
increases in divorce rate globally. What then, are the remote and immediate
causes of divorces?
They are: social
prejudices inculcated in the child through wrong child-rearing customs;
emotional immaturity caused by incomplete resolution of the developmental tasks
of adolescence;, warped attitudes or negative perceptions picked from print
and electronic media; and finally, myopic expectations from the marriage
institution that eventually lead to infidelity or adultery.
It is the ardent wish of this existential therapist and his team
of concerned para-counsellors, that have assisted him over a quarter of a
century, that all parents make the reading, studying and assimilation of the
contents of this textbook on pre-marital counselling compulsory for their
children if they really want their precious kids to live better lives than they
did. For engaged couples, this is a must-read! It will consolidate their
wedlock if they can practise what they learn. This is their undergraduate
curriculum: their lecture series on the theory and practice of responsible
parenthood.
Three booklets that are fore-runners to this comprehensive one
are:
1. AM I QUALIFIED FOR MARRIAGE?
2. FAMILY COUNSELLING, A
Psychometric Approach and
3. AM I PREPARED FOR RESPONSIBLE
PARENTHOOD?
This innovative and timely textbook will make the training of
family counsellors simpler for tertiary institutions that already have school
guidance counselling programmes. For religious leaders who are concerned that
many weddings they officiated at crumble in less than six months after, now
have this enriched self-tutorial handbook they can use to train pastoral
counsellors in their various congregations.
This work, which took twenty five years to assemble, is actually
three books in one. The common denominator in the three sections is that the
entire textbook, in a cyclic manoeuvre treats “The Theory and Practice of …
· MARRIAGE / FAMILY COUNSELLING
· EXISTENTIAL FAMILY THERAPY and
· PSYCHOMETRIC SKILLS IN FAMILY
COUNSELLING
This is done in such an inter-related manner that a good student,
who assimilates all, ends up becoming an eclectic counsellor, as well as a
competent therapist on graduation.
Part I covers the biological,
physiological and other scientific grounds on which the professional training
of marriage and family counsellors is built.
Part II introduces the
non-philosopher, theologian or psychologist to the building blocks on which
existential therapy is constructed, as well as emphasizing the need for
eclecticism.
Part III wraps up the entire
comprehensive textbook with the use of current psychometric tools that a
skilled modern counsellor or therapist can use instead of merely doing
guesswork or religious preaching.
This is definitely a scientific practitioner’s manual for
effectiveness and efficiency in injecting family health, social success and
optimum happiness into all families. Essentially therefore, what our objective
has been all this while is to elevate FAMILY COUNSELLORS AND FAMILY THERAPISTS
to the scientific era of standing shoulder high in any health institution as
professionals. However, this elevation can only be realistic if one
internalises what is graphically deposited herein.
Like I had noted in FAMILY
COUNSELLING - A Psychometric Approach, printed by Mbeyi & Associates
(Nig.) Ltd, Okota, Lagos that preceded this comprehensive one; “Family Counselling in Nigeria is
new, when viewed as a professional job involving the formal face-to-face
consultations between a counselee and a competent marital counsellor.” See p. x (1995).
My people say that one does not ask an adult to step out of the
scorching heat of the sun! And ‘the words of our elders are words of wisdom’. Sir A. O. Okeukwu recaptured the ideal
African concept of a family in his introductory expose. Enjoy it. Good luck!
Dr Jideofo
Kenechukwu Danmbaezue,
Professor of
Psychometrics,
saintkenez@yahoo.co.uk
PART
I
THE
THEORETICAL BASE FOR PROFESSIONAL PRACTITIONERS OF FAMILY COUNSELLING
*AM I
PREPARED FOR
RESPONSIBLE
PARENTHOOD?
The
Role and Duties of Parenting
*This
was what the back cover of one of the earlier publications looked like.
IN BIAFRA ,
TRADITIONAL WEDDINGS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN IMPORTED RELIGIOUS SOCIETY
WEDDINGS AS IS SHOWN BELOW
CHAPTER ONE
MARITAL CUSTOMS AND LAWS IN IGBO LAND
Sir
Andrew Okoliukwu Okeukwu, KSJ
A form of marriage has been found
to exist in all human societies, past and present. Its importance can be seen
in the elaborate rituals and complex laws that surround it. Although these laws
and rituals are as varied and numerous as human cultural organizations are,
there are some universals that do apply in each society. The legal function of
marriage is to ensure the sexual rights of the partners with respect to each
other and to define the relationships of children within a community. Marriage
has historically conferred a legitimate status on an offspring. It entitles him
or her to the various privileges set down by the traditions of a particular
community, which includes the rights of legitimate participation in the
activities of the kindred, ownership and inheritance of properties and
privileges accruing to the family lineage. In most societies, marriage
establishes the permissible social relations allowed to bona fide members,
including the acceptable selection of future spouses. Until the late 20th
Century, marriage was rarely a matter of free choice. In Western societies,
romantic love between spouses came to be associated with marriage, but in most
other developing nations of the world, this was not the primary motive for the
choice of spouses in matrimony. One's marriage partner was carefully chosen. In
Igbo land for example, many norms and mores determine the legality of each
marriage!
Endogamy, the practice of
marrying someone from within one's own ethnic group is the oldest social
regulation of marriage. When the forms of communication with outside groups are
limited, endogamous marriage is a natural consequence. Cultural pressures to
marry within one's social, economic, and ethnic group are still very strongly
enforced in some societies in Nigeria
Exogamy, the practice of
marrying outside the group, is found in societies in which kinship relations
are the most complex, thus barring from marriage, large groups who may trace
their lineage to a common ancestor. Once there is any blood relationship, the
engagement is cancelled. This is where the Igbo surpasses other ethnic groups
in enforcing pre-marital genetical counselling.
In our traditional societies in
which the African extended family system remains the basic unit, marriages are
usually arranged by elders in each concerned family unit. The assumption is
that love between the partners comes after marriage and more thought is given
to the socioeconomic advantages accruing to the larger family from the marriage
than romantic love. By contrast, in modern societies that have accepted western
lifestyles where Christianity and nuclear family predominates, educated young
adults now opt to choose their own mates. It is assumed that love determines
proper marriage, and less thought is normally given to the socioeconomic
aspects of the match. However, this has increased divorce rates due to
misconceptions of the traditional values attached to the pre-literate marriage
customs that ensured the longevity of marriages.
What is a family
in Igbo land?
The answer is simple.
“Ezi-na-ulo”, is what the Igbo call it. Literally, it simply means “members of
a compound and a house”. Therefore, a family comprises those members who share
their lives together within a household located in a compound. Naturally,
there is a father plus a mother of the home and a compound in which they live
in and happily interact. The father is the king of his domain. He has married a
wife or wives and has subsequently produced children. He takes responsibility
for all their needs:
· Shelter, Food
and Clothing
· Hospital Bills
and School Fees
· Defence and
Transport
· Loans and
Investment
In short, our people are right by
calling him “DIBIA-ULO” - the doctor who diagnoses and treats all the problems
in his house. To be a ‘dibia’- implies a protracted training as apprentice,
internship and housemanship before freedom to start one’s own medical practice.
So it is implied that a teenager or an adolescent who has not endured the long
tutelage under his father can never be a good dibia-ulo.
Another saying of our people brings out the real job of a husband: “Okokporo anaghi ama mgbe ogara na
ama ogo ya” (a bachelor
hardly knows when he has passed the road that leads to the homestead of his
father-in-law). What I think this implies is the need for keen observation of
the local norms and mores of the community, the absence of which translates
into an irresponsible husband that is not good as future son-in-law.
To be a dibia-ulo therefore:
· One must have a
compound he calls his own before contemplating marriage.
· The bachelor
must make his own nest as a fowl does when it is preparing to lay eggs.
· A prospective
husband must not only have a place to call his “ezi” but must also build a homestead,
“ulo,” where he hopes to pack in with his future bride and begin to produce
babies. So he must be self-reliant, independent and buoyant enough to settle
all the hospital bills surrounding pregnancy and child birth.
· It is only
then that he is qualified to seek a bride. But today, what do we find; sons
still living under the roof of their parents marrying. It is a shame. Some even
impregnate a girl and run home to beg daddy to foot the bills for formal
engagement and marriage rites.
In summary: A Family in a
traditional Igbo setting comprises;
A. A responsible man that
builds a home,
B. At least a man and a
woman with their children,
C. The wife or wives are
dependent on him,
D. He is the mechanic, the
plumber and doctor of the family,
E. He shoulders the good,
the bad and the ugly in his home,
F. His failure to take good
care of the wife spells divorce and a broken home.
In societies with arranged
marriages, the universal custom is that someone acts as an intermediary or matchmaker. This is very true in Igbo
communities, whereby the intermediary's chief responsibility is to arrange a
marriage that will be satisfactory to the two families represented. Some form
of dowry or bride price is almost always exchanged in
societies that favour such arranged marriages. This is more like an insurance
policy that preserves the life of the marriage when problems arise! On the
other hand, among the educated class, especially those that want to exhibit
their acquired western education, youths are allowed to choose their own mates.
Dating is permitted so that spouses-to-be meet and become acquainted with their
prospective marriage partners and members of their families. Successful dating
may result in courtship that usually leads to formal traditional marriage rites
and religious weddings.
In Igbo land, marriage is a
village affair or in the least, a kindred affair, whereby it is not only the
bridegroom that is the husband of the new bride but all his kinsmen and women.
The woman is called: ‘our
wife’ by the people.
Therefore to marry in our culture entails pre-marital investigations or
research into the family backgrounds of both bride and groom. This is the
unique aspect of traditional marriage that benefits the couple. It is the most
advantageous aspect of Igbo wisdom. Whereas Western societies resort to
professional marriage counsellors and family therapists, we have this
pre-marital counselling done for the couple before their formal wedding.
It has so many advantages:
1. It excludes
genetic diseases if properly conducted,
2. It pre-empts
anti-social behavioural traits in the offsprings,
3. It protects most
of the community’s religious taboos,
4. It enforces
traditional norms and mores,
5. It protects the
newly married bride from inordinate jealousies, and finally
6. It publicises
that one is no more a bachelor or a spinster.
In our culture, the first is the
most important parameter for the marriage to get the blessings of parents and
members of the African extended family system. One really wonders how our
ancestors were able to fathom the need for this PRE-MARITAL GENETICAL
COUNSELLING long before the arrival of the first white man on the shores of Africa and prior to the arrival of Western
medicine, psychology, sociology or anthropology and Christianity.
Some of these shall be the focus
of our discussions in this comprehensive textbook on scientific family
counselling. As an existential family therapist of thirty-five years standing
and the father of seven married sons and three daughters, let me share my
varied experiences of counselling them with fellow parents-to-be. We need to go
back to our roots to reduce the current increase in divorce rate and failed
marriages.
CHAPTER TWO
THE
SOCIOLOGY OF FAMILY LIFE
Mrs.
Alice Nwakego Chineme Mbaezue
Introduction
Family as a sociological
construct is the smallest social relationship that identifies those united
through bonds of kinship or marriage. This simplest version of the concept of
‘family’ is represented by the nuclear variation and is present in all
societies, primitive or civilised. Even the sub-human species, our closest
cousins on the evolutionary tree: chimpanzees and gorillas have nuclear
families.
Ideally, a family provides its
members with protection, companionship, socialisation and security. The
structure of the family and the needs that the family fulfils vary from society
to society. The nuclear family—a husband, his wife and their children is the
main unit in some societies. In others, it is a subordinate part of an extended
family, which also consists of grandparents, uncles, brothers and other
relatives. This is the commonest variation in Africa , especially among the Igbo of the South-East of Nigeria
A third family unit variation
that has forced its presence on us is the single-parent family. In this
aberration, men and women who are incapable of maintaining marital
relationships arrange to have children without legal or formal marriage. In
some others, children live with divorcees, a widowed mother or father who caters
for them without the help of the opposite mate. The latest in the country’s
capital is concubinage with children reared by ‘live-in lovers’, without
formalising the co-habitation by either traditional or religious rites of
marriage. In Nigeria Abuja
The Historical
Development of Families
Social scientists, especially
anthropologists, have developed several theories about how family structures
and functions evolved.
· In prehistoric
hunting and gathering societies, two or three nuclear families, usually linked
through bonds of kinship, banded together for part of the year but dispersed
into separate nuclear units in those seasons when food was scarce. The family
was an economic unit: men hunted, while women gathered and prepared food and
tended children. Infanticide and expulsion of the infirm that could not work
were common.
· Some
anthropologists contend that prehistoric people were monogamous, because
monogamy prevails in non-industrial and ethnocentric forms of family
organisation in some contemporary societies to date.
· Social
scientists believe that the modern nuclear family structure developed largely
from that of the ancient Hebrews, whose families were patriarchal in structure,
while later some cultures changed to matriarchal versions due to economic
adversities whereby an impoverished man could not singly fend for nor care for
a pregnant woman. (For details, see Patrilineage and Matrilineage). The family
resulting from the Greco-Roman culture was also patriarchal and bound by strict
religious precepts. In later centuries, as the Greek and then the Roman
civilisations declined, so did their well-ordered family life.
With the advent of Christianity,
marriage and childbearing became the central concerns of moral theologians and
canonists, usually regarded as experts in religious teachings that deal on
family life and the rearing of children. The purely religious nature of family
ties was abandoned in favour of civil bonds after the Reformation, which began
in the 1500s. Most Western nations now recognise the family relationship as
primarily a civil matter.
The Modern
Family
The modern family differs from
pre-western forms in its composition, size, functions and the roles of husbands
and wives. The only aspect of the family that continues to survive all change
is the provision of affection and emotional support by and to all its members,
particularly infants and young children. Specialised institutions now carry out
most of the duties performed by the agrarian family: economic production,
education, religion and recreation. Early education, career prospects and
professional jobs usually separate members of the family. This is because
family members often have to get employment and so work in different
occupations and in locations away from the home.
Primary, secondary and tertiary
education is often provided by the state, by religious organisations or private
groups. Religious training and recreational activities are available outside
the home, although both still have a place in family life. The family is still
responsible for the socialisation of children. Even in this area of family life
orientation, the overwhelming influence of peer groups, current electronics
gadgets and the print media have assumed a larger role than is necessary, most
being diversionary and non-beneficial.
©
Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Marital Status
in U.S.
This chart shows
the percentage of American women and men in various age groups who are married,
divorced, or widowed, or who have never been married. Only a small fraction of
the U.S. Africa .
Microsoft
® Encarta ® Encyclopaedia 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation.
Family Sizes and
Economic Emancipation
Family composition in industrial
societies has changed dramatically. The average number of children born to a
woman in the United States of America Europe , some couples do not want any children at all,
while in Africa and other Third World countries it is a crime not to marry
and have as many children
as God permits a couple, and
this results in very large and unmanageable families. The remote causes of
poverty and economic adversities stem from this primitive and naïve emphasis on
‘having as many children as God allows’
Consequently, the number of years
separating the births of the youngest and oldest children has declined. This
has occurred in conjunction with increased longevity. In earlier times,
marriages normally dissolved
through the death of a spouse before the youngest child left home. Today, husbands and wives potentially
have about as many years together after the children leave home as before. Some
of these developments are related to ongoing changes in women’s roles.
Women in all stages of family
life have joined the labour force. Rising expectations of personal
gratification through marriage and family, together with eased legal grounds
for divorce and increasing employment opportunities for women, have contributed
to a rise in divorce rate worldwide. The frequency of divorce cases is
not peculiar to advanced countries. The increase in broken marriages, single
parenthood and widowhood is now so high that most religious groups cannot cope
with pastoral counselling. In the 20th Century, extended family households
declined in prevalence. This change is associated particularly with increased
residential mobility and with diminished financial responsibility of children
for ageing parents, as pensions from jobs and government-sponsored benefits for
retired people became more common.
The Rise of
One-Parent Families
By the 1970s, the prototypical
nuclear family had yielded somewhat to modified structures including the
one-parent family, the stepfamily and the childless family. One-parent families
in the past were usually the result of the death of a spouse. Now, however,
most one-parent families are the result of divorce, although some are created
when unmarried people bear children. In 1991, more than one out of four
children lived with only one parent. Most one-parent families, however,
eventually became two-parent families through remarriage.
A stepfamily is created by a new
marriage of a single parent. It may consist of:
· A parent and
children and a childless spouse,
· A parent and
children and
· A spouse whose
children live elsewhere, or
· Two who
collaborate to end their one-parent families.
In a stepfamily, problems in
relationship between non-biological parents and children may generate tension: the
difficulties can be especially great in the marriage of single parents when the
children of both parents live with them as siblings.
The Arrival of
Childless Families
For many years, the proportion of
couples that were childless declined steadily as venereal and other diseases
that cause infertility were conquered. In the 1970s, however, the changes in
the status of women reversed this trend. Couples often elect to have no
children or to postpone having them until their careers are well established. Therefore,
the novel preponderance of childless families may be the result of such
deliberate choices by the concerned couples. In addition to this is the
availability of birth control measures and easy access to professional
counselling and appropriate contraceptive drugs.
Since the 1960s, several
variations in the family unit have emerged. More unmarried couples are living
together, before or instead of marrying. Some elderly couples, most often
widowed, are finding it more economically practical to cohabit without
marrying.
Homosexual couples also live
together as a family more openly today, sometimes sharing their households with
the children of one partner or with adopted or foster children. Communal
families, made up of groups of related or unrelated people, have long existed
in isolated instances (see Communal
Living). Such units began to occur in the United States
The variation is not possible in Africa for close-knit kinship system forbids
it. Some norms and mores prohibiting inter-marriage between consanguineous
relatives are enforced here more than in any other area.
Worldwide
Innovations
All developing countries,
especially in Africa and Asia are
witnessing innovations that are not only nauseating but also sacrilegious to
the average traditionalist and debilitating to the ethos of the rural dweller!
Industrialised nations are experiencing the shift in family lifestyles similar
to those found in France United Kingdom United States of America Middle East are
secluded from these anomalies because they accept polygyny and women accept
their place in the home. China Japan
The value system of the younger
generation looks down on the marriage institution and religion does not play
the crucial roles it did before now! Consequently, marital breakdowns,
separations and divorces are rising astronomically in every country worldwide.
Moreover as celibacy is flagrantly flouted by so many, paedophilia is equally
now in vogue, increasingly, sexual immorality exists even where religious and
legal impediments to them are strongest.
Today, smaller families in terms
of numerical strength and a lengthened post-parental stage are found in most
industrial societies. Urbanisation and social anomie combine forces to
denigrate stability in marriages and stable family life. Unchecked population
growth in developing nations threatens the family system. The number of
surviving children in a family has rapidly increased as infectious diseases,
famine and other causes of child mortality have been reduced. Because families
often cannot support so many children, the reduction in infant mortality has
posed a challenge to the nuclear family and to the resources of developing
nations.
A
Large family size contributes to the impoverishment of most rural African
communities. But the greatest cause of poverty in third world countries is poor
governance by insensitive political leaders who pilfer their countries natural
resources. There are cases where a nuclear family has as many as thirteen
siblings! In some Igbo communities, as well as other nation groups in Nigeria
A UNIQUE
MATRILINEAL LINEAGE AMONG IGBOS OF AFIKPO
In Ehugbo, an agrarian community,
the hoe ogu and its smaller sister uwelle rank
second to the machete oge in farm work. In Ehugbo cultural life, the woman is
the hoe handle the egu while the man is the iron piece the ogu. Without
the female-folk the male-folk cannot perform effectively. At birth and
during the ululation okokoriko, the final chant for a female child ends with
ulo mue my own house. Because of the matrilineal relationship ikwu in Ehugbo,
all the children delivered of one woman are of the same ikwu as the woman.
On the other hand, a male child’s
ululation chant ends with onye oke mue – literally, the one who stands for my
share. The full meaning of this expression is manifested in adult life when he
gets married and has children. Though he is the biological father of the
children, they are related to their mother. Thus in a nuclear family of five
offsprings, they and their mother are of the same ikwu, while the father is
alone, making a ratio of 6:1. So as the woman’s family roots increase through
her, the man’s root remains stagnant. For a better clarification, let us assume
that the woman of this write-up is of the Ibe Awo kindred and the man (husband)
is that of Ibe Okwu. At present, there are thirty such matrilineal
relations ikwu in Ehugbo.
In summary, in this ancient
community, inheritance of land and some other items of property, landed or
movable, is generally matrilineal among the Afikpo people of South-East of
Nigeria. It is not very common in other rural areas.
For more
information and Cross References in Parenting Duties, read these:
• The parenting
instinct, see Instinct
• Neglect or harming children, see Child Abuse
• Deficient family settings, see Family (sociology); Single Parents; Homosexuality; Foster Care
• For how parents negligence affect children’s behaviour, see Child Development; Personality / Disorders
•For legal duties of parents to children, see Parent and Child
•For social programmes for children’s well-being, see Child Welfare
• For comprehensive commentaries on Child Psychology by writers and experts on parenting and child development, see Benjamin McLane Spock; Anna Freud; Maria Montessori; Donald Woods Winnicott
• Neglect or harming children, see Child Abuse
• Deficient family settings, see Family (sociology); Single Parents; Homosexuality; Foster Care
• For how parents negligence affect children’s behaviour, see Child Development; Personality / Disorders
•For legal duties of parents to children, see Parent and Child
•For social programmes for children’s well-being, see Child Welfare
• For comprehensive commentaries on Child Psychology by writers and experts on parenting and child development, see Benjamin McLane Spock; Anna Freud; Maria Montessori; Donald Woods Winnicott
CHAPTER THREE
THE PARENTING INSTINCT AND CHILDCARE
Dr Jideofo
Kenechukwu Danmbaezue
Instinct, in zoology and psychology, is
the innate programming characteristic of a particular animal species that
organises complex patterns of behaviour, enabling members of a species to
respond appropriately to a wide range of situations in the natural world. Such
behaviours are usually involved patterns of responses to particular stimuli and
are often permanent patterns of feeding, mating, parenting, and expression of
aggression. In each species, these characteristic behaviour patterns are
developed and refined by the forces of natural selection in the process of
evolution.
Some
scholars make careful distinctions between learned behaviours and instinctive
behaviours. In recent years, however, researchers have generally agreed that
such distinctions are not particularly useful and that learning and instinct
interact to direct an animal’s behaviour in appropriate ways. Instinctive
behaviours are inherited from parents and are vitally important in helping an
animal adapt to and survive in any and every ecological environment it finds
itself. Thus, an animal transferred from one zoo to another in a different
climate learns to adjust like others that were there before its arrival and so
still lives a normal life!
Instinctive
behaviours can be extremely complex even in relatively simple animals, for
example, the remarkable navigational and communication skills possessed by
honey bees. A worker bee may fly a quarter of a mile or more from the hive in
search of flowers that are a good source of food. The sun usually serves as an
indicator of direction, but the bee can navigate accurately, even in a moderate
breeze, when a cloud hides the sun.
When
it finds a good source of food, the bee has the capacity to calculate a true
course back to the hive, allowing for wind and for apparent movement of the
sun. Upon returning to the hive, it communicates the location of the food
through a “dance” that conveys information about distance and direction. Other
bees use this information to go directly to the food. In this example, learning
and genetically coded patterns of behaviour each play an important role.
Instincts permit an animal to show highly adaptive and often very complex
behaviours without the necessity of learning those responses through trial and
error.
The
role that instinct plays in human behaviour is not yet clear. Some researchers
feel that human behaviours such as aggression and territoriality may have
instinctive components. Others feel that such a conclusion is not warranted by
the available data and that human behaviour is qualitatively different from
that of other animals. There is some danger of over generalising to human
behaviour from animal research; however, many of the same forces that direct
the behaviour of other animals are likely to influence human behaviour.
The
term instinct can also be applied to several constructs developed by Sigmund
Freud and other personality theorists (see Psychoanalysis).
Freud theorized that there are instincts for life and for death, and that the
sexual drive is essentially instinctive. This specific application of the term instinct is unrelated to the way in which behavioural
scientists use the term.
The Stock
Market/Rob Lewine
A Couple without
Children
Many
couples remain childless by choice or due to biological problems. Often they do
not want children to disrupt their lovemaking! They marry for companionship!
Childless families make up an increasing number of households in developed
countries like France and the United States.
Microsoft
® Encarta ® Encyclopaedia 2004. ©
1993-2003
PARENT AND CHILDCARE
Parent and Child is a branch of the law of
domestic relations that determines the legal rights and obligations of fathers
or mothers to their children and of children to their parents. The legal
relationship is distinguished from the natural relationship; for example, two
persons may have a legal relationship of parent and child although there is no
natural relationship, as in the case of an adopted child.
In common law, in the United Kingdom United States
MODERN
LAW
The legal relationships
of parent and child established under common law have been modified by statute
in Britain U.S.
Children
who are physically or emotionally abused by their parents may be the subjects
of legal action in order to protect the children. Parents' rights to custody of
their children may be limited or, in extreme cases, terminated because of
failure to provide adequate care. Laws require a father to support his minor
children if he is able to do so, whether or not he has ever been married to
their mother. Failure to provide support may result in civil or criminal
proceedings against him. If paternity has been admitted or established, laws
permit children to inherit from their father's estate unless specifically
excluded in his will.
SURROGACY
Surrogate motherhood has
become one of the most difficult problems in modern family law. The term surrogate mother was first used in connection with in
vitro fertilization (see Infertility)
in the late 1970s. The newest use refers to the introduction, by artificial
insemination, of the sperm of a man whose wife is infertile into a woman who
has agreed, often by contract, to bear the child conceived because of the
insemination and then relinquish it to the couple after birth.
One argument against surrogacy
is that it is little more than formalized baby selling. The counter-argument is
that surrogacy is not baby selling because the husband of the couple receiving
the child is that child's biological father. Many state legislatures are
considering bills that would either make surrogate parenting entirely illegal
or strictly regulate it, for example, limiting or prohibiting the payment of fees
to the surrogate or to intermediaries. Most would require psychological
counselling for the prospective surrogate mother, legal representation for all
parties, and court approval of the contract.
CURRENT
ABERRATIONS IN PARENTHOOD
There has been a desecration
of family values over the centuries, so that today we have un-wed mothers and
unfit parents being tolerated in some permissive societies. This is an
irresponsible aspect of parenthood. Join in the crusade for campaigning against
it. However, since it has become a recurring decimal even in urban cities of
Africa, one cannot avoid treating its demerits, in the least, and condemning
the immaturity of those who fall prey to such unplanned families that are very
disadvantageous to raising good children.
Photo
Researchers, Inc./Vanessa Vick
Lesbian Couple
and Child
In
recent years, gay and lesbian couples have become visible participants in
traditional family pursuits. This lesbian couple is raising a son together.
This has not reached Africa for
now, and when it does, it will be regarded as an anathema.
One such aberration is
lesbian couples adopting children and raising up such unfortunate children in
the absence of parents of both sexes. Of course, such kids will definitely have
deformed personality traits and socially, their peers will discriminate against
them! They will forever live with the scorn of the community! They may grow up
and hate their lesbian ‘parents’ since they were fake ones!
Tony Stone
Images/Dan Bosler
Single-Parent Family
In a single-parent family,
children live with an unmarried, divorced, or widowed mother or father. In the United States Biafra and most other African countries. In
all Africa ,
offspring of such families are regarded as ‘bastards’ a.k.a. social outcasts. Microsoft
® Encarta ®
Encyclopaedia 2004. © 1993-2003
Another similar and in fact the
most common aberration is the unwed mother, which is directly the consequence
of indiscipline among the youth. Such indiscriminate indulgence in pre-marital
sex is an aberration that results in single parenthood, and unfortunately, it is
the children that suffer emotionally as their personality will definitely be
deformed. Join this team of Happy Family Network crusaders to nip in the bud
the laxity in morality that is the remote cause of such aberrations in family
life!
If present day parents shirk
their responsibilities of being the primary educators of their offspring in
matters of morality and social ethics, then we shall have failed in one of the
very fundamental duties of responsible parenthood. What legacy will such
parents leave for their posterity? Will they be happy to have all their sons
and daughters become fathers and mothers without courtship, engagement and formal
marriage? We cannot fold our hands and pretend that there is nothing we can do
about it!
THE
ORIGINAL SATIRICAL DEDICATION
THAT
THE PUBLISHER THREW OUT
To
all lovers whose hearts had been broken before.
It is definitely not the end of
the world as they would soon find out. Adam’s heart was the first to be broken!
He survived it even though he lost his composure and therefore refrained from
naming any children his wife bore until the arrival of the one “in his likeness
and in his own image“; whom he quickly named; Seth. Joseph, the Carpenter, also
survived his marital crisis when he listened to a midnight divine counselling from an angel and
implemented what he was told in the dream. Your broken hearts can also be
mended by this book.
See
KJV of the Bible
To
all Religious Leaders whose pastoral careers had been dented.
The fact that they witnessed the
collapse of marriages; whose ceremonies they presided over barely three months
after their high society celebrations; does not make news. It is common all
over the globe. That the wedding was the talk of the town did not preclude the
crash because the personalities of the partners were not evaluated by
psychological tests and so they were not matched socio- economically nor
psycho-politically. This book provides alternative remedies!
To
all prospective bachelors and spinsters of this global village,
Who deserve better pre-marital
counselling that should correspond with the emerging trends in romantic love.
Physical attraction alone that leads to indulgence in pre-marital sex spells
social insecurity for those lacking emotional maturity. This is one of the
remote causes of the current desecration of the marriage institution that
precede separations and divorces in most countries of the world. This
psychometric book is a prophylactic approach to remedy the social malaise
whereby couples are enduring their marriages instead of enjoying them. Buy and
give copies to your loved ones. Good Luck!
INTERDISCIPLINARY
PEER-REVIEWS
The psychological tests developed
by my professional colleague deserve annual reviews in our ever-changing world.
They definitely need enculturation for those communities whose socio-cultural
milieus differ significantly from the Igbo world-view in which they were
synthesized. Besides this extraneous variable, I congratulate this
revolutionary clinician, Flt Lt Dr J. K. D. Mbaezue (rtd), who rejected so many
teaching appointments and settled for the tedious job of providing indigenous
inventories, scales and tests for the counselling world. I was the first to get
his psychological test on marriage compatibility, which he developed in
Abakaliki in 1984. He has come a long way. He belongs to the second genre of
Nigerian-trained clinical psychologists after Prof. P. Omoluabi of the University of Lagos University of Nigeria
Prof.
Bernice N. Ezeilo, Professor of Clinical Psychology, UNN.
Sir Kenez 007 was my admirer way
back in 1973 without my knowledge. I only got to know this after his numerous
visits to our alma-mater to seek my counsel in all his research efforts many
years later. I have followed his clinical career since 1979 when he gained
admission into the School of Medicine College of Medical
Sciences University of Benin Medical College Africa authenticates his ingenuity in private
practice. I had the unique privilege of criticising, modifying and shaping his
standardisation methods. We disagreed occasionally. He understood and
appreciated them in good faith. Enjoy the fruits of our academic rigmaroles.
They will make your marriage and family life happy self-fulfilling. He also has
three career psychological tests for school guidance counsellors.
Prof.
Peter Omoluabi, Professor of Clinical Psychology & Dean, Soc. Sciences,
UNILAG
Dr J. K. Danmbaezue is my
military mentor and an elder brother. We confide in each other. For years, I
wondered why he refused lecturing in academic institutions as his peers did,
where he could have reached the professorial position that he deserves. Today,
I am wiser. I quartered him for the ninety days he spent in Lagos
Pastor
Nicholas Mbaezue-Daniel, General Overseer, Evangel Chapel, Lekki Area, Lagos
This book can be divided into
three sections as we have in medicine, namely;
Part I in our
medical parlance is the same as ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY OF MARRIAGE,
Part II in like
manner is exactly the THEORY& PRACTICE OF FAMILY THERAPY, while
Part III is
CLINICAL IVESTIGATIONS, DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS AND PSYCHOTHERAPEUTICS.
I can now say that we have a new
profession midwifed by this radical psychologist who never ceases to amaze me with
alternative ways of looking at everything. He animates his environment and
turns a depressive occasion into a vibrant one with his creative jokes and
anecdotes. I assure you, he has a bagful of them at anytime. ‘Laughter is
the Best Medicine’ is his gospel, furthermore his presence in any gathering
turns into a hilarious one punctuated with therapeutic vibes from all branches
of knowledge. The DEDICATION page of this book proves me right. However, don’t
take him on religious diatribes unless you have made up your mind to become an
apostate. He was dreaded as a reincarnation of Martin Luther and so he left the
seminary.
Prof.
Alexius C. J. Ezeoke, Emeritus Professor of Chemical Pathology, UNEC / UNTH, Enugu
“Dr Danmbaezue and his colleagues
have shown that Marriage & Family Counselling can be scientific like other
branches of medicine. It is to our credit that our continuous interaction with
him throughout our ten-year research on HIV-AIDS has paid off. He has shown his
ability to transform a profession many regard as a subjective one into an
objective, quantifiable and replicable one. The psychological tests he
developed and standardised over a period of twenty five years are the tools
that have raised the Counselling Profession into an enviable one.”
Prof.
Bede C. Ibeh, Professor of Paediatrics, Fmr. DVC UNEC & Dean of Medicine,
UNTH, Enugu
“I
didn’t know what the word ‘workaholic’ implied till the third year of my
marriage to Dr Kenez. Now, I am a professor when it comes to explaining it.
Combine a divergent thinker and a perfectionist, mix the result with a radical
revolutionary and add a pinch of enthusiasm in academic excellence, what you
get is a workaholic. Workaholics do not look at the clock when deadlines
are to be met. A page is read and re-read a hundred times if that is what it
costs to have an error-free script. God save any secretary that marries such a
human machine. Thanks to the arrival of laptops, I have been relieved of taking
shorthand notes at midnight and transcribing them before noon the next day! I doff my hat to the
wizards who invented these secretarial gadgets called; computers. They
came to my rescue. However, the
silver lining in our home is that he is very humorous when the task is
finished. He then becomes human once more by metamorphosing into a
laughter-machine churning out jokes that are not only sarcastic and romantic
but at times heretical and sacrilegious. This book is his seventh, whereas we
have only three children by choice. May be when other women count their children,
I’ll have to add seven to the three human beings to give me a winning number of
ten.” He has no bank accounts and insurance policies. I gave him this title;
‘Ph.D in everything’ when he expounded his theory, ‘a man who has five mouths
to feed 7760 hours annually is already operating five bank accounts’. Do you
agree?
Oyiridiya
I of Umuelechi a.k.a Mrs. A. N. C. Mbaezue, HOD, Business Education, ESCE (T) Enugu
The eagle has landed. The
publication of this masterpiece is a realisation of my utmost dream. Neophyte
parents and grandparents can now give their progeny a wedding gift more
precious than gold and silver. I know that some cellular phones cost more than
two hundred thousand naira, yet young adults buy them. Our book forestalls all
the errors such youth often make in selecting marriage partners. They are
easily misled by the glittering appearances and sex appeal of their would-be
spouses. They are mistaken. I know, because I have ten such youths from my
groins. Incompatibility in thoughts, words and deeds are the foundation stones
of an insecure marriage destined for heartaches, heartbreaks and eventual
divorce. The older generation hadn’t the opportunity of using psychological
tests to evaluate their choices of life-partners. Now, the younger generations
have no excuses. “Had I known; blab – blab – blab” is only for fools who refuse
to use the contents of this book on the issue. Avoid the mistakes we made. Use
them to select the best option of a life-time partner and make the necessary
psycho-socio-economic adjustment you need before signing on the
dotted lines. Among the Igbos, the words of elders are often the words of
wisdom. God guide you if you heed my advice.
Sir
Andrew Okoliukwu Okeukwu, KSJ International, DURURAKU I of Oru West LGA. Imo State
A hunter shot down an eagle in a
typical tropical forest in 1969. Fate, however, still led him to the nest of
the female eagle he had shot. He rescued the hatchlings, three in number, he
saw in the nest. He took them home and asked his wife to rear them as other
semi-domesticated hens they had. The mother-hen taught the eaglets to feed as
her chicks did.
Of the three, only one survived
for two years. One was carried by a kite. The other was lost in a torrential
downpour during the rainy season. The sole survivor turned out to be a male at
a year and half and wrestled to death another kite that swooped down to steal
another chick. The hunter dotted on it for that bravery, but he never regretted
being the murderer of its mother.
The brave eaglet fed by
scratching the ground and eating worms or insects as the mother hen had taught
her brood. One day, a
white-headed real eagle swooped down cackling; you don’t belong there, look at
your wings, come off the ground, you belong to the sky, I’ll teach you to fly
and feed like a royal eagle and hunt like me.
The brave eaglet swung into
action. After five minutes of stampeding and fluttering its wings, hopped onto
a nearby log of wood and took its first flight in two years of captivity and
soared into the sky. He looked down on the hunter, his wife, the mother-hen and
its chicks as if bidding them goodbye.
That brave
eaglet that flew off to independence is Dr Kenez, the Hunter is Nigeria, the
hunter’s wife is Nigerian Universities Commission, the mother-hen is NAP,
Nigerian Association of Psychologists and the chicks are the numerous
classroom, chalk and blackboard professors. You
can win two hundred dollars if you mail to us the correct identity of the
mother eagle. Use our e-mail or telephone numbers shown in this book. Attach a
scanned copy of your purchase receipt.
Barr.
James Mmegwa, LLB (London Anambra State
“Ägunabu
Umuelechi, Dr Kenez, is my protégé and a war veteran of Degema Strike Force of
the Biafran Commandos (BA 6532) during the fratricidal civil war in Nigeria
He sees alternatives
where others do not. That is his trade mark. For example; The Igbo say that a baby sitter
employed to carry a newborn has no need to stay any longer when the infant
dies. Most people agree, but
Dr Kenez disagrees! He has two more alternatives; the babysitter more often than not,
is a female and so she can wait till another baby is born. If the waiting
passes five years and there is none, then she can rightly depose the madam of
the house and bear a child for the man who employed her. Don’t laugh!
Psychometric
Family Counselling, a Kenezian Approach” is
the actualisation of that Kenezian philosophy of life. Since our Ministers of
Education and other Educational Administrators have refused to play their roles
and duties as regards the ever-increasing rates of divorce nation-wide and
internationally, a solution has been provided by this original thinker after
twenty-five years of research. This type of textbook has been long overdue in
our Colleges of Education and Universities, because there was no standard book
for lecturing, training, examining and producing competent Marriage and Family
Counsellors. That excuse is
now history!
The curriculum
for training out scientific counsellors and efficient therapists is here at
last. Therefore, the ball is now in the courts of the NUC, our Educational
Administrators and our Commissioners for Social Development, Youths and Sports
to canvass for a unit in every tertiary institution to stem the tide of family
disintegration worldwide. The era of no pre-marital counselling for our beloved
children is gone. All Government and NGOs as well as Religious Organisations,
now have the appropriate instruments and tools to slow down the pandemic of
pathological marriages resulting in separations and divorces. Here, I rest my case.
Onowu Dr
Christopher A. Ezike, FRCS (London
The production cost of this comprehensive textbook
is; 991.000 man-hours plus $180 per copy of the coloured ones. So, our cover
price of $200 is very cheap when compared to the cost of wrist watches,
ear-rings, wedding suits or gowns and cakes or the benefits new couples derive
from its well-researched content that ensures a stable and happy marriage. This
is the best birthday or wedding present for your lovely children. For students
who want to become professional counsellors, it is a worthwhile investment that
will earn them a living.
MAY
THE ALMIGHTY CREATOR REWARD EACH OF US WITH PEACE AND LONGLIFE!
CALL
FOR FOUNDATION MEMBERS OF FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE
After several
years of conducting family counselling and therapy services, we have decided to
tackle the problem head on by establishing an institute where the youth can be
given the opportunity of learning first hand what marriage is all about every
long vacation for ages 15 - 25. Join us today.
THE MISSION STATEMENT OF FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE
Every individual
nature is part of the cosmos. To live virtuously means to live in accord with
one's nature, to live according to the natural and eternal laws the designer of
the universe intended by employing truth and right reason in all we do. Because
passion and emotion are considered irrational movements of the soul, the wise
individual seeks to eradicate the passions and consciously embrace the rational
life. “True law is right reason in agreement with Nature; it is of universal
application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands and
averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions. . . . There will not be
different laws at different countries or communities, or different laws now and
in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all
nations and for all times.” The laws governing all living things; birth,
growth, respiration, movement, nutrition, excretion, reproduction and finally
death hold sway in every place on planet earth under normal temperature and
pressure. Humans have the same anatomy and physiology despite our differing
languages, child-rearing practices, skin colour, racial differences and social
statuses. We are the offspring of the Almighty Creator of the macrocosms and
microcosms we share. Our survival in our variety of physical environment
follows the same laws. No man is an island. We need each other!
Rev. Prof. J. J.
Kenez also contends that natural laws are sacrosanct for they were made by the
Almighty Architect and Engineer who created every being on planet; EARTH. They
are divine and eternal; because they are universal and are no respecters of
places and times of birth, parentage, race, educational level or religion!
There are so many self-evident examples; the movement of the sun and moon
regulate the hours of day, night, weeks, months and years; so also do gravity,
temperature, pressure, emotion, motivation, conception, pregnancy, labour and
birth regulate family life. If anyone disagrees, let him provide evidence to
the contrary. The founders of FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE
· ONE ALMIGHTY
CREATOR, ONE CREATED UNIVERSE, ONE HUMAN FAMILY,
ONE GLOBAL FAITH and ONE MODE
OF WORSHIP; is our creed
· SERVICE TO
HUMANITY INTERNATIONALLY, is the lifestyle of all members,
· LOYALTY TO THE
ABSOLUTE TRUTH, in every thought, word or deed is our ethics &
· OBEDIENCE TO
NATURAL & ETERNAL LAWS OF THE CREATOR, is our gospel
If
you want to be a foundation member of the board of directors for this
humanitarian FAMILY LIFE COLLEGE send us a proposal of what you can contribute
and attach a brief CV, your contact addresses and a current passport sized
photo of yourself.
Two
Previous Booklets on Marriage
YOU CAN ONLY GET THE BOOK IN PERSON AS IT IS TOO LARGE TO UPLOAD ON TO
THE INTERNET SITES I HAVE.
Write me, if you know how to do otherwise, i am still a novice.... contact me via ...................saintkenez@yahoo.co.uk ........
GOD BLESS ALL OF US AS WE MAKE THE BEST DECISIONS OF LIVING A HEALTHY,
SUCCESSFUL AND HAPPY FAMILY LIFESTYLES.
YOU CAN ONLY GET THE BOOK IN PERSON AS IT IS TOO LARGE TO UPLOAD ON TO
THE INTERNET SITES I HAVE.
Write me, if you know how to do otherwise, i am still a novice.... contact me via ...................saintkenez@yahoo.co.uk ........
GOD BLESS ALL OF US AS WE MAKE THE BEST DECISIONS OF LIVING A HEALTHY,
SUCCESSFUL AND HAPPY FAMILY LIFESTYLES, WHICH WILL HAVE THE SPIRAL EFFECT OF ENTHRONING GLOBAL PEACE,
Your Chief Servant,
Dr Jideofo Kenechukwu Danmbaezue.
The Humble Vessel of the Holy Spirit of the Almighty Creator
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