As a mid-career lady, Aduke vowed not to allow extended family to interfere or stay close to her nuclear family after marriage. “I don’t want any in-law around,” she would say.
Aduke stayed true to her vow after marriage, and she never allowed any extended family member, both from her own side of the family and her husband’s, to move close. Their stay was limited to 24 hours, beyond which her hackles would be raised. Without a doubt, hers was an “it’s my-husband-and-I” kind of relationship.
As extreme as Aduke’s aversion to her in-laws’ presence may seems, her case is not an isolated one. Many modern women are gradually doing away with the extended family culture common in the 1970s. Rather, they now stick to the nuclear family structure.
In Sociology, the family denotes a “group of people affiliated by a common ancestry, affinity or co-residence.” Although the concept of consanguinity originally referred to relations by blood, but anthropologists have argued that one must understand the idea of blood metaphorically, adding that many societies understand family through other concepts rather than genetic distance.
Many sociologists have argued that the main function of the family is to perpetuate society; either socially, with the “social production of children,” biologically, or both. Thus, one’s experience of one’s family shifts over time. From the perspective of children, the family is a family of orientation: the family serves to locate children socially, and plays a major role in their enculturation and socialisation. From the point of view of the parent(s), the family is a family of procreation, the goal of which is to produce, enculturate and socialise children.
However, producing children is not the only function of the family. In societies with a sexual division of labour, marriage and the resulting relationship between two people is necessary for the formation of an economically productive household.
M. P. Mallum, a lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Jos, says one of the greatest strengths of Nigerian society is the extended family system, which can be a great support than the welfare state of other communities.
He observes that in recent times, with the advent of a wage economy, many of the traditional responsibilities are now limited to the wage-earners. However, no interpersonal system is wholly without weakness. “Within the extended family system,” he explains, “the multiplicity of relationships sometimes leads to jealousies and rivalries, and it is often the young adolescent who is affected by these, as his sensitivity towards the feelings of others increases.”
Thus, it can be seen that the extended family system, despite its strengths, may place some specific strains on society and adolescents. These strains relate mostly to forging an independent identity when there is a multiplicity of adult figures within the family.
“Guidance service, therefore, can provide parents with vocational, educational, personal-social information which will make them better informed in their planning situations with children. This could result in sounder expectations and decisions. Counsellors can assist parents in obtaining the assistance of private and community agencies and organisations, which help children who need such attention because of physical and emotional problems.
“Because personal problems of the students or individuals sometimes arise in the home, or at least are contributed to by the home situation, the teacher or counsellor may find it necessary to make direct contact with parents and the community,” Mallum says.
In addition, he says never before have the school counsellors in Nigeria been so critically needed, and seldom have we (counsellors) been faced with responsibilities and tasks whose results could determine, in a significant way, the success or failure of the extended family system, explaining that for counsellors and teachers, as leaders in the academic enterprise, it is a time of challenge and opportunity to make a contribution.
Guidance services are concerned with satisfying youths and adults to resolve their emotional, personal-social issues for better adjustment to life goals generally.
“Therefore, as teachers and counsellors, there is a pressing need for a realisation of the new roles which schools must play to satisfy the needs of the adolescent in the Nigerian society. Our schools must assume new functions, which would enable them take over effectively the roles which were originally assigned and performed by extended families,” he says.
For Raji Odunfa, a counsellor, a typical African child needs affection, belonging, achievement, social recognition, independence and self-esteem. These psychological needs have significant bearings on the work of teachers and counsellors in African schools. Their roles must now consist largely in creating avenues for making it easy for pupils to satisfy their needs, to provide alternative means of satisfying these needs, to create desirable needs for pupils to satisfy and to create opportunities for the correction of undesirable ones. The appreciation of these new roles, among other things, implies that teachers and counsellors must understand and be patient with pupils’ requirements for need satisfaction.
Anne Agbaje
