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INTRODUCTION

Human family made of husband, wife, child or children is the smallest social unit in human society. It can also be a group of persons united by marriage ties, blood or by adoption that constitutes a single household and they interact with each other in different social capacities of parents, spouses, children and siblings. The family is at the heart of society. Human family is built upon the institution of marriage by God. At the dawn of creation, God made man and woman and children that result from their union to make up a human family.

The Catholic teaching on the meaning of family states that “family, which is founded and given by love, is a community of persons: of husband and wife, of parents and children, of relatives. Its first task is to live with fidelity the reality of communion in a constant effort to develop an authentic community of persons”. Pope Francis emphasizes the deep crisis that the family and marriages are undergoing in the Western world, and of course, in the 21st century adding that the family is "a new mission field for the Church." He challenges families today to be witnesses to the world of love, fidelity, and service. Every reasonable and honest person will agree that the values of love, fidelity and service are found wanting in most 21st century families. His comments about family consisted largely of a tidal wave of empathy for people struggling with unemployment and low wages, parents who made immature choices and the much bigger existential challenge of how to commit in a world where choice seems limitless. Families of 21st century come in all shapes and sizes of divorces and re-marriages, parenting out-of-wedlock and many others. And these pose numerous challenges to human families which extend to society at large.

SOCIAL STABILITY AND ITS CHARACTERISTICS

Uzondu quoted in George, 2009, noted that social stability is a term used to refer to a home that is responsibly running to provide peace, cordiality, healthy communication, growth and development for parents and children. In line with Uzondu, Luster and Okagaki quoted in George opined that social stability is referred to as “a socially stable group of people living together happily and enjoying harmony, peace, and sufficiency”. It suggests that a stable family is a social unit run by parents who play their various roles effectively and indeed influence their children intellectually, physically, morally, psychologically and socially. The Socially Stable family is known for the following characteristics:

• Mutual Dependence:

They depend solely on each other for mutual support. From birth, a child completely depends on his/her parents and even significant others. The father depends on his wife’s ability to play her roles as a mother who cuddles the children as well as the father. Then, the mother depends on the husband’s ability to provide for the family the security needs, financial and emotional needs

• Communication: This is the family’s ability to exchange verbally and non-verbally, to send and receive information and ideas.
• Peaceful Co-existence and Acceptance: This is the family’s ability to accept unconditionally the gift of each other; to relate friendly; bearing one another’s burden. The stability of family largely determines the advancement of society.  Some families are going through traumas and challenges and of course have indeed affected the stability of society. This implies that there is an increase in challenges facing society, especially the school system of the 21st century for more effort to make up for the family’s lapses. This in turn calls for families counselling services in the 21st century as both preventive and curative measures for the situations.

CHALLENGES FACING THE 21ST CENTURY FAMILY

Challenges can be defined as something that puts one to the test. These challenges can be  situations,  tasks,  problems or  contests which need great mental and physical efforts to be done successfully, with improvement and betterment of the situations. Ideally, children are raised in homes with two biological parents who have the support of their own parents and that of extended family members and relatives. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “a man and a woman united in marriage, together with their children, form a family. This institution is prior to any recognition by public authority, which has an obligation to recognize it. With time, reality does not hold again as the framed work plan of the ideal family is greatly affected by the changing realities that are staring at human faces. Families are facing many challenges today. Children of the 21st century in Nigeria are greatly affected and their own challenges are difficult to combat due to the availability of the sophisticated technology and social media.

The challenges facing the 21st century family range from the ability of the parents to harness family life and work life, handling stresses, parenting children properly amidst digital age of the 21st century especially in Nigeria, sexual and drug abuses, addictions of all kinds, communication issues, divorces, grieves, pornographies, same sex attractions, managing family based on budgeted living, poverty,  the high cost of living situations, other economic crisis that breeds unemployment and deprivation which further hinder the positive socialization of family members.

CAUSES OF FAMILY CHALLENGES

Family challenges have been there from time immemorial. It existed down through the ages and is still showing faces in more complicated forms in the 21st century. Adam and Eve, the first human parents and family, knew the challenge of self-knowledge of being naked. Hence, they faced their challenge. They searched for leaves for clothing (Genesis 3:7). They also faced the challenges of knowledge of loopholes of each other’s character.

One of the major causes of family challenges is when the role of a mother and father in the affective and sexual development of a child is found wanting. The first and most important part of a child’s relationship with the mother in the exchange of affection is related to the nutritive activity. This activity lasts months and even to a year and some months. During the above activity, a child studies the face and expressions of the mother and by the second month, the child could recognize the mother and equally appreciate the activity of showing love and care with smiles of gratitude. The feeling of the wellbeing of a child and the enhancement of a child’s confidence is gotten from that affective contact with the mother. These experiences are what contribute to the future effectiveness of the social behaviour of the child.  A balanced character and sex behaviour of the child at an adult age depends largely on the first experiences of pleasure he/she has in the privileged relationships with the mother. A child who has experienced a satisfactory relationship with the mother is now able to accept the outside world is lovely and friendly.

It is in this opening to the reality of meeting and accepting the outside world that the figure of the father becomes more prominent. The father is loving and admirable. He is the representative of law, order, culture and adventure. He transmits to the child his traditions and way of life. By identifying with the parent of the same sex, the male child expresses not only his need of neutralizing the feared person (father), but also his need to imitate and become like the admired model, step by step, the child learns to attribute to each of the parents a well-defined role.

On the other hand, when a child is born under the negative effects of the unfavorable social environment of parents namely, single parenting, divorce, violence within families, abusive environment, poor educational background and poor economic conditions and the likes, the reverse is the case. The child born in such undesirable socio-economic environment termed under-privileged persons and psychologically challenged not only suffer from the epidemics of nutritional deficiency but also influenced in the affective expression of future grown man. When the roles of a mother and father in the affective and sexual development of a child are not achieved successfully, the adverse effect is for life. Then, the adverse effect is what most of the 21st century families are swimming in.

Nevertheless, each human family is unique. This determines how they cope with challenges and how they seek to be helped. The family where the child is born remains the foundational unit for the socialization of such a growing child. It remains the first social place and the dispenser of the stock of skills, values, knowledge and attitudes which the individual needs for getting along in the wider society. Most 21st century families have failed in training their children, meaning that the children have instead internalized the wrong norms, values, beliefs and behavioral patterns leading to deviant cases. Experiences, stresses and influences from the past as a result of death of a parent or even of both parents have contributed greatly in the 21st century families’ challenges.

According to Pope John II, family is the “way of the Church.” Instead of individual freedom and individual deeds of virtue or vice, it was really the family exercising freedom, and family love (both within itself and to the larger community); that is the driver of human history”. But the reverse is the case in the 21st century where most families are marked by individualism and idiosyncrasy. Pope Francis opined that in the families “Children are not individual goods, but people who contribute to the growth of all, bringing human and generational wealth.”

However, family poverty can breed deficient satisfaction of basic needs; lack of basic provisions can also lay the foundation of deficient, maladaptive and delinquent behaviour among the children in the family. The presence of an alcoholic in a family, either parents or children or the disruption caused by war and hatred can disorganize a human family up to the level of being dysfunctional for decades of years.

IMPLICATION FOR COUNSELLING SERVICES

There is a need to update parents on their roles in parenting children and preventing abuse of all kinds through public education programs. Better parenting supervision of children needs to be addressed too. Teacher-parent’s involvement in the prevention and management of child sexual abuse in schools should be encouraged.

The professional counsellors should be in the frontline to guide the government in their educational curriculum planning. Some challenges like corruption may need psychotherapeutic interventions such as cognitive behavioral therapy. The principles of classical and operant conditioning of Pavlov, Watson and Skinner argued that psychological disorders are learned by observation and reinforcement and can be unlearned in the same manner. Hence, the goal of the therapy is to confront people with their irrational beliefs and ideas and provide Psycho-education or re-education on how to embrace challenges.

Idleness is a sickness. Hence, vocational or rehabilitation sets of counselling services are to be designed by professional counsellors to develop the skills and ability to practice a vocation in a productive way by individuals to prepare them to be productive members of their society.

Some challenges need God’s intervention, and Christianity and Islamic religion belief in prayer. This does not need professionals. Hence, prayer therapy uses prayer therapeutically in challenges that entail emotions and mental healings. Here, prayer becomes alternative efficacy. Mental illness that resulted to emotional instability can inhibit individual from performing to their best ability. Mentally challenging conditions and psychological disorders can inhibit cognitive ability and intellectual functioning. Hence, mental health counselling becomes imperative to both young and old in fact to everyone in restoring all stained relationships.

CONCLUSION

The human family truly serves several functions for a larger society and hence, it is at the heart of society. It socializes children, provides practical and emotional support for its members, regulates sexual reproduction activities, and provides its members with a social identity. The family transmits to the child its traditions and way of life both good and bad ones. Most of the 21st century families have failed in training their children, meaning that the children have instead internalized greatly the wrong norms, values, beliefs and behavioral patterns leading to deviant cases. With this, the 21st century families in Nigeria consciously and unconsciously turned out to produce several challenges attacking social stability. The way forward should be through family counselling services.

REFERENCES

Bernardo Hurault, (2000), Christian Community Bible, Claretian Publication, Quezon City

          Philippines     

George I.N. (2006), Counselling for Family Stability: Journal of the Counselling Association of

           Nigeria, vol. 22, pg 99-104

George I.N. (2009), Family, Sex and marital counselling, Ugo Abaam publishing co.

https://www.vaticannews. VA