Many children from dissolved marriages often fall victim to antisocial behaviors from peer groups. This is easy because such children usually experience rejection, the absence of love, and bodily injury.
In school, they show traits of urchins because they are not given attention and are made unhappy. In this piece, ODIMEGWU ONWUMERE looks at the impact of divorce on children regarding emotional and stressful development, costing governments billions of dollars.
He was four years old when his parents were divorced in 2012 because of what they said were their irreconcilable differences. Tom Ugo (not his real name) did not attend school the preceding year due to the difficulties that the divorce had degenerated into.
During their family troubles, Ugo’s family resided in Oyigbo, a suburb of Port Harcourt, the capital of Rivers State, south-south Nigeria.
His parents fought over who should take custody of Ugo. While doing so, they did not take into cognizance the sermon by experts on marital challenges that parents’ divorce will mean breaking trust among their children.
Also, they did not consider the matrix that says every child’s mind is to see their family being stable and last with love.
Ugo’s parents did not recognize the anxiety their separation from marriage was causing their son. His hope was shattered. No professional counseling or approaches seemed to be in place to tame and manage the experiences of Separation Anxiety Disorder that supervened.
Ugo’s parents later went back to court and were cleared on who should take custody of the young boy. Making clear the security and care for Ugo, the court decided that Ugo would go to school again by living with his mother.
Ugo returned to school again in 2017. Although Ugo’s mother won custody of keeping her son, the impact of the divorce was still visible. The young Ugo was constantly upset by the issue of separation. He hardly kept a proper routine at home.
His distress was because he couldn’t fully benefit from having both parents around, as he wished they could live together. The instability and lack of structure resulting from their separation took a toll on him.
Origin of modern-day divorce
Divorce is as old as the origin of human family relationships. Some early history of divorce was traced to Europe around 1857; and in that early era, only men were permitted to divorce. In this period of time, there was Matrimonial Causes Act. This act allowed ordinary people to divorce. Though all men were presumed to marry and divorce, the right to divorce through the Act of Parliament was only opened to the rich. Divorce was hugely an expensive social occurrence then. From Henry VIII to White v White as reported on Saturday 19 September 2009 investigation by a broadsheet, Henry VIII was granted a divorce by the Archbishop of Canterbury, long before then. Church courts retained the power to dissolve marriages.
Conversely, whichever institution retains the autonomy to dissolve marriages, psychoanalysis by Gimba Abdullahi Liman on June 15 2012 expressed the concern of one Mrs. Maryam Mohammed Madam, a Sociologist, in the Department of General Studies, Federal Polytechnic Bida that divorce has negative effects on children’s education. It highlighted the impact of physical, emotional, cognitive, moral, and educational effects on the children. Liman in his summation added that single parents no longer have ample time for their children and they fall victim to many antisocial behaviors from peer groups. Parenting as a single household is increasingly under pressure to do better and save children faced with stressful lives with a mother here today and a father there tomorrow in shared timelines.
Coming to terms with the high rate of divorce in society these days, many children in Nigeria are being exposed to divorce and many had to repeat class over and over. In the event that children from divorced backgrounds did not drop out of school in its entirety, a child is easily trapped with poor school performance and repeating classes. They are subjected to their parents’ divorce to experience rejection, the trouncing of love, and bodily injury. In school, they show traits of urchins, because they were not given attention and, are made to be unhappy. The impact of divorce on children is no easy emotional and stressful development.
Such children with divorce experiences may engage in drugs and other social crimes such as petty stealing, suicide, and murder. They suffer the psychological and social issues of their parents’ divorce anywhere they went. Some of them show serious mental health outcomes to deal with. The consequence of this often gives their school authorities a handful of troubles that they cannot contain. Many suffer from delayed learning processes; while others who are not in bodily contact with each of their parents, may fail to equal the level of the educational achievements of their parents.
The list of challenges for children caused by divorce is a long one. The least of the effects that children of school-going age may suffer in divorce situations in Nigeria can range from poverty to traumatic health imbalances. In the so-called civilized climes, children who are suffering from psychological traumas, as a result of divorce, are subjected to undergo psycho-educational testing. But in Nigeria, they would be dropped out of school, due to the lackadaisical approach with which governments at all levels handle the issues pertaining to educators and parents.
Worst educational indices
Apart from that there is hardly any role played by the government to determine the life of a child’s uneasiness at school. In 2014, the Director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, in Nigeria, Professor Hassana Alidou at the launch of the Education For All, EFA, Global Monitoring Report, GMR, said Nigeria had some of the worst educational indices in the world.
UNESCO’s representative in Nigeria in that year disclosed that the menace was already costing governments $129 billion a year. Ten percent of the global spending is on primary education, yet, hardly a child out of four children can read a single sentence or solve simple mathematics. UNESCO feared that it would take the poorest young women in developing countries of Asia and Africa until 2072, for them to be literate.
Inattentive and uncooperative manners
This is coming after the body lamented in a report that over 10 million Nigerian children of school age are not in school. It is observable that children from divorced homes have inattentive and uncooperative manners and are beleaguered at school. While these children suffer learning processes, hardly any school in the country appropriately engaged a school psychologist that could examine the child and offer some appropriate counseling measures in order to place the child properly in school.
Some schools have counselors, who may have read such courses at school, yet come short of professional approaches in handling issues associated with behaviors, or concerns related to divorce at school. Factors that most times put the children’s academic future in danger could be itemized under frivolities of divorce.
Controversies between education, religion
Lately, a 50-year-old businessman whose name was given as Mr. Saliu Adesokan reportedly implored an Igando Customary Court in Lagos to dissolve his 17-year-old marriage to his wife, Jumoke Adesokan, for converting his children to Christianity. According to comments credited to Mr. Adesokan, he had enrolled his children in an Islamic school, but his wife withdrew them from the school and took them to church. But the wife, whose age was given as 45, said that it was the children, who on their own preferred attending church and, that she had no hand in their choice for church.
Mr. Adesokan had divorced his first two wives on the grounds that they had bad conduct.
Jumoke said her stepdaughters were making life miserable for her and had turned her into a punching bag. According to her, “If I report them to my husband, what he always says is that ‘leave them, they will soon go to their husband’s houses’, he will not even scold them.”
The rate of divorce is high in Nigeria
On March 5, 2014, Mr. Yusuf Abdulkareem, an Ilorin Upper Area Court Judge, apparently decried the high rate of divorce in the country and how it is disadvantageous to the future of children. Abdulkareem made this disclosure in Ilorin. He informed newsmen: “Children get wayward and unsecured as soon as their parents dissolve their marriage; because two good hands are better than one in training a child. You see children going into prostitution, armed robbery, and other terrible acts just because their parents are no more together and they see themselves as being hopeless.”
The irony of divorce is that while the couple enjoys the attention they sought in the hands of the authorities, the children do not. It is visible that children respond to divorce differently, depending on their gender, age, and juncture of development. They have a feeling that since their parents could not stay together it was imperative that they did not love themselves.
Divorce is a current social crisis in Nigeria that is affecting children’s education. From across the regions – East, West, South, and North – the story is the same. Northern areas of Nigeria continue to be hit by the nuisances of insurgents and divorce. The plague called almajiri could not be a product only created by the Islamic education system in the north, but, also, by failed marriages and family values.
Almajiri Education Programme
The Federal Government of Nigeria under the then leadership of President Jonathan Goodluck instituted Almajiri Education Programme in order to tackle the menace. But how seriously the nineteen states in the north and the Muslim clerics are that the almajiris utilize the school system modeled in a Western education form, does not meet the eyes.
According to a source: “The nineteen states in the north have had little success in containing the problem of the almajiris, facing strong resistance from Muslim clerics in the more traditional Muslim states of the north against any policy that is seen to restrict the operations of Islamic schools that are the source of these almajiris.”
The source was worried that the high rate of divorce in that region of the country is telling on children. The source also informed that since Muslims form the largest part of the population of the north and are authorized to marry more than one wife, polygamy is rife “with 38% of those in rural areas and 22% of those in urban areas in polygamous marriages.”
Religion and traditions not helping children
Not even the religious, civic, and traditional orders on marriage have helped Nigerian children from being the most affected by divorce. Such children will most often hawk and beg, on the streets, to augment their income for well-being. The Universal Basic Education scheme (UBE) has a limit in funding the basic school, let alone, the children who are financially constrained.
It is unclear how the Matrimonial Causes Act enacted in 1970 has saved or is saving marriages in the country. The Act was primarily formulated to address the issue of dissolution of marriages under three separate laws. Social pundits apparently regret that what the Act had mainly focused on was to register more marriages than to solve the problem of dissolution of marriages.
Taking children into consideration before divorce
On July 10, 2008, Rita Gonyok, a former youth corps member with National Press Centre, Abuja, advised that parents who propose to divorce should take their children’s security and stability into consideration so as not to jeopardize their future. She warned that there is no loss heavier that could be measured in both parents and the children than that of a contested and devastating divorce.
She frowned at divorce because, according to her, it causes the children untold stress, complications in sleeping, problems in schooling, nervous habits, recurring physical behaviors, and a relapse of episodes of behaviors. The dangers of such emotional stresses will result in bed-wetting, fears, and at randomly taking solace in undesirable pastime activities to wreck their future.
In Gonyok’s strong view, children may become clingy and whiny and they may need a greater understanding of their moods and behavior. She warned that children have a greater need to be nurtured, but failure of which may in turn impose a greater need to “take care” of their parents. She added that giving up one’s childhood to care for emotionally troubled parents is an all-encompassing characteristic outcome in children of divorced families.
The outcome of disturbed emotions translates into behaviors of concern that impede learning and positive contribution to one’s society. This is more noticeable among children challenged with the circumstances of their parental divorce.
According to experts, achieving balance in education in Nigeria requires educators to collaborate with professionals in the field of child education and complex needs. This collaboration should focus on using psychological, supportive, and positive behavior approaches to help pupils become better individuals.
Odimegwu Onwumere writes from Rivers State via Email: [email protected]
