Parents need healing before kids can thrive
When children face violence at home, either as a function of discipline or via exposure to violent interactions between adults, long-term problems can take root. Data shows that children exposed to violence are more likely to adopt aggressive behaviour themselves. These children manifest continued aggression throughout their lives as part of a cycle of intergenerational violence, according to a 2022 study by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and the University of Cape Town (UCT).
But it is not just the presence of violence that creates the cycle, it is also the absence of warm, secure relationships with healthy adult role models. For emotionally and socially well-adjusted children to reach healthy adulthood, secure parental attachment is required, according to psychiatrist John Bowlby’s attachment theory. Nothing has changed since this theory was published almost fifty years ago.
Creating safe family spaces has to begin at home, but the ISS/UCT study shows that mothers who live in poverty are more likely to use physical punishment or leave their children unsupervised and are less likely to be affectionate. Given the high number of people living in poverty in South Africa, how can these parents heal themselves?
South African parents cannot rely on government given that official support for parenting and families is almost non-existent, and 98% of social services are provided by civil society in the form of independent NGOS. Parents also cannot wait for help from individual NGOS, which are chronically under-resourced and underfunded.
In South Africa, one in every five children (21,3%) does not live with a parent and only one in three (32,7%) lives with both parents. This absent nuclear family structure is frequently blamed for many of the crises our children face. But the key variable is not two parents and a nuclear family unit. It is whether parents and caregivers are mentally healthy and whether they themselves have experienced fragmented relationships with the adults in their lives.
Because sustainability has long been a challenge for NGOS, the South African Parenting Programme Implementers Network (Sappin) intends to ensure that quality parenting programmes are consistently available.
By uniting NGOS, Sappin drives collective organisation, coordination and a bigger formalised voice for the parenting sector; by undertaking fundraising, communication and advocacy, it actively drives policy change; and by researching, co-developing and implementing new parenting programmes, it serves different NGOS across the country. In the past year, Sappin’s network supported almost 20000 families with parenting programmes and reached 3-million parents through information and awareness programmes.