35% of children in South Africa are being raised with both parents in the home. The rest are being raised by single parents, grandparents or no parents at all.
55% of children do not know their biological fathers.
These are statistics that were presented by Errol Naidoo of The Family Policy Institute at the Mighty Families Conference in Bloemfontein in March 2018.
They explain much of the brokenness that we see in our society today. He went on to say that 95% of the men in our jails were raised without a father and many of the gangsters in the gangs that plague our cities, look to their gang as a place of belonging (family) and to the gang leader as a surrogate father figure.
Apparently, most of our nation’s families have experienced trauma of some kind – abandonment, betrayal, abuse, divorce …whatever … and there is deep pain for those individuals.
There are no perfect families – even those with both parents in the home have their struggles and their issues… absentee fathers who are "married" to their careers, parents who are easily angered, domineering mothers, manipulators, jealous partners who try to control the other, enablers, perfectionists forever seeking approval, shopaholics, hoarders who gather clutter, big spenders who get the family into debt… and so the list could go on.
An excellent saying to teach your child is this: “Ken jou familie se foute en leer daaruit.” In English it means, know your family’s faults and learn from them.
In so many families, the faults are perpetuated from one generation to the next and no healing or victory ever comes.
We need to teach our children to recognise our faults, not judge their parents lest they become bitter, but rather extend grace to their parents who were raised by a different set of parents, with other issues and circumstances.
They need to be able to walk in forgiveness, seek restoration and grow in character and maturity so that they can heal and grow up strong in spirit.
The best way to teach them this is to be a good example.
This means examining our own upbringing, overcoming the hurt and hardships that we may have experienced and forgiving those who wronged us.
This may be no easy task, but if we want to heal the nation, the way to do it is to start with our own family.
We want to encourage you to be intentional about the emotional and spiritual aspects of raising your children.
"It is better to build boys than mend broken men."
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