moniquekwachou

One would likely get dismissed for suggesting that African parents ‘spoil their kids’ as much if not more than their Western counterparts. I’ve said as much on occasion and gotten reactions like: “How can you even think that? No, we are very strict; our kids don’t talk back and won’t engage is bold displays of PDA etc. Of course we don’t spoil kids”. To us, what make kids spoiled is their “laziness”. As an uncle tried to illustrate how spoiled American kids are he said “they’ve never had to carry water on their heads nor do they know how to cook… only take out here and there… those ones don’t even know how to wash their clothes? They’re spoiled”.That’s how I grew up understanding what being spoiled is. Basically someone who had every basic need supplied and someone who can’t handle/won’t do menial work.I would like to note that this definition of spoiled is straight out of “suffer mentality”. A by-product of colonialism and unhealed trauma. Because why else would we herald the doing of menial workthe as epitome of being hardworking when the reason we do those things on our own is born more out of lack than choice? But we’ll discuss that on a different day. Let’s stick to how African parents are spoiling their own kids, because there’s more than one way to spoil a child. If you know me, you know youth work is my heart-work. I work with young people regularly and regard youth development- the changing of young minds and investing in their capacities as the most sustainable form of development. My experience as a youth-worker and teacher have inspired me to write time and time again about how the way we are raising and educating young Cameroonians is at the root of many of our problems. But it’s worth repeating in a different manner, so in this piece, I want to argue that the way we are raising children sets them up for failure and that the only way to survive and thrive in the same society requires rebelling at some point of your life. To support this argument, I’m using examples from my work with young people and my own life. Recently, in a group, I’m a part of, the discussion turned to the laziness of young Cameroonians. This person who used ‘laziness’ in the way my uncle had once used ‘laziness’ to refer to American kids said of our own: “They can’t do google searches, they want to be spoon-fed all info, why would a university graduate not be able to put a CV together. Why don’t they know how to use their email? They are lazy…”I contradicted them in the group. I said not quite. Young Cameroonians aren’t lazy. They are often hardworking at what you valued while raising them; such as whether or not they know how to cook Koki well and how they serve as their parents’ assistants with most of them babysitting their younger siblings since the age of seven (7). They bend down, unlike the Aje-butta children. So, I insisted, they are hardworking- hard being the operative word. And I continued; acknowledging that what the complainer is criticizing is how our youth lack intuitive soft skills, why they lack individuality, creativity and the capacity to think out of the box. Well, I said, that is because you raised them to fit into the box, to aspire after the belonging in the box and remote possibility of at some point being at the top but in the box. We were raised not to question; it was rude to ask why I was to call someone I am not related to “uncle” or “aunty”. For young women, it was unladylike to fraternize with men and we came to associate being outgoing with being “cheap”. We were to be home immediately after school, no extracurricular activities- except the extracurricular activities were picking stones from rice to be cooked in the evening or learning how to bake and braid hair like a good girl; the boys maybe got to play football. We were raised in houses that have ‘adult parlours’ and children parlours’ – a generational gap obvious within our own homes; yet, now as a graduate networking skills are valued and the majority of those raised as such can barely engage in constructive conversations with senior colleagues and partners in professional spaces. We can bemoan the fact that our young people are not enterprising and proactive enough, that they require direction for everything and have gone through school just memorizing without applying what they learned; but in doing so we likewise must acknowledge the role of how we raised them- with a lack of freedom of expression, restriction on their authentic being and more which led to this dependency. We must acknowledge how our thinking kids should listen but not be heard contributes to their current inability to self-lead… We must ask ourselves: how many kids know the details of their parents’ jobs, how often did kids see their parents read or hear them talk about their work to understand what they do?” And what did we really expect when kids go on school holidays only to be shuffled to ‘holiday classes’ to prepare for the next academic year? No extracurricular even on vacation, just preparing them to be better conformists. An example… In 2021 I led the organizing of a workshop for adolescent activists (though their ages ranged from 16-22) in Yaoundé. Participants were to come from all over the country and have their parents sign consent forms. Several couldn’t make it to the fully-funded opportunity because how dare I think of having a 16-year-old take the bus from Bamenda to come lodge at a Catholic rest house in Yaoundé for 3 days and it would mean missing a day of school. Those who could make it are those who could already advocate for themselves or those who had no strict parents or those who lied/omitted the