by Ndidi Ngwuluka

Created on: February 20, 2009   Last Updated: February 22, 2009

Parents influence significantly how their children turn out in life. If a child is brought up in a quarrelsome home, the child may grow up becoming a quarrelsome adult. This is expected because the child spent the growing and forming phase of life with parents who have shown no better way to live. Parents are children's first role models and patterns that they copy. Even if they do not like certain attitude, they still find themselves behaving as such because they know no better and the power of influence whether negative or positive is indeed strong.

Based on what the children see their parents do, they react or respond accordingly. Two children in a family may also react or respond differently to what they see. My father never beat my mother but they did quarrel and said a lot of things I wished I never heard. Initially, I made up my mind never to get married because the model of marriage I saw did not appeal to me while my sister made up her mind to get married to prove that marriage can be better than what was modelled before her.

Parents fighting in front of their children can also affect the children's relationship with either parent. As we grew up, I found myself always fighting my father to defend my mother. This continued until I got to varsity and I realized interfering was not helping my relationship with my father so I resorted to encouraging my mother instead. I only got to see more good qualities of my father after my mother died. Then I realized that they did not really need to quarrel but it was mainly an ego problem and they lacked the right way to communicate effectively.

Some children are likely to get into marriage with the wrong perceptions about men or women. It is amazing how the same sequence can repeat itself. I heard of a story where a father insisted on his wife handing over her full salary to him every month. When the woman refused, he threw her out of the window and this affect her walking permanently. The son demanded same of his wife. He married a medical doctor who was earning more than he did. His wife panicked and ran away because she did not want what happened to her mother-in-law to happen to her. A son was taught by the father that women must be beaten for them to listen and align to dictates. A lady was taught by her mother that men are so selfish, inconsiderate, uncaring and have no regards for women. Hence she must learn to be very independent.

Children may be so affected that growth psychologically, emotionally, mentally and physically may be hampered. The ladies lose self esteem and also are not able to choose the right husbands. A number of them end up choosing men like their fathers and end up being abused as well. Some grow up thinking women would always be abused by men after all marriage is never fair to women. They get into marriage with a slave mentality. Then some go the other extreme which is to prove that they cannot be controlled by men and they decide to be offensive all through their marriages.

Some children both male and female develop a phobia for marriage and choose not get married. Some may battle with it and make several attempts to develop relationships only to chicken out a few days to the wedding.

If quarrelling, fighting, and hatred is modelled before children, they quarrel and hate people around them. They would think issues can only be resolved through fighting unless there are more influential persons other than their parents who teach them otherwise. However, if they grow up in a family filled with love and understanding, they will exude same to their spouses and people around them.

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