-Oba Samuel
BENEFITS OF HEALTHY MARRIAGE IN PARENTING
A marriage can be divide into two- healthy and unhealthy. In an unhealthy marriage, children take first seat to witness their parent exhibit destructive behaviours like intolerance , quarrels, lack of trust, disunity, anger, getting back at each other, solo life style etc
Children first learning foundation is the family no wonder many couples today find it difficult to trust each other because of bad foundation gotten from their parent.
Healthy Marriage can not be achieved if the Couples do not make God the foundation of their home.
- Well groomed, confident and Godly children: Marriage is the nest for grooming children.
Outside the parental nest is the destructive net waiting to trap them
↔The best place to raise godly children is the home where parents are serving God and leading their children in the way of the Lord. If parents are not godly, the chances that their children will serve God is very slim
↔Statistics have confirmed it, that the alarming rise in divorce cases is the bane behind waywardness among children.
Working marriage enhances children emotional and cognitive stimulation.
↔When marriage breaks, its not just the marriage that breaks, the life of the children also break.
↔Many homes are no longer a haven of rest but have become a place filled with selfish& abusive parents which make many children run away from home.
↔Because of love-starved homes, many children are turning to drugs, gangs, sex, violence, video games, social media, &suicide
❌Many read parenting books, attend parenting seminars and still find it difficult to raise great children because they have missed the missing link.
↔Being a good man/woman is not enough to raise quality children, you must be exceptional couples.
↔Parenting is a two-party job: Every child needs a father figure as well as a mother figure to be a balanced child
↔It takes two people to become a parents ,it will take commitment between the two of them to parent them effectively .
❌Raising of children is not a mother’s sole responsibility. Boys and girls need their Fathers as much as their mothers.
↔Husbands, note that time spent with your children is not a favour to your wife. It is a joint task.
- TO GUIDE THEM: Children need to be guided in order not to miss the track in life. This can only be achieved by the joint efforts of both husband and wife. :Prov,1:8-9,Gen.18:18-19,Prov.22:6
My son, hear the instruction of thy father, And forsake not the law of thy mother: For they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, And chains about thy neck.
Proverbs 1:8-9 KJV
Parenting is not just giving instruction and training there must be guidance from both parents.
There are stages in the life of a child that he or she will need either the father or the mother individual and jointly. That’s why to raise a balanced child; you need the cooperation of your spouse
⤴If your wife does not agree with you, she will indulge the children & whatever you give as instruction won’t become a law.
- Right Direction: Unity among parents make it easy for them to parent their childcare in the same direction.
↕Raising children with the same voice, instructions and discipline help make children well-behaved.
Unlike when husband and wife come with different opinions and instructions. children will get confused and pick the worse opinion from the society.
Jointly discipline your children as a couple and not as individuals. Children will hate the one that disciplines them &love the one that indulge them.
↔Couples should sought-out their differences privately but speak with one voice to the children
4 .Good models: When you raise children in the atmosphere of love, they will learn to love God and Love others, raise them in the atmosphere of violence, they will engage in fights& violence as a way of life.
Your children will be influenced greatly by your kind of marriage.
5 .For better performance: Children do better when they are raised together by father and mother under the same roof.
↔Children raised in a healthy home perform better academically and more likely to attend university, earn more than their counterparts from broken homes and more likely to go on to form stable marriages.
↔It has been discovered that most wives beaters are sons of wives beater themselves.
↔Broken marriage is the producers of drop-outs and social miscreants.
↔Children raised by married parents do better in life on economic and social measures.’
6 .Protection from sexual abuse: Good marriage help to prevent children from being physically and sexually molested.
↔Children living with a single mother is 14 times more likely to suffer serious physical abuse than children living with biological parents.
↔So also a child whose mother has remarried to another man is 33 times more likely to suffer physical and child abuse. Sexual molestation is common among stepfamilies.
7.Are less likely to use drugs, alcohol and to commit delinquent behaviours
8 .Have a decreased risk of divorce in marriage.
9 .Less likely to become pregnant or impregnate someone as a teenager
10.To give gender specific support :Children are exposed to gender specific support from father and mother. Father handles children discipline ,leadership and gender based instruction for boys while mothers provide nurturing as well as biological interactions for daughters.
11 .Passing values into them for family and public good
↔Children from divorce families lives with tension daily, emotionally traumatised and unhappy as a result of different instructions, beliefs and values.
↔Parental marital problems, discord and violence have adverse effects on children’s well-being .Children in conflict prone marriages and going through divorce experience high level sadness and emotional imbalance.
↔Children benefit greatly if parents can stay married and works on their marriage rather than getting a divorce.
↔Married couples earn more incomes than single parents. Of course, money is needed in parenting for better feeding, better education and quality living environments.
❌Financial inadequacy of most single parents is one of the reasons many children get recruited into crimes by men of the underworld.
THE WAY OUT
✔Marriage is a place where parenting can be improved.
Parenting right will require you to acknowledge your heavenly father, children will relate, listen, obey their earthly father more easily when they see and perceive that he is in harmony with his heavenly father. Get more devoted to God and pray more for your children because there’s a force militating against the lives of children.
✔Couples should create more time for each other as husbands and wives in order to revitalise their marriage.
✔Lead a balanced life: job& marriage: Avoid jobs that take you away from your spouse and children for 6 days in a week or 5am-10pm daily. When you are not available, you are not a daddy but an uncle, the letter A is found in Daddy while UN is unavailable is in uncle.
↔If you don’t have time for them, the devil through the society have time for them to plant in them what will make you weep at old age. Read parenting books, attend parenting seminars, get them committed to godly things, education & supply their needs. All these make positive impacts in children’s life
↔Create time to reignite romance, revitalized your marriage through couples program, couples retreat, dinner nights, read marriage books and have mentor couples. Be committed to improve your marriage.
✔Include children in your daily schedule .You must have time for them to be able to put your values in them
✔Seek help in case of marital challenges: All marriages have their ups and downs. Couples in unhappy marriages can turn their marriages around if they can seek godly counsel and work on it.
✔Be ready to forgive your spouse and move on with peace. Note that by telling the children negative things their father did to you will backfire because they will grow up to hates their father, refused to take care of him and deny themselves of a blessing which can only be gotten from a biological father
↔Get all the sex you need from your spouse at home. If you have problems with sex in your marriage, seek godly counsel now. Infidelity is the greatest destroyer of marriage.
↔I hereby urged married couples to seek for solution to their marital challenges, not to see divorce as an option. To embrace repair and not to look for spousal replacement.
