WHAT ABOUT FAMILY? TESS ONWUEME’S SHAKARA: DANCE-HALL QUEEN AND THE CHALLENGES OF CONTEMPORARY PARENTING

Abstract

In contemporary Nigeria, there has been a remarkable shift in the balance of power to children as Western family models and parenting suffuse the Internet and cable reality programmes lapped up by hypersensitive youth increasingly incentivized by anxious parents goading them on to achieve egocentric goals. Parenting challenges appear to have gained much traction in the wake of the 21st century as modernist forces proliferate, and the civic frontiers of traditional values shrink further. There is need to evolve sustainable cultural approaches towards parenting in a modern Nigerian society facing extraneous influences on the
younger impressionable generation. Government and policy framers, educators and parents, need to reassess their engagement
with children and adolescents to ensure that traditional values are imparted. Using Tess Onwueme’s SHAKARA: DANCE-HALL
QUEEN, the article engages the conservative notions of single motherhood as being oppressive in nature. The research advances
the need to redirect our social development dialogue towards family-based gender agenda that confront existing paternalistic
parenting models