Although our aim is to nurture healthy children, Nigerian children are still subjected to severe physical and mental stress as they develop.
So far our interest and activities have been to ensure their physical well-being through the reduction of high mortality and morbidity rates, still inadequate as this may be. But we need to examine from time to time the other needs of the Nigerian child which will ensure a totally healthy development.
We are split between two cultures – our traditional and the Western, a relic of our colonial past. This also affects our child-rearing practices. Therefore, these practices must have a very important bearing on how the child is prepared for our world of today so that he fits into our disturbed cultural milieu.
Different styles of child-rearing and education can produce different personalities in terms of motivation, aggressiveness, achievement and integration of the individual into the community socially and culturally. It is important that, while we struggle with the visible organic disease, we fix our gaze on the other important measures to attain this end – a healthy child.
The process of social adjustment begins from the moment of birth. Many of our traditional birth practices ensure that the mother either carries or suckles her child immediately after birth. The baby therefore comes into close contact with the mother at this critical time.
Moreover she is forced to stay indoors with the baby for varying periods of time. By this means, the attachment of the baby to the mother, so essential for the child’s ability to relate to her in future is secured.
This crucial moment in the baby’s life is now being recognized in the Western countries, whilst birth practices in some hospital and maternity homes separate mother and child immediately after birth to the extent that their ability to develop a close relationship may be jeopardized.
Our Nigerian child of today may, therefore, be worse off than that of yesterday. As we move towards the training of our traditional birth attendants with a view to incorporating them into our health services, healthy practices such as the one described above must be maintained and encouraged