Dear Agatha,
My daughter is just 15 years old. Recently she got pregnant and out of fear for her future, the reputation of the family as well as my well being as a mother, my husband and I terminated the pregnancy.
This was not before we scolded and punished her for the mess she got herself and all of us into by implication.
We were lucky the abortion was successful although not without some incidents which should have taught her a lesson.
She didn’t take the JSS 3 examinations along with her colleagues. She had to wait before going back to school. Now my fears are all over again.
Since terminating her pregnancy, she has gone very wild. She goes and comes, as she likes, sometimes taking off to God knows where for days. The father expects me to be stricter with her but what can I do? Beat her or send her out of the house?
Now my worst nightmare has happened again. Recently, I noticed her vomiting and on close examinations, discovered she is pregnant again. Like the previous one, father unknown.
The father thinks I am irresponsible, and went to the ridiculous length of attributing her behaviour to my side of the family. The tension in my home is deep.
Now I am at a crossroad. I don’t know if I should allow her keep this child or help her again terminate the pregnancy. She has threatened to take her life if I don’t allow her terminate the pregnancy having pleaded with me to forgive her.
She is my only daughter. I don’t her to end up becoming useless in life. How is she going to cope with the damage of having a child without a father? How do I handle my husband who is blaming me and has the opinion that my insistence we aborted the pregnancy the last time gave her the impetus to get pregnant again?
Concerned Mother.
Dear Concerned Mother,
You are really to blame for this current situation your daughter has found herself. While you may not be blamed for the first incident, this one is certainly yours blame to carry.
No matter what, you shouldn’t have encouraged an abortion of the first pregnancy. Keeping the baby would have helped her become more responsible as well as focused. That she got a light sentence the first time gave her the encouragement to go further, to continue with her wayward lifestyle.
Your husband is blaming you because being your only daughter, you may have over-indulged her to the extent of giving her too much freedom to do, as she likes. Hence why would she just disappear from the house for days and appear without you enforcing some rigid discipline? It is not only by beating a child you enforce discipline, besides your daughter has gone beyond that.
With a child like this, use what she likes the most to bend her. She likes freedom. It is either you give her no freedom at all or you give her all the freedom to wreck her life. The latter option takes some determination and ruthlessness to accomplish. Sending her back to the streets would make her realise after a while that there is nothing in the street but hard life and damage. Chances are the men she is dating are not responsible for her fully. They are the ‘touch and go’ type of boys who are themselves dependent on their parents hence would not encourage her to stay permanently.
By the time she goes round them and is rejected at every point by the men or boys; the lesson of moderation and discipline would have been learnt. For some young girls, it takes the real and vivid street life suffering to make them come to their full senses.
Your husband’s anger appears to you as not making any effort whatsoever to make her change. That she is your only daughter shouldn’t make you indulge her or accept everything she does.
This time around, insist she keeps the baby as well as get a job to sustain herself and the baby. Even if you are going to help her out eventually, let her start with the impression that the days of tea-parties are over and that having frittered away the previous chance you gave her to make something out of her life, this time around she would face the music all alone.
Call her bluff at her blackmail to kill herself. Tell her, the life she wants to take isn’t useful to you as it is now since she has destroyed it and that it won’t hurt you if she takes it after giving your grandchild. She is just telling you that to blackmail you into doing her will. Don’t give in to her blackmail else you would be making more terrible mistake than you have done before.
If you hadn’t done the abortion for her, she wouldn’t have had the boldness to get pregnant again. The burden and shame of having a child as well as seeing her friends going forward in their lives would have made her change from her wayward ways.
Because you have always pampered her will, done everything to make her happy irrespective of your own discomfort, your new position would not more than words, tell her how disappointed you are at her conduct and how much she has hurt you. It would shock her into thinking about her life as well as the future of the child and hers in addition.
It is the only way you can help her change from her ways.
You must be prepared to give her the lesson you failed to give her before now, be a supportive but firm mother to her. That you are firm and strict doesn’t make you less of a good mother; discipline done in love is beautiful and wonderful.
Your husband is angry that you failed in your department as a mother to entrench the right discipline and moral values into your daughter.
Granted, good parenting isn’t always a function of doing the right thing but also that of luck as well as the grace of God. But our duties as parents are to give our children the right foundation to be useful to us as well as themselves.
Helping her to procure that abortion is akin to giving her the support to continue to be wayward, which is not a function of a good parent, especially a mother.
You owe your daughter the right values. Divorce all your sentiments and do your job of parenting this child properly. This child needs you to be focused if she is to go back on the right track.
She needs your prayers as well as your positive support to become the child that would make you very proud.
Good luck.
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