Overdoing traditional family ties

Ethiopian Society has deep rooted family traditions where members of a household, including extended family members, live together in the same compound at the expense of the head of the family.
The tradition differs sharply between rural and urban areas. Although the system of extended family life is not new to the rural regions of the country, the life style is based on the principle of equitable shared responsibility. This is particularly true with a farming family where the males set off to the farm at the crack of dawn carrying the plowshares and leading the oxen. The women, in most cases, remain behind in the house and take care of the chores by picking up cattle dung, fetching and carrying water and firewood from distant locations, and taking meals to their husbands and sons on the farm.
The smaller children, on their part, herd the remaining animals, including milking cows, to the grazing fields. In other words, rural family life is hard but disciplined and dutiful. At the end of the day everybody feels that they are an important element of the family and remain confident that one has respected the family’s values and authority figures.
How about urban life? City living is similar to the rural life in its general disposition. However, it sharply differs from the former in application as far as leadership patterns are concerned. It appears rather unethical, counter-productive and retrogressive as far as some of its members are concerned.
A child who is born to a loving family grows in the complete care and comfort provided by parents. Some are pampered and others grow up modestly. However, both remain under the guardianship of their parents until they attain adulthood. When they finish school and become bread-winners, they are still influenced by their families to continue living with them and perpetuate the old pattern of life.
What could these new productive educated children do after that? As they cannot disobey the wishes of their parents, they still continue to live in the family house without paying a cent in rent. They are free to spend their money in the best cafés, cinemas, and on personal effects. What is then the social impact of such a cadre of ‘dependent’ personalities on the struggling economy of Ethiopia? Has it negative or positive effects on employment and on the productive processes of organizations?
Of course, there are those very few who go out and try to establish their own independent lives as they finish school and obtain employment. But, the harsh economic situations like high house rents and house management become unbearable. They are compelled to rejoin their parents by abandoning their effort at self sufficient lives. The same thing has started happening in some of European and in other economically advanced societies where the young used to go off on their own after 18, only to rejoin with their families because of the expensive solo life.
Yet, family life in urban Ethiopia has a generally negative impact on children as it does not equip them with the tools of social responsibility; in a sense, some families reduce grown-up and educated children to the level of parasites on society. If an educated bread-winning young man or woman continues to live with his/her parents at their expense, he/she is automatically hindered from the taste of true life. Such young people will not have room in their minds to appreciate the worth of one’s life, because a great deal of one’s life is still supported by his/her parents after employment, while his/her remuneration is earmarked for outings and cafés. No one in his/her right mind expects such a class of young people to be serious at the work place. One’s total attitude will be unethical, irresponsible and frail to be counted upon. These type of people care less for advice forwarded to them by bosses. There are times that they arrive late to the office and leave early before finishing their assignments. If admonished, they hasten to submit their resignations; after all they have nothing to lose since their livelihood is still based on their parents. In that case, what kind of a generation is being nurtured? There are of course the many exceptions to the rule who are responsible not only to their families but to society as a whole. These are valuable elements of society and are desirable at all times.
Such an attitude will never help our country to move forward even an inch. Nonetheless, in the interest of the economic, social and security advancement of Ethiopia, families should be responsible for designing a new mould that would allow their loved ones (the young, educated and employed), make a sharp shift from a parasitic to one of ethical, responsible and productive life. It is then that they can become a force to reckon with in order to make a difference in the competitive environment where Ethiopia needs stronger and meaningful youth more than at any time before.