There have been cases where some children are tagged illegitimate, this is no new story because even in the Bible days, there was a remarkable case where some children that claimed to be legitimate said to the one by another mother that he was not going to have any share in the inheritance their father left behind—simply because they said he was a son from a strange woman. This kind of a situation has repeated itself in the lives of millions of children, and it is still happening.
As we all know, the difference in geographical position of the world has a way it affects the looks, character, and behaviour of the people found in this different locations. In some parts, families are established when a man and woman come together and if they love themselves, they begin to cohabit and before they perform the marital rights, two to three children would already be down the line. In some cases, these two (man and woman) that have come together as man and wife; though yet to perform marital rights would have finished giving birth to the number of children they wished. Parents weep many tears in some cases also wondering, “Where did we go wrong?” regarding their children who get so involved. Very likely it is not what was done wrong, but what was not done at all.
It is frightening to know that over half of those under twenty years of age are not receiving moral training from anybody anywhere. The neglect of proper guidance and teaching is a tragedy. Providing biological information and “birth control” devices does not resolve the problem. The problem is the lack of morality, proper family structure, and respect for God. When moral teaching is neglected by parents, or ignored by youths, what else can be expected except the results of miss conduct and sin and the just recompense of reward? It is a moral and spiritual tragedy of the worst sort.
The today world has become such that hirelings groom our children instead of parents. Illicit sexual activity is sometimes provoked by the lack of security in the home. With the enormous divorce rate, single parent homes, mothers working outside the home and children cared for by others, the security level for many children is at rock bottom. When parents are so busy that they cannot take care of their children, they will begin to seek companionship and acceptance for themselves from almost any quarter, these children act similarly and find themselves in some kind of careless sexual relationships. There will ever be the natural curiosity among the young about the opposite sex of which parents have failed to teach children regarding the body. As a result, many today are clamoring for the schools to do the job often by teachers who are so misinformed as to think that sex can be properly presented in a vacuum of moral teaching.
True, too many children get their “facts of life” from the back alley, dirty jokes and filthy conversation, but this only aggravates the problem. Those who seek to limit or prohibit safe, legal abortion need to understand the damaging consequences for the unwanted children, their mothers, and society. Abortion is linked to social maladjustment, delinquency, alcoholism, abuse of drugs. Motherhood should be a choice – though, allowing abortion is also a sin before the almighty God. This brings us to a point where everybody has to wake up to his/her responsibility in ensuring a proper foundation for the family. The emotional trauma these categories of persons go through is not what anybody should face as they are called different names like “bastard, born – throw-away”.
Like in the case of Jephthah as we have it in the Holy Bible, it was recorded that “vain men” were gathered around him, that is to say that the kind of associates he had were jobless people, those that go from one Ogogoro (local hot drink) spot to the other, one gamble joint to another. This is exactly the situation of majority of people who find themselves in this circumstance. Illegitimate or unwanted children as they are called has more than double the number of low IQ scores as their matched pairs. Physical growth is usually poor and school performance significantly low.
Finally, at early teen age, illegitimate/unwanted children are more often reluctant to go to school, they would always want to leave at the earliest possible age, and find little purpose in continuing their education. Relationships with teachers and fellow classmates are not without more trouble. At home, the illegitimate/unwanted girls feel their fathers are less interested in them; they behave more inconsistently. These children are often rated as more stubborn, naughty, more hyperactive and less sociable and bad-tempered. They are in some cases rated lower in academic achievement. Schoolmates reject them as friends more often than their peers. Born to ambivalent mothers, these children are more deviant, received less empathy and attention to their communications, have less warm interchanges with each other, and suffer psychological deprivation. They feel more rejected by their mothers than their matched-pairs; and their relationships with parents deteriorate over time. These children show a greater proneness to social problems, criminal activity, and have tripled the amount of serious offenses requiring custodial prison sentences.
If you question them about their happiness and life-style, the report you will get will be far more dissatisfaction, unhappiness, problems, and worries than the control children. They will always mention having poor relationships with their parents and they knew that their parents are dissatisfied with them. Illegitimate/unwanted children always report repeated disappointments with love relationships and agree with the statement: “love brings more trouble than pleasure.” All these associated problems result from developmental processes; whereby it is clear that children who are delayed in their physical development will also be delayed in their ability to develop cognitively and emotionally. These children will experience a different social reality than children who have not experienced physical disability will, because, people react to and act differently towards people with some form of disabilities.
Looking at how abnormal development is affected by physical development, it is clear that there is a link between different developmental areas and how they affect one another. For children who develop normally, this interplay is hardly recognizable—as each area develops successfully and does not require review. Yet physical growth requires the body to recognize and utilize outside experiences to develop and the emotional ability to feel safe about trying new things. Therefore, physical development relies on emotional and cognitive development to be successful.
Emotional development relies on thinking to interpret situations and to recognize people’s responses, in addition to being able to interpret their responses and shape behaviors accordingly; emotional development relies on physical development to be able to shape those behaviours. Cognitive development relies on both physical and emotional development to shape thoughts about behaviours, and to carry out the thoughts. If at any point one of these areas is delayed or limited, both of the other areas will be similarly limited. The psychological development of children involves looking at the issues, stages and various influences that a child experiences throughout their development into functioning adults.
Child psychology can be divided into two main areas, the actual process of psychological development that the child goes through when growing up and the analysis and treatment of the various problems that a child may face throughout their development. During a child’s development from infancy to adulthood, many influences are responsible for shaping their ways of seeing the world, their ideas of their own identity and their place within society. Factors such as environmental setting, family, and community shape a child, in a perfect world, a child would develop successfully into a happy functioning adult without any problems along the way. However, this is not the case for those tagged illegitimate or unwanted children—as many of them find themselves struggling throughout these developmental processes. What we all must come to realize is that an undefined sexual relationship courses a lot of setback to peace living in any society, and at the same time put so many children through untold pains in life.