By Ted Malanda

A smiling couple and their two beautiful, adorable children pose in front of an elegant home, the lawn bedecked with flower gardens and trees swaying gently in the midmorning breeze. This is the standard, romantic postcard picture of a perfect family the world over.

This image of bliss is, unfortunately, just a figment of the imagination. In reality, many parents struggle with what sociologists call the ‘black sheep of the family’ — children who have veered off the track to become a menace, a constant source of emotional and financial torment and an embarrassment.

Recently, a TV station aired the story of a young man in Nyeri who had become mentally incapacitated such that he had to depend on his elderly parents for everything –– the result of drug abuse.

Family and friends dictate how we carry ourselves. Photos: Posed By Models/Martin Mukangu

"He had been a good child, very clever in school. But trouble began when he went to college. We heard rumours that he was using drugs. We helped him get a job after he completed his course but he was unable to work. He would disappear for weeks from his workstation. We talked to him and tried everything including prayers to get him to reform. But eventually, the drugs destroyed him," his father said bitterly.

In Kakamega, a man in his early 40s whiles time away at the local market. He is the village vagabond, a common sight at funerals within a five-kilometre radius where he gets food and illicit brew to dig graves.

His clothes are mostly hand-me-downs from scandalised family members who never went to school because their peasant father spent all his resources educating him –– the star child.

It was at high school that things went wrong. Perhaps to ‘fit in’ with his peers, the boy, who was from a very humble background, began smoking cigarettes and marijuana and drinking chang’aa in a slum adjacent to the school.

By the time he was in Form Six, he had been suspended from school a number of times and fired as the deputy school captain. Needless to say, he flunked his A-Levels.

However, he joined a leading middle-level college on account of his O-Level grades. But his alcohol, indiscipline and drug related problems persisted. He was discontinued from his studies, a fate that would be repeated with rapid succession at six other colleges that he attended.

For other children, the rot begins even earlier — in primary school where they play truant, fight and disregard rules and regulations. In high school, they get suspended and expelled countless times for engaging in anti-social behaviour.

This phenomenon is not just restricted to poor, dysfunctional families –– the usual stereotype for poor parenting. In fact, the high and mighty probably fare even worse, spending vast financial resources to ensure their children do not end up in the gutter. They are not always successful.

A deputy commissioner of police is summoned by the school principal and told to his face that his son is a petty thief and a drug addict. Senior clergy, powerful politicians and public officials squirm with pain and shame as their alcoholic sons and daughters cause fatal traffic accidents in drunken stupor. They also watch helplessly as their children threaten bar patrons with firearms, are promiscuous and display shocking depravity totally at odds with their upbringing and social status.

Often, no one can figure out when or what went wrong.

Mwanahamadi Salim was born into an affluent family in Mombasa, growing up in relative comfort with her eight siblings. But in spite of strict upbringing, her eldest brother quit school in Form Four, grew dreadlocks and became a tout. Unlike his siblings who are all college graduates, he lacks tertiary training. Now in his 40s, she says, he still "drinks and swears like a sailor, is jobless, smokes like a chimney and loves women to the extent that all his marriages have failed."

Curiously, she describes him as a very kind, compassionate spirit.

"When my father was attacked by gangsters, he drove from Voi at midnight to check on him while the rest of us were just making panicky phone calls."

In spite of the crazy things he’s done, Mwanahamadi says her father loves the wayward child.

"He now blames himself for taking him to boarding school when he was too young, for forcing him to use his right hand yet he was left-handed and for pushing him too hard to become an accountant…"

Elsie Kinyua talks of the pain of having an eldest brother, 50, who still lives in their mother’s compound, eats from her kitchen and steals household goods to buy alcohol.

"He has been married so many times we have lost count. What is annoying is that while our mother is so tough on the rest of us, she always spares food for him, saying ‘where else do you want him to go?’"

Religious leaders and parents point fingers at Satan and haul such children irrespective of age to places of worship to seek spiritual intervention and cast their demons out.

Others blame witches. How else, they wonder, would you explain why most children who go astray are usually very gifted academically? Indeed, even in this age, witchdoctors still make fortunes in vain attempts to exorcise the evil out of young adults using talismans and bloody animal sacrifices.

Elders, on the other hand, say it is all about young people marrying into wrong families.

"In our day, our marriage partners were carefully selected and vetted to ensure their family histories were clean. Were there suicides, drunkenness, serial divorces, thieves or witches in the family? That’s the only way you can guarantee responsible offspring. But these days, the youth meet in discos in town and get married the same week," laments Arthur Manda, an elder in Mumias.

But experts have a different view. Basil Tulesi, a counselling psychologist, tutor and the health and safety officer at Braeburn Mombasa International School, says such children are often very disturbed and in desperate need of professional help.

"There are many factors that interact to create the so called ‘black sheep’ of the family. Some may be viewed as ‘acceptable’. For instance, severe mental health problems or neurological or genetic disabilities can earn a child the label. Such children need and can be helped through profession guidance and medical intervention," he says.

But, he adds, a large majority of ‘black sheep’ behaviour with overt traits such as rebellion and a non-conformist attitude towards set values are acquired.

"In schools, teachers determine what happens within the classroom, and they have the power to affect and influence the environmental factors from which children learn. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the home, where, in most cases, parents have systematically abandoned structure in favour of a free-for-all and cheap populist-seeking environment," says the schoolmaster.

He says parents and society at large are quick to castigate the so-called black sheep and look helpless when confronted by children who have gone terribly astray.

"Religion remains too conservative with no viable role models for children. The community, on the other hand, is too busy making money and pursuing individualistic lifestyles to tend to the needs of young people who do not ‘conform,’ leaving children to practically grow up unguided," he says.

The ‘black sheep’ may therefore have acquired their behaviour from a teacher who didn’t supervise them well, from a politician who uses defamatory language, from a father who cheats... from all of us for poor parenting.