In Nigeria today, our leaders and some individuals have tried to initiate bills and create laws that would regulate public conduct of dressing. Indecent dressing has become so rampant that it has crawled into the mind of mothers who are supposed to lead by examples as a result making their kids become the victims of what the society is campaign against.
Our kids (children from 2-16 years of age) now dress half naked to parties by the help of their mothers and guardians.
Indecent dressing is causing considerable concern among many people for which accusing fingers are being pointed at the direct culprits who happen to be the parents especially the mothers.
The problem of indecent dressing starts from the homes. Some mothers want their children to imitate the western culture and their way of dressing, so they portray their kids in line with modernization. These kind of mothers forget that they are endangering the future of their children.
If you can take a look at children going to birthday parties these day, you will see that indecent dressing is not just from the young people, it has been indoctrinate into them by their moms and it will take serious measures to wipe it away from the society because those (mothers) who are supposed to do the primary duty are those encouraging the act of indecent dressing.
Some mothers dress their kids so responsibly in the name of fashion and expect them to dress responsibly when they are grown, such will be impossible.
Mothers start a very tender age to dress up their kids happily with mini skirts, spaghetti tops, bon short, etc. by the time, they grow up, their sense of dressing has literally gone “ladygaga”. And yet we worry about indecent dressing in our society. It all starts from the home.
Mothers are really the one to blame for these societal ill, as some of them do not have the time to admonish their children when they dress indecently. They forget that it is what the child learns from home that he or she takes on to the out side world. It the duty of mothers to keep an eye on the type of dresses her children wears.
The idea of being modest is a challenge to mothers to be responsible parents and consider what they can do to help daughters become modest in all ways of life. The idea of being modest has to be taught early in a child’s life. Mothers should think of what their children will be in the next 10, 15, 20 years in term of dressing.
What a child should see and hold so importantly that would be of positive benefit to him or her, should be what the mother should emphasize most. Trying to discipline a teenager has limited impact on behavioural change, because by the time children reach their teenage years, if they have not be internalized why it is important to dress modestly and make education a priority among other worldly things, then there is little that can be done to slow down the train in immorality.
A child should be taught that dressing show our morality, and should note that decent dressing signifies one’s dignity. Dressing sends different messages to whoever it is intended for.
In the ever and fast changing world today, only positive aspect of civilization should be tolerated and encouraged. Mothers should stop worshipping western culture. We are Africans; our culture of covering our nakedness should be revealed in us at every stage in life.
Children should be made to understand that they are agents of change in the campaign against indecent dressing.
All parts of the woman’s body are sensitive, so they deserve to be fully wrapped up decently in the name of dressing.
If mothers do their work adequately, the kids will have no cause to dress indecently. ###
Edith Nse Friday
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