How to wipe out baby factories in Nigeria –Mary Ikoku: For the President of Moms Africa and CEO, Integrated Quest Public Relations, Mrs. Mary Ikoku, baby factories must be wiped out of the society because they represent sheer cruelty to mother and child. According to the Working Moms’ boss, she helps women to cope with the challenges created by mixing careers with parenthood, and it’s one of the reasons the South East Mothers Summit recently held to nip the baby factory menace in the bud. In this chat with TS Weekend, the public relations expert and former special adviser to the late Minister of Information, Dora Akunyili explains why baby factory is an exhibition of a lack of value for human life. Read on. Baby factory menace First is the challenge of motherhood and parenting and the need to restore our society to our originality, which included a strong respect for morals. Listening to today’s media, you will discover the level of moral decadence in our society, which has led to this menace of baby factory. Women are not only an endangered species and now their offspring are not left out. The baby factory menace is an exhibition of a lack of value for human life. The South Eastern women disagree with this evil and are doing everything to not just curb it but also completely eradicate it. The summit With the remarkable turn out at the summit, it shows that the women are not just listening but are also in it together to curb this societal challenge. With subsequent interaction and intervention, the perpetrators of this evil act will understand that we are no longer taking this with levity; that we are saying no to it, and mothers are doing something about it. Government’s involvement This is not a duty for the government. However, I believe that the government will set up relevant measures to enable its implementation by adopting the communiqué. We must also realise that laws and policies have been made in this country that people flaunt, so our target is the family system where the perpetrators of the acts are groomed. As mothers, we are gathered to decide how we can hold our home front together in order to save our nation, Nigeria. This summit is different and successful because when women gather to do something, they passionately strive to achieve it. On Working Moms Africa magazine The need to balance work and family is a key factor. First and foremost, I am a mother and a career woman. At a point, my job demanded I keep two homes. However, as a working mother, my spouse and I had to take decisions that enable the children have the best of upbringing, by raising them consistently together in one home. Working Moms is God’s vision and a forum where working women can gather necessary information that helps them create balance and also give them, as caretakers of their homes, the necessary strength while answering God’s call on their lives. If the woman misses her place in her home, the family is in disarray and the nation’s structure disintegrates. Working mom refers to any and every woman who does something in order to keep her family; the woman who is frying akara is working, the woman who is at home is doing a job being a-stay-at-home mum, and we recognise all these categories of mothers because we all have worn different hats at some point in time. Challenges Personally, I don’t see challenges, I keep the vision in view and I press towards the mark. There are challenges just like every other entrepreneur in Nigeria. You have to deal with the issue of power and assembling the right kind of team to work with. Getting very smart young people to work with is yet another thing to look out for. Most graduates are unemployable, that notwithstanding, I recruit housewives who want to be integrated into the work force, and hire them for Working Moms. Magazine circulation was a major issue in the beginning but thank God for our network of moms’ subscribers, because getting the magazine to them directly takes off a whole of stress. Also online stores like Jumia are great partners. Housewives as working moms At Working Moms, we encourage more housewives to join the workforce because a woman needs to be economically vibrant and self-sufficient. A self-sufficient woman can walk out of a bad marriage. Lack of self-sufficiency makes a lot of women stay on in bad marriages considering the demands of being alone like having children to take care of, school fees to pay etc. Some of these women even get killed in such bad marriages. We encourage women to find something to do, even if you are a stay-at-home mother, find something of interest to do while tending to the kids. Some housewives do not invest in their children more than the working mothers, as some are stuck between the screens of their TVs while the children are left at the mercy of the house help. A working mother even as she is upwardly mobile, comes back home, manages her time and fits into the curriculum of her children, she schedules for every member of the family. In either situation, time management is the key factor. We once again encourage more women to join the work force, whether at home, in office, or as entrepreneurs. Reading culture The reading culture is fast eroding but with Working Moms it is reloading as we bring in a lot of rich content. We have a huge readership in Africa. Currently, we have over 20,000 moms in our network. Working Moms magazine is just a part of the project that addresses issues of work, life and creating balancing. My advice for the society My advice? Look inwards and take your place as parents. Good parenting can’t be traded for anything in the world. The family may be the tiniest piece of any society, yet it is the most important unit of the society. We need to raise functional children so we can have a functional society. Without well-groomed children, what you will find is a dysfunctional society, Boko Haram, b aby factory, and all sort of things we will be dealing with. Children are like a plain sheet of paper and what you write on them is what they become. Feed your children with the right kind of value so that at the end of the day we will have a functional society. Every other thing can wait, but upbringing of our children cannot wait. The time to invest in our young ones is now. Original link Read More goo.gl/LHT3ri (y) ✍comment ☏share
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 05:40:46 +0000