Money Woes Weakens Family Unit
23 year old Nakelo (Tailevu) lass Nanise Rainima won the first category up for grabs in the race to find Miss Fiji 2014. Miss Rainima, sponsored by APCO COATINGS spoke on the links between the the economic prosperity of a country and the increase in social ills plaguing families. A former Head Girl and Dux of Suva Grammar School, Miss Rainima is a full time missionary who works with university students. Her personal platform at the Vodafone Fiji Hibiscus Festival is Youth Development: Encouraging young people to realise that they have a purpose. Nanise is from Nakelo Tailevu and is a vasu of the chiefly island of Bau, Tailevu. She hold a Bachelor of Science in Bio/Chemistry with minor in Physics from the University of the South Pacific. She loves working with young people and singing.
NANISE RAINIMA, MISS APCO COATINGS Our society seems to be struggling from disintegrating family values, increasing domestic violence family breakdown and separation and teenage pregnancies. What, in your view, is the underlying cause of these problems and what is your solution to them?
Good afternoon Judges, Members of the audience, fellow contestants and to you all who are watching through Fiji One.
What is causing these problems to arise? Teenage pregnancies, increasing domestic violence and family breakdown, who is to be blamed for this? Can we blame the media? That is influencing our children with foreign ideologies? Or maybe an obvious one would be to put the blame on the parents’, who are not teaching their children the right thing to do? Is that it? I don’t think that’s fair from their perspective.
Sir Sidney Poitier who is the author of The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography says, “Of all my father's teachings, the most enduring was the one about the true measure of a man. That true measure was how well he provided for his children, and it stuck with me as if it were etched in my brain.”
That is a man who understood the role of the sole bread winner of the family and I believe that that is the root cause of disintegrating family values meaning; the strength of a family is weakened by money woes simple as that. It all has to do with the economic security of the family unit.
To illustrate the effects of economic problems on family values, allow me to bring forth a review of a play: Death of a salesman on CNN by Julian Zelizer an accomplished author and Professor of History and Public Affairs in Princeton University. In his review, he made valid conclusions that economic problems affects family values. His review identifies the following: 1. Job growth, 2. Taking care of the old and 3. Education and its cost.
Let’s bring this home to our situation in Fiji. His observations can be true to us.
Credible qualifications attracts good job opportunities. It’s one thing to find a job and another to get a good-paying job. The trend of successfully finding a job these days continue to decrease, unemployment rate shoots up. Because of this many dimly see a prosperous future and cease to try.
When the family members don’t feel their jobs are stable, or they don’t have jobs especially with married couples, tensions quickly mounts on basic issues such as paying the rent or mortgage and buying food which leads to domestic violence and family breakdowns. Too often the society is ignorant to the effects of economic strains on families.
Another source of economic instability comes from taking care of the old, in terms of their social security and health. The main income earners of the family struggle between providing for their children and their elderly parents. Our society is so used to communal living where people live with their extended families and this in turn demands extra financial commitment to the sole bread winner. This burden cause stress which gives birth to conflicts within the family structure. Families experiencing this become oblivious to the importance of family time where moral values are instilled in children’s minds. Values that children will pass on to their children and so on and so forth. Because of the pressure and the conflict, family values begin to disintegrate.
Finally there is education and the cost associated with it. There is a need for higher education especially when one aims to get a really good job. Initiatives are set up to encourage further education in developing skills, capabilities, intelligence and expertise for a more marketable economy. In Fiji today, with the student loans scheme now in place, compared to the respective scholarship awards, once students graduate and before they work they are already in debt. This is a major disadvantage when they are setting up their own households because rental or mortgage payments needs to be met along with the daily sustenance and additional family commitments. If the income is not sufficient to meet the growing family needs, tension begins to rise within the family. On the contrary, those who do not complete education becomes a financial burden on the family.
A solution that I can think of is good, sound economic policies by policymakers which will create more job opportunities in the private and public sectors, also in the Technical and Vocational areas. The more job opportunities, the more people are employed the better it is for the family unit. Sound economic policies will also help the senior citizens through social security benefits which will alleviate the burden on the family finances. Once job opportunities increases and social security benefits for the aged are taken care of, resources are freed to be utilised for family consumption even education. Also influential stakeholders in the community like churches, youth groups and sporting clubs should play their roles in instilling good moral values. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, I would say that a productive, well-educated and a healthy and moral society will see a great reduction in the social ills that have been mentioned this afternoon. Vinaka.