Kenyan Parents Urged to Help Teenagers “make responsible choices” amid Surge in Pregnancy

Bishop Kariuki who heads the Commission for Education and Religious Education of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) attributed the challenge to parents.

“Parents have failed in their parenting responsibility: both in educating their children and in defending them,” Bishop Kariuki who is also the Local Ordinary of Kenya’s Embu diocese said, adding in reference to parents, “They will now appreciate the role of the teachers, who constantly counsel these girls and safeguard them from vicious predators.”

Our constitution defends minors, hence those who have impregnated them should face the law, the 52-year-old Prelate told ACI Africa during the interview.

The Bishop’s concern over the parenting approach by parents has been echoed by the Youth Chaplain in the affected diocese, Fr. Alexander Kituku who told ACI Africa in a June 17 interview, “Parents do not want to walk with their children, that’s where the blame is.”

According to the Youth Chaplain, it seems the ideal parenting no longer exists.

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What exists is an “auto-piloting of things” where parents only provide materially for their children but leave them to navigate other aspects of life on their own, hoping they will turn out fine, Fr. Alexander said.

“This is the high time we (rang) a bell to the parents and tell them: wake up; walk with your children; know where they are; know their friends; go to their bedrooms and see what’s there; open their boxes and see what they have kept there,” Fr. Alexander told ACI Africa in the June 17 interview, adding, “You should know the environment of your children because it will tell you who and how your child is.”

The Cleric has urged parents to strive to bring up their children in a Christian manner by encouraging them to be prayerful and to read the scriptures noting that by doing so, the children “learn morals, know how to control themselves, and understand what God is telling them.”

To prevent the youth in the diocese from engaging in immorality, Fr. Alexander is planning to collaborate with fellow priests to do the “bare minimum” for a start, by reaching out to the youths through “recording audio messages and sharing them on WhatsApp and Facebook.”

The message, the Youth Chaplain in Kenya’s Machakos Diocese says, is to tell the youth “that this is not the time for them to do such things. They are in a period of formation and when they start engaging in such things, they will destroy their lives.”

“We will try to guide them on how to remain engaged since the majority of them are engaging in these issues (sexual immorality) because they have a lot of free time and are available to these men,” Fr. Alexander told ACI Africa adding, “They need to engage in healthy activities not destructive things.”

For the Education Secretary in Machakos diocese, Fr. Francis Kioko, the “alarming numbers” on teenage pregnancies in the region “ring a bell that the government needs to do something about the reopening of schools” since its where children are “protected against those (sex) predators.”