Parents need healing before children can thrive

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When children face violence at home, either as a function of discipline or through exposure to violent interactions between adults, long-term problems can take root. Data shows that children exposed to violence are more likely to adopt aggressive behaviour themselves. 

These children manifest continued aggression throughout their lives as part of a cycle of intergenerational violence according to a 2022 study by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and the University of Cape Town (UCT).

But it is not just the presence of violence that creates the cycle, it is also the absence of warm, secure relationships with healthy adult role models. For emotionally and socially well-adjusted children to reach healthy adulthood, secure parental attachment is required, according to psychiatrist John Bowlby’s attachment theory. 

Nothing has changed since this theory was published almost 50 years ago. Children build better resilience and have a higher chance of fulfilling their potential, completing school and developing useful skills if their parents and caregivers spend quality time with them. This includes providing cognitive stimulation, managing bad behaviour, disciplining without violence and teaching self-regulation, en route to real mental well-being. 

Poverty is a contributing factor

Creating safe family spaces has to begin at home, but the ISS/UCT study showed that mothers who live in poverty are more likely to use physical punishment or leave their children unsupervised and are less likely to be affectionate towards their children. Given the high number of people living in poverty in South Africa, how can these parents heal themselves? 

South African parents cannot rely on the government given that official support for parenting and families is almost non-existent and 98% of social services are provided by civil society in the form of independent NGOs. Parents also cannot wait for help from individual NGOs, which are chronically under-resourced and underfunded.

Enter Sappin, the South African Parenting Programme Implementers Network, which unites the civil society organisations that provide parenting programmes. As a network of NGOs, Sappin uses evidence-based research to develop and support parenting programmes across South Africa, with the mandate of helping parents overcome their own problems and build lasting and enduring family relationships.

The earlier parents receive help, the better. Katharine Frost, an educational psychologist and Sappin member, says: “The first 1 000 days are critical. Psychologically, they set the foundation for a child’s future.” 

In South Africa, one in every five children (21.3%) does not live with a parent and only one in three (32.7%) lives with both parents. This absent nuclear family structure is frequently blamed for many of the crises our children face, including intergenerational violence. But when it comes to raising children who are emotionally, socially and behaviourally well-developed, family structure is not as important as setting. 

Are caregivers themselves well?

The key variable is not two parents and a nuclear family unit. It is whether or not parents and caregivers are mentally healthy and whether they themselves have experienced fragmented relationships with the adults in their lives. 

This is why Sappin intends to drive advocacy and policy change in the South African parent/child landscape and to co-develop, research and implement new parenting programmes and models for dissemination to stakeholders. 

Because sustainability has long been a challenge for NGOs, Sappin intends to ensure that quality parenting programmes – and a wider range of interventions – are consistently available across the country. 

By uniting relevant NGOs, Sappin: 

drives the collective organisation, coordination and a bigger formalised voice for the parenting sector; actively drives policy change by undertaking fundraising, communication and advocacy; and by researching, co-developing and implementing new parenting programmes, it serves different NGOs across the network and across the country. 

In the last year, Sappin’s network of member organisations directly supported almost 20 000 families with parenting programmes and reached more than three million parents through information and awareness, and this work is beginning to visibly affect communities.

For example, a new violence prevention programme, “Free to Grow: Family Violence Prevention Programme in a Workplace”, is delivered as a workplace intervention, sponsored and supported by employers. Because the programme is implemented at work, the logistical burden on parents is lighter and it is easier for them to commit to attending. It is also scalable. 

Spearheaded by Sappin, the ISS, and the Seven Passes Initiative (a Sappin member organisation), this particular intervention demonstrates that working together and building collective capacity multiplies the individual resources of NGOs, enabling more significant impacts. 

This is exactly the type of intervention model that has the potential to change the prospects for real violence prevention in South Africa.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.