Few days ago, I was at a discord show on #wls-africa discord server, then there was a discussion about this topic, the show was hosted by @bookoons and there were contributions from @zizymena @mosunomotude and a few others, these set of people gave their thoughts on who's to blame for this epidemic, so I decided to share my own thoughts here on my blog, and if possible continue the discussion as well.

But before we go full speed into this topic, we might need to take a quick look at what juvenile delinquency is.

A juvenile is someone who's considered to be young and not fully developed, and delinquency simply means misconduct, when you add these two words together, it should make sense.
Juvenile delinquency is when a young person, who's not yet mature (mostly around the teen ages) commits a crime or misconduct that's punishable by the law or sometimes seen in the negative light by the society.

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So who do we blame when a child/teenager commits a crime, could it be the Parents, the Society or the child. I'll give my views and I will be open to your thoughts.

The Parents

Train up a child in the way he should go, when he's old, he won't depart from it, thus says a certain wise book. Parents are the caretakers of their children, a school of thought says the lifestyle of a parent influences the life of a child. The parents are with the responsibility of providing their children with their physical, spiritual, emotional, educational and financial needs, and if a Parent should default in one of these, chances are the child tends to look elsewhere for them.

Parents have contributed directly and sometimes indirectly to the way of life or delinquency in the life of their wards, a lot of the children that are abused are due to the negligence of their parents. When a Parent is permissive, negligent in their duties as guardians, indulgent, affirmative enablement of misbehavior, or too authoritative in their parenting style, then the chances are that the child will seek refuge elsewhere. A lot of underage children are on the street hawking, many have resulted to prostitution as a means of survival, many gets introduced into drugs, and they turn addict, many get into robbery and all kinds of crimes. Worst of it all, many females give birth out of wedlock, on the streets with no means of survival for themselves, let alone the new born, thereby, restarting the cycle all over.

There's need for Parents to jealously take care of their children, bring them up with love, let each child see his or her Parents as their friends, someone they could talk to, on just any subject matter, when a child can talk to his/her parents about just anything, there's no way that child is going astray. Especially if the Parents are attentive and caring enough to guide them rightly. Many children's lives has been thwarted and misled due to the lackadaisical attitude of their parents.

We stand a better chance at reducing juvenile delinquencies, if the parents can provide, take care and nurture their children in the right way, either physically, emotionally, educationally, spiritually and otherwise.

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The Society

There's a popular saying that, you need a whole community to raise a child. This simply goes to show that the society also plays a major role in raising the children. Once the parents of a child is negligent in their duties, the next place a child looks to is his/her immediately environment. Sometimes it doesn't have to be the environment, it could be from TVs and other media devices, it can be argued that children and youths are increasingly the target for the production of video games and computer games, most of which tend to promote violence in some way. Then we have the movies and shows that are shown on our TVs. Without proper guidance from Parents, this might also play a major role in the life of a child, take for instance, a child whose parents are always absent, but with so much access to the TV, and if such child is glued to movies or scenes that tends to promote sex, and other vices, then he or she tends to see it as norms.

So the society plays a major role, in shaping a child, but it definitely can be cut down to its barest minimum if the Parents are not negligent in their duties.

The Children

A wise man once said, it doesn't matter where you were born, what matters is who you choose to become. Being born into a dysfunctional society, or raised by Parents who are negligent should only spur us to do better as kids. For we've seen enough examples of what we shouldn't become, then we can firmly make for ourselves the things we really want to be. Life gives us options, that's why they say, if life gives you lemon, you should make lemonade.

A child can choose for him or herself to become what the society isn't and what the Parents isn't. If it's possible for a good parent to raise a bad child, then it's also possible for a bad parent to have a good child. All the child needs to do is make up his or her mind to be better. We've had a lot of examples of great men and women who were either born into a dysfunctional society or raised by parents who were negligent, but they still turned out great.

In a way, it's all up to the child to decide, if he or she wants to be great, or if he or she will rather become the bad example that the parents or the society have been or truly make greatness for him or herself.

So that's basically my thoughts, I feel all three factors shares a part in the blame, but if it were to be given in percentages, then the parents gets the highest, followed by the child, then the society.

What do you think? Who would you blame for a juvenile delinquent?

Thanks for reading