Umleavyo, The Dilemma of Parents is composed of studies on the gap between the generations and how this gap has widened over the past century. The past serves as the seemingly stable background on which to project currently fluid and ambiguous parent-child relationships. The focus of the studies is often on the different methods and goals for bringing up the next generation. These range from physical punishment, to achieving compliance through fear and reference to supernatural forces, to initiation ceremonies that provide multiple precautions and timely instruction on marriage and procreation, to the emphasis on relations between people as the most crucial experiences and to the encouragement of a sense personal responsibility.
This volume is based on the narratives of the grandparents, parents and youths in the villages of the Pare people in the north and of the initiation leaders in Songea in the south, and on a comparison of the opinions of elders and youths about gender issues among the Nyakyusa. The unwillingness of parents to talk about a topic so delicate that they cannot find the right words is confronted. Parents are handicapped in their efforts to discuss sexual matters with their children by a lack of terms that are sufficiently clear, without being crude.
Part of the parents' dilemma arises from societal conditions they cannot control. For a long time, individualisation has been understood as a response to hitherto unknown opportunities opened up by education, science and technology. Currently, there are two main branches of individualism: one involving those who have been able to emancipate themselves and reap some of the benefits of modernisation, and another for those for whom the modem economies have no use - surplus people individualised by force, poverty and eroding social bonds. How should one support youths for whom there is no clear passage to full adulthood? How can one forge links between the plight of families and issues of citizenship and public action? These are some of the questions raised in this book.
