Editor,

RE: "Parenting can’t be delegated to schools” (The New Times, March 21).

Gone are the days when parenting was done at the family level and, more important, as a community responsibility. But this has changed in recent past with babysitters and the milk bottles virtually replacing parents.

Parenting has apparently fallen in the hands of schools so much today people’s morals are more inclined to education rather than the nurturing one needs during childhood.

I’m not by anyway saying schools can’t parent but the lead should be taken by the parents. Parents seem to have given up on their responsibilities claiming to be working hard to shape the future of the young ones yet they should spend more time in preparing them for tomorrow.

You cannot give birth to a child and fail to prepare them for a better future, it is every parent’s responsibility to provide the foundation on which a child’s subsequent handlers will build.

Communities should also resume the quality of collective parenting, whereby every child was a responsibility of all. Today you find people not willing to correct children who are misbehaving. But once the time of harvesting the seeds of immorality comes the community will share equitably.

Look at a scenario where a boy abuses illegal substance and the whole community is silent about it but these are parents to girls who this boy will probably end up raping once those drugs take their toll on him.

We need to collectively feel concerned before it’s too late.

Kassim Bizimungu