The wife of Vicar and President Holy Cross Anglican Church, Wuye, Abuja, Mrs Funmilayo Taiwo, on Sunday urged Nigerian women to give their children quality upbringing that would guarantee their future rest.
Taiwo, on the occasion of 2019 Mother’s Day, implored women that better upbringing is the only investment and surety that parents can bequeath their children.
She explained that good children’s upbringing would yield better and unimaginable reward for mothers in their old age.
She described Mother’s Sunday as one of the favorite festivals of the year coming as it does half way through Lent.
“The lovely flowers given each year to Mums in church brings a welcome splash of colors.
“But it is also good to reflect on the wider meaning of ‘Mothering’, which the Cambridge Dictionary defines as “the process of caring for children as their mother, or of caring for people as a mother does”.
“While acknowledging the very special relationship between a mother and her child, it embraces today’s reality, where the lead care could equally be a single father, a grandparent, or someone in the wider family or community.
“It is vitally important to celebrate them all, as they help ensure that every child can grow up in a loving and supportive environment,” she explained.
According to her, there is a saying in Africa, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’. It is reality that in every family there are people who have died for one reasons or the other.
“We cannot just leave their children. We should bring them into our families, our extended families, all have both biological children and children that we have welcomed in”.
On the usefulness of good parenting on the society, she advised women to be resourceful, modesty, live exemplary lives and be teachers to every child around.
Taiwo said the definition of a mother goes beyond the caring for children to “caring for people as a mother does as well”.
It is so important, on Mother’s Sunday, that people should take time to celebrate and thank all mothers, who work in ways great and small to help others.
The Preacher at the service, Mrs Anichukwu Chibuzor, urged mothers to spend their quality time in raising their children, adding that the duty of raising a child is beyond house help and relatives contributions.
Chibuzor said taking care of children would pass down the needed noble character that would show forth the light of God to the world.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that Mothering Sunday falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent, exactly three weeks before Easter Day.
It is observed as a day where people visit and pray for their mother with a view to honouring them and giving them presents.(NAN)
