TOUGH TALKING DOREEN BILLINGS: Mothers have failed their children

SHE believes as a nation we have let down our children big time, and mothers, especially, have failed their children miserably.

Doreen Billings, head of Mother in Crisis, says the change — towards a better country and better families — lies in mothers taking back their roles as heads of households.

BILLINGS... we are too busy trying to be friends with our children and not being mothers and fathers. (Photo: Jermaine Barnaby

“Mothers can influence their households,” Billings said last week, addressing the Women’s Empowerment Expo held at the National Indoor Sports Centre.

“Its starts with the moms. Mothers are the ones who have influence...”

Mother in Crisis, a group of mothers who seek to empower other moms, helps everyone from women seeking advice on violent children, to women who knowingly go to bed at night with mass murderers. The group also patrols the bus routes in an effort to get kids to avoid engaging in disruptive behaviour on buses.

This tough-talking 58-year-old mother of three boys didn’t hold back on scathing criticism of parenting methods, as she addressed the audience at the expo. Excerpts are shared below.

On mothers failing their children:

“To say that we the mothers have failed our children is an understatement. We have failed our children so badly, I mean you can see it. The way they dress, both males and females; the way they carry themselves, their approach to life — we have failed them totally. Our children are emotionless, they look at things differently, there is no passion in them it’s like they are blank. When you speak to the young people they are saying they are not concerned about what tomorrow is going to be ‘because we live in a community where gunshot is firing everyday, 24 hours, so there is no guarantee that we are going to live to see another day’. And when you say that there is a future, they say ‘but what future? I don’t see my parents being better off so what’s going to make us better off?’

We the mothers have not trained our sons to be respectful to females. We don’t train them to do anything — not even to boil water.

We have not set standards for our children and that is what we need to do.”

On barrel children:

“Some parents fail their children from the moment they get a visa. Mothers have abandoned their children to go to foreign lands where they feel that the grass is greener and the streets are covered in gold. And then some of them send stuff in barrels. But how can a barrel speak to a child emotionally and mentally? What happens to nurturing? You are sending them all these nice things but what are they going to do with them? It can’t comfort them at nights when they are looking for a mother. When they want a mother she is not there, she is too busy earning. In some cases the mothers forget their children. They go abroad and they meet a new man and start a new family and they forget their kids that they leave out here.”

On how the nation has failed the children:

“What legacy are we leaving for our children as a nation? The country has not made any preparation for our children. Crime rate, carnal abuse, no jobs, no nothing, the country has not grown at all, not even a little bit. So what signals are we sending our children? We have the artistes who they gravitate towards and the sort of messages that some of these musicians are putting out is terrible!”

On being friends with your children:

“We are too busy trying to be friends with our children and not being mothers and fathers. People come and say to me that mothers need to be friends with their children. Are you kidding me? If he (child) wants friends let him go to school to look friends, I am not his friend. I am his mother! And that is my role and I don’t want to change it.”