Truth is, this is both assumptions and fantasies. We may have a responsible family member who will stand by everyone and do his best, but to assume that children are made or treated so well that they don’t know their parents, or that being taken care of by responsible family members completely replaces having their parents around, is simply false.
The oldest family member I knew who was taken care of by his dad’s sibling is an only child was born in 1942. He has raised to the pinnacle of his career and has been the breadwinner to the larger family since the 80s he still talked about how lucky he is to be a member of that particular family and, at the same time, how he wished his parents had lived a little longer.
Another, born in the 80s, was loved, adored and well cared for. Yet she told me how alone and deeply empty she feels, and that her prayer every day is to live long enough for her children to grow up without experiencing what she did.
Unless you experience that emptiness yourself, you will never truly understand what they go through.
May our parents live long, and may we as parents live long enough to see our children to fruition. This, of course, is without prejudice to the reality of orphans.
In the past, when the extended family system worked terrifically well, children could grow up without knowing that they were not of the same parents. Children of brothers in the extended family would live in one large family compound and would often be catered for by one older brother. All of them were called Baba.
During festivities, they would wear the same uniform habiliment to celebrate Sallah, Maulud, etc. At a point, you would grow up not knowing your real father until you reached a certain age in life.
Sometimes, children of a late family member would be adopted by another family member and would even use his name in school instead of that of their real parents. They wouldn’t be treated unfairly or unjustly; it was only after they had come of age that they would realise their orphanhood. This is the Arewa most of us grew up in. This is the context I was referring to.
So, when we talk about these types of things, it’s egregiously from a prism of an informed realities. It is what was obtainable in our societies before “modernisation” and “civilisation” robbed us of that family system that defined our growth, shaped our perception, and charted a course for our adulthood.