Should parents be blamed on the rise of teen pregnancies?
A Catholic priest in Embu has associated the increased cases of adolescents engaging in early sex to failure by parents who share rooms with their teens.
Fr Patrick Mugendi said many parents usually share houses, and in some cases bedrooms, with their boys and girls, thus introducing them to sexual activities at a young age.
Speaking at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, Kyeni, where 200 newly circumcised boys are recuperating, the priest decried high incidences of such boys sharing houses with their parents.
Fr Mugendi said the traditional ways where circumcised boys had their own houses discouraged early sex.
He said the boys who are being taken through various topics to guide them in life had said they faced huge challenges to address their problems since they stayed in the same houses with their parents.
“When parents share houses with such big boys, you find that there is no privacy over what is happening and the children are exposed to those things. We are asking parents to set aside different rooms for such boys so that they can be away when they are engaging in their activities,” said Fr Mugendi.
He said the church had started mentoring the boys so as to sensitize them on the dangers of engaging in early sex, drugs and substance abuse and how to be committed Christians.
“The boy child has been neglected. Old men used to call the boys together and guide them on how to behave during maturity. Nowadays, we don’t have huts where elderly men stayed and the church has taken that role and to tell them what is happening in their lives. We want to show them that the church is not for only women, but also for men and how the men can hold the church,” said Fr Mugendi.
Adding that the boys, who completed their KCPE this year, will be taken through two-week training and will be guided on drugs and substance abuse, sexuality, sacraments and behavioral change among the youth.