Ensuring Children's Safety is a Feminist Issue Too

Blossom by Hippy Heidi

While reading my PUNCH newspaper newsfeed a couple of days back, I came across an article about a hit and run truck accident in Lagos that stated that as some students of Ojodu Grammar School were going home after closing from school, a truck ran over them. Additionally, it was confirmed that at least ten died and others were injured. Among other things, this incident brought to mind a conversation I had had with someone about how irresponsible it is to leave children by themselves or drop them off with just anyone or even well known neighbors, for that matter. At the time of that conversation, I had blatantly agreed that it was indeed irresponsible and thought no further of it. What I have now come to realize is how much of that viewpoint is shrouded in privilege, especially socio-economic privilege. While I may not be the daughter of Otedola or Dangote, I have access to good housing, clean water, basic hygiene products, three square meals a day and non-public transportation. 
In blaming parents, especially mothers, for what we see as negligent parenting, we forget that being a woman comes in many different shades and mainstream feminism can sometimes forget some of the most essential problems that women might face. As much as it claims to be for all women, mainstream feminism can sometimes dwell so much on Western versions of feminism emphasizing on the themes of gender wage gap and date rape culture that it forgets that issues like hunger, housing, transportation, etc., are all very much feminist issues too. 
As much as some problems or patriarchal ideologies cut across women from all walks of life, we sometimes forget issues peculiar to women (specifically mothers in this case) who live with disabilities, who are illiterate, queer, immigrants and who suffer from mental health struggles.
It is easy to call some other mothers irresponsible when you have enough disposable income to hire nannies and drivers or the school you send your children to has a functioning school bus. Think of the mothers who have to set up their stalls as early as 5am to make the akara (bean cakes) that they are going to sell to customers on their way to work or school. Do they have the time to walk their five year old to school and walk back to set up in time? Think of every naira that could be lost from opening the shop later than usual. For many women who are family heads, it can be a lose-lose situation. If they do not make enough money, they might not be able to keep their children in school or afford basic food and basic cleaning and hygiene products for survival. We might see some moms we aspire to be like on TV. The moms who can juggle home and work life so perfectly that we cannot help but feel repulsion for the others who cannot simply walk their children to school. 
While it is important to acknowledge the hard work of those supermoms and not discredit their efforts, we remain somewhat unfair by failing to remember that such people often have a lot more resources at their disposal. On another note, we feel disgust for poor and/or uneducated people who keep having more and more children, but sex education still remains inadequate or even, completely absent. We look at their immediate surrounding and think of them as unkempt and dirty but what facilities or systems do we have in place to grant everyone access to basic hygiene products? Some neighborhoods are so cramped up that there is no space to hang wet clothes in the absence of a dryer. With the epileptic power supply, perishable foods spoil faster and some families move from bad nutrition to outright malnutrition. Privilege can be so blinding that it might not occur to you that not everyone has a fridge or gas cooker. Some people would rather down rotten food than throw it away and go hungry. 
I might be a woman who will end up having her own children, but the way motherhood will look for me as a cisgender, able-bodied, straight, middle class woman might be very different from how someone who does not tick all these checkboxes might experience motherhood. 
Another important thing to awaken to is how often feminism is made out to be an individualistic movement. We do not have to do it all on our own. To be the badass woman that has conquered all barriers to be the supermom or CEO or whatever else. We have to make a conscious effort to realize that many more women, as well as people of other sexes, face institutional barriers that stem from different parts of their identity that make some hurdles harder to jump over. While I do not claim to be the perfect feminist, I believe that feminism in Nigeria, Africa, developing countries and in fact, the world at large, does not always have to resemble Western world mainstream notions of feminism. Feminism should be a concept that reaches out to everyone. One that does not condemn people for living in poverty. One that seeks effective solutions to combat various issues that disproportionately affect different kinds of women. One that leaves space for collaboration and dialogue. One that combines words with actions and one that does not wait to be validated by everyone before getting to work. 
While there are definitely negligent parents, I would like to assume that many parents would like to supervise their children and not leave them to walk to school alone or keep them at neighbors' houses while they go off to work. However, there are hard choices to make and choosing not to work, or choosing to go for a PTA meeting or choosing to walk the kids to school, is unfortunately a luxury that a number of people do not have. Rather than see this as their personal shortcoming, we should be looking towards improving the public transport system, finding ways to combat housing and food insecurity and ensure that the safety of children is something that no parent has to sacrifice in order to bring food to the table or put shirts on their children's backs.