Unemployment and Life Course Parenting in Nigeria: Implications for Traditional African Social Security

The phenomenon of unemployment and its effects are not the same in every society. In most African countries and in Nigeria in particular, parents are responsible for the cost of education and/or skill acquisitions of their children, not only for the children to be independent of their parents in future, but for the children to be able to take care of their parents when they are too old or incapacitated to work. However, the rate of youth unemployment in Nigeria (42.24% or about 38.2 million) is making parenting a life course, a situation of ‘till death do us path’. This study adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection. The qualitative method uses in-depth interviews, while the quantitative involves the use of structured questionnaire. The respondents are stratified along parents and unemployed youth in Lagos State, Nigeria. Secondary data from National Population Commission and National Bureau of Statistics were used for the rate of unemployment. The result shows that parenting is a continuum as parents are not only investing in the training of their children, the investment continues even after graduation and skill acquisition, even at adulthood. Parents also take huge financial responsibility in the marriage ceremony of their children and continue to assist the family after marriage, due to unemployment. The supposed independent of the children of their parents are becoming unachievable and the pay-back period, the expected traditional social security, has become a mirage. The paper suggests adequate social policy measures, which include: adequate provisions of social facilities, improvement in educational curriculum, affordable housing scheme, free health care facilities for the aged, unemployment allowances, educational loan, skill acquisitions, diversification of the economy among others.