Emotional growth: Through social media, films, podcasts and online forums, we are exposed daily to alternative models of parenting from around the world.
I recently had a candid conversation with my physiotherapist, Mokgadi Mohale, a University of Cape Town graduate with a flourishing practice in Auckland Park, Johannesburg. I regularly consult Mokgadi, not just for her physiotherapy expertise, but also for the warmth she brings into every session.
On one particular visit, I asked her where her kindness came from. What began as a casual exchange soon evolved into a thoughtful exploration of our shared experiences growing up in African households — particularly on the theme of parenting and, more specifically, the deep-rooted aversion many African parents have to apologising to their children. An important issue that requires public engagement because of its mental health implications for the vast majority of African youths.
This issue is one that resonates across many African homes. Among adults who reflect on their upbringing, one recurring theme is the difficulty, or near impossibility, of receiving an apology from their parents, even when it is clear that a wrong was committed.
Many carry a quiet frustration, often expressing how they felt misunderstood, neglected, or even emotionally abandoned, during their formative years.
For some, the complaint centres on discipline. They were harshly punished for minor infractions or treated with a level of severity that, in hindsight, feels excessive.
For others, the issue is emotional absence. Many recall fathers who were physically present in the home but emotionally and psychologically distant, or who were frequently absent altogether due to work commitments.
Stories abound of fathers missing birthdays, school plays, sporting events and the simple moments that mattered in the life of a vulnerable child. In each of these narratives lies a common thread — a yearning for presence, recognition and, ultimately, an apology.
This emotional distance has created long-term tension in the relationships between adult children and their fathers. Some individuals trace their struggles with mental health or their difficulty forming healthy relationships back to this paternal absence. Others suggest that, paradoxically, this absence forced them to grow up quickly and become resilient.
By being denied childhood comforts, they argue, they were shaped into strong, self-sufficient adults. But even this silver lining does not erase the psychological wounds carried by many.
Mokgadi and I reflected on how these experiences are not isolated to South Africa or Nigeria, where we respectively come from. Rather, they span various African contexts, revealing a pattern of generational disconnect and emotional misalignment.
I want to argue here that therapy, especially intergenerational therapy, can play a vital role in repairing these broken relationships. But before rushing to clinical interventions, it is crucial to understand why this aversion to apologising exists in the first place.
I suggest that one overlooked explanation lies in the conflict between two different social worlds — one shaped by tradition (the generation of our parents) and the other influenced by modernity and globalisation through technological transfer (our generation). This tension is rarely acknowledged in discussions about African parenting.
Let me explain.
When African parents, especially fathers, are challenged about their emotional absence or refusal to apologise, a common defence is that they were simply doing what they had to do, working long hours to provide for their families. Their love, they argue, was demonstrated through sacrifice, not through affection or verbal affirmation.
In their minds, the long days and sleepless nights were not neglectful, but deeply loving. The priority was to secure opportunities they never had, to ensure their children would have better futures. And, indeed, many of us owe our educational and professional accomplishments to their tireless labour.
But this rationale overlooks a deeper issue. While our parents’ love was shaped by sacrifice and survival, we, brought up in a different time and under different cultural influences, measure love differently.
We expect emotional availability, verbal affirmation and, crucially, accountability through apology when harm is done. This disconnect of generational emotional accountability should not be understood at face value; it is a disconnect that is embedded in technological transfer.
What do I mean?
Unlike our parents, we are children of the digital age. We are tech-savvy, globally connected and culturally hybrid. Through social media, films, podcasts and online forums, we are exposed daily to alternative models of parenting from around the world. We see parents who not only attend their children’s milestones but also apologise when they make mistakes, express love openly and prioritise emotional intelligence.
These globalised perspectives have reshaped our expectations. We unconsciously internalise these new values and apply them as moral standards when judging our own parents, often forgetting that they were brought up in entirely different socio-cultural contexts, with fewer opportunities for exposure and reflection.
Many of our parents currently do not engage with digital technologies the way we do. They rarely watch international content and their emotional vocabularies were formed in a world where parental authority was absolute and seldom questioned.
This mismatch in cultural reference points creates conflict. We expect our parents to understand, and meet, modern emotional standards, even though they were never socialised into them.
We judge them according to our own globally influenced frameworks, often without acknowledging that their worldview was forged in a time and place where vulnerability was seen as weakness and apologies from elders were culturally unthinkable.
As a scholar of technology and philosophy, I teach post-phenomenology, a school of thought that examines how technologies shape human experience, including moral behaviour. One key insight from post-phenomenology is that technology is never value-neutral.
When a technology, such as digital media, is transferred from one culture to another, it brings with it new values, norms and expectations. These can disrupt existing traditions and reshape how people relate to one another, often without conscious awareness.
Thus, digital technology has not only connected us to the world; it has transformed how we perceive ourselves, our parents and the moral expectations we place on them. Our use of technology has expanded our emotional lexicon, giving us access to ideas and values our parents were never exposed to. But this expansion has also widened the emotional gap between generations.
To be clear, I am not suggesting we excuse or downplay the harm caused by parental neglect or emotional absence. Nor am I saying every African parent who refuses to apologise does so out of cultural duty.
Abuse, in any form, must be addressed directly. However, for many of us, the tension with our parents is not about abuse, but about emotional misalignment. It is about differing moral vocabularies, shaped by different life experiences.
If we are to heal these rifts, through therapy or otherwise, we must first acknowledge the different social worlds that we and our parents inhabit. We must approach these conversations not just with pain and accusation, but with critical understanding.
Therapy becomes more effective when it is not only a space for venting grievances, but also for cultivating empathy across generational and cultural lines.
In this way, I hope this reflection can encourage a more thoughtful and compassionate dialogue between African children and their parents.
We can hold them accountable while also recognising the limits of their social conditioning. Perhaps, with time and patience, we can bridge the divide, not only through therapy but through mutual recognition of the complex histories that shape our ways of loving, hurting and healing.
Edmund Terem Ugar teaches philosophy and the philosophy of modern technology at the University of Johannesburg and North-West University.