Birthday celebrations have a universal significance. There are specific rituals that attend the birth of a child and future celebration of that day. Horoscope, a body of knowledge, developed to give daily forecasts about individuals born in a particular month has become very popular in recent times as folks religiously assimilate whatever it says. A colleague posted his daughter’s birthday photos on Facebook and made a comment on how he celebrated his own birthday by mounting the escalator at Kingsway, Ibadan, Nigeria, after taking black and white photos from a pinhole camera.
For children and teenagers; birthday celebrations are usually full of fun since life may not have started making serious demands. However, in late adolescent years; some manifestation of maladjustment disorders may be present in terms of extreme social withdrawal, labile moods showing as a sudden drop in school grades. Adolescent birthday celebrations could be a reminder of repeated failures at getting admission to the University and a social pointer to delay in achieving the secondary sexual characteristics especially breast development for the girls and muscle development for the boys. This poses a great challenge for parents to give emotional and psychological support as this may lay the foundation for future psychiatric problems. In developed and most emerging cultures; the 18th birthday is remarkable because of the social independence it promises although most times without a corresponding emotional maturity. This predisposes them to wild adventures especially sexual escapades without corresponding emotional and financial support to handle the consequence. This may be responsible for teenage pregnancy and the attendant psychological disturbances. They are more prone to developing psychiatric disorders after childbirth and drop out of school. For the teenage boy; the 18th birthday may be the period of initiation into drug use especially marijuana, most times, they start using it for coping with social demands of the newly acclaimed status of independence until it becomes an addiction.
For a lady, the 21st birthday is significant as it is assumed that from there she can be a wife and a mother. However, the emotional and psychological maturity crucial for these social functions is often times not there apart from the biological facilities appropriate for the age. Quite a number of our present-day marital problems stem from this dissonance. Beyond higher education certificates and physical maturity, a good number still have issues of self-definition, independent initiatives, resilience, communication and problems solving. Invariably they employ maladaptive coping mechanisms as some develop mental illness in marriage or after childbirth as a result of a poor adjustment to the challenges of motherhood. There is a whole lot of difference between the wedding ceremony and the married life. Marriage takes a very serious toll on the psycho-social resources of the couple.
According to Erik Erikson, in his epigenetic principle; the age of 40 is an important psychological birthday. This is obviously the premise for the popular saying that a fool at forty is a fool forever. The fortieth birthday celebration is expected to produce a well-adjusted individual consolidating on a career that draws naturally from his endowments and being involved in a mutually beneficial emotional or marital relationship. Birthday celebrations before forty provide opportunities to evaluate how one is progressing towards maturity. What we bring to forty derives from factors like the circumstances of birth, type of family and the style of parenting. Other important issues include spiritual or religious philosophy, attitudes and values developed over the years about self, relationships and society. As a result of our strong modern materialistic orientation and poor socioeconomic circumstances, a good number of folks hit forty with psychological issues. The prevailing unemployment has devastating effects on our youths hence the preponderance of maladaptive patterns of behaviour. Men refuse to marry and we have an increasing number of elderly spinsters.
There is a need for a modified and culturally compliant cognitive readjustment strategy at forty to reduce the psychological crisis that attends this milestone. Value clarification and readjustments are very crucial. If this is not done; it will take a toll on future milestone celebrations like the one at fifty where the individual is expected to be actively engaged in strong altruistic and self-transcendent activities having negotiated the mid-life crisis. Drug and alcohol addiction usually marks the maladjusted mid-life birthday celebrations culminating in failed marriages, delinquent children and career disasters. The seventieth birthday celebration should be one of looking back with satisfaction and sound mental health derivable from an awareness of a life of creative contribution. Our birthdays should be celebrated with an objective personal interrogation of our values and thoughts on how aligned we are with our ideal codes. Mental health experts could be very useful in this regard as they can help identify issues before they constitute serious problems and guide us in our parenting approaches.
Dr Adeoye Oyewole
adeoyewole2000@yahoo.com
+234 803 490 5808 (WhatsApp Only)
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