The Hidden Wound of a Strict Religious Upbringing

Over 90% of people in Sub-Saharan Africa say that religion is very important in their life. This religious fervor shapes everything: daily routines, social circles, marriage, and of course, parenting. For many of us, prayer and religious rituals were not just a big part of childhood; they were non-negotiable. That is not, in itself, a bad thing. Faith has carried African families through unimaginable hardships. It has provided community, moral grounding, and a sense of meaning that no secular framework has managed to replace.

But is there something that can go wrong inside even the most devout household? Yes. And the silence around it does not make it less real.

This article is not an attack on faith, on any religion, or on parents who chose to raise their children with deep religious conviction. These patterns appear across traditions: in Christian homes, Muslim homes, and others. The question is not whether faith belongs in the family. It does. The question is what happens when faith is used, often without realising it, as a substitute for parenting.

Many deeply religious parents have witnessed what they genuinely believe to be miracles. Their faith is not performative; it is real, earned, and sincere. And from that place of sincere faith, some of them make a quiet decision: God will raise my children. They provide food, clothing, healthcare, and education. They pray over their children faithfully. And then they step back. But here is what that child experiences: a parent who is present in the house but absent in the relationship. Your child has emotional needs, not just physical and spiritual ones. Sometimes he needs you simply as a parent who loves him, or as a more experienced human being who can help him make sense of what he is going through. Not every moment calls for a spiritual guide. Some moments just call for a parent.

Another trap is seeing every life event: every behaviour, every struggle, and every developmental milestone, through a purely religious framework. This makes it especially hard to approach a child’s behaviour with empathy, because anything that falls short of expectation gets labelled as a moral or spiritual failure rather than understood as a normal part of growing up. The examples are painfully familiar to many: a two-year-old who won’t listen — demons got into him. A teenager who pushes back against the family rules — demons got into her! This is where many parent-child relationships begin to fracture. The child feels not just misunderstood, but spiritually condemned by the very people who are supposed to be their safe haven. And more often than not, it is precisely this experience that makes a child grow up to resent the religious life rather than embrace it.

 I am a Christian. I know the power of prayer. I am also a human being, and I know that not every problem is a spiritual problem. Some problems are ordinary life problems, and they require our active engagement before they require divine intervention. This is not a contradiction of faith. It is an honest understanding of how life works. When your child gathers the courage to tell you she is struggling, that she is confused, or overwhelmed, or depressed, she already knows she should pray. You have been telling her that her whole life. What she is coming to you for is something different: to be heard. To feel that what she is going through is real and understood. To have a conversation where you share your own experiences, your own moments of confusion, your own humanity. But if your son opens up to you about a deep struggle and the only response he receives is pray more, fast more, that is not comfort. That is dismissal. What it communicates, unintentionally but clearly, is that you, the person he loves and trusts most, cannot meet him where he is. That is a wound that prayer alone will not heal.

This trap is particularly acute for parents who hold positions of authority or visibility in their religious community, pastors, imams, deacons, elders. The reputation they carry is real and it matters to them. But that reputation has a cost, and it is their children who often pay it. The cost comes in many forms: conversations that cannot happen because they would be unseemly, experiences that are forbidden because they might compromise the family’s image, emotions that must be hidden because holiness does not look like that. And then there is the heaviest cost of all: the moment a child sees, behind closed doors, a version of their parent that bears no resemblance to the one the congregation admires. The gap between the public saint and the private person creates a confusion about morality and faith that can take decades to untangle. And when it finally comes undone, it rarely comes undone quietly. It often bursts into the very scandal the reputation was built to prevent. Because after all: No one is good, except God alone (Mark 10:18). No parent, however devout, is exempt from that truth.

Children learn far more through observation than through rules. If faith is a genuine and living part of your life, let your children see it, not as a performance, but as something that actually sustains you, comforts you, and makes you more human, not less. Give them structure when they are very young. As they grow, give them room. Inspire them with your faith without becoming so consumed by the spiritual that you become unreachable to them as a person. And show them, through your actions, not just your words, that your love for them does not depend on their compliance with your beliefs. They are still learning many things about life, questioning and resisting is part of their learning journey, it is part of their growth. Allow them their right to be children. Allow them to experience life and to grow.