The role of family in nation building could not be over-emphasized; children are the leaders of tomorrow. The importance attached to effective child upbringing necessitated establishment of international agencies like United Nation International Children Emergency Funds, Amnesty International, Red Cross, Care International and others. The kind of profession most Nigerian parents engage in impede their effective parenting roles, and the consequences of these are manifested in deviant behavior which cumulated into cultism and other threats to nationhood. Hence, this paper assessed parents` career pursuit and child rearing as loopholes for deviance in Nigeria. The study applied both quantitative and qualitative methods; the quantitative method was descriptive and cross-sectional. Primary data were obtained through administration of questionnaire to 290 parents;- simple random and purposive sampling techniques were adopted. The qualitative method was done through content analysis textbooks, journals and internet. Primary data were analyzed through descriptive methods of frequency distribution and chi-square. The study anchors on social learning theory by Albert Bandura and broken window theory by James Wilson. Findings showed 60% of the respondents were male while 40% were female; - most of the respondents 79% of the respondents scrutinized their children academic work once in a month while 10% do that frequently, the results of chi-square test was 18.36, degree of freedom was 5 and critical region was 11.38, the hypothesis that parents attention to children and reduction in deviance was accepted. The study recommends flexible work hours and economic buoyancy to create more opportunities for parents. This study will be useful to ministry of youth development and researchers in the family affairs.

Keywords: Parents` career pursuit, child rearing, deviance, youth development, Lagos,