Face It: We Don't Really Like Children

[bigdude]

Article

Parents are reduced to standing in St. Peter's Square as the new Pope arrives. They hold up pictures of their children who were sodomized by men being protected by men inside the church itself. Children who were abused at Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens throw themselves off bridges while their rapists get a year in jail, if that.

I don't like adults much; I like children very much indeed. Ms. Dardenne feels the same. “I have found the courage to retrace my stations of the cross,” she writes, to fight the “terrifying naiveté” most adults have about pedophiles. Never underestimate them, she warns. Always understand that they are candidates for life in prison, not for a psychiatrist's chair. She slept padlocked to the rancid Mr. Dutroux. She knows.

Last week, the Supreme Court of Canada heard the case (the women's equality group LEAF intervened, which is superb) of Barney v. Canada and the United Church. These dry words conceal the fact that Ottawa thinks raping, physically and emotionally abusing a little aboriginal boy in residential school does not warrant full compensation. Lower courts say only the sexual abuse is worth compensation; as for the cultural genocide, the humiliation, the hunger and the life destroyed, they are considered separate wrongs and without value.

What did that little boy, kidnapped from his parents by the government rather than a Mr. Dutroux, ever do to deserve such disregard?

Unfortunately Heather Mallick is right.

I wonder what they have done in Sweden to be so much more protective of children, and to look after children in a much much healthier way than in Canada.

[bigdude]

Here's an idea for the few out there that really do like children:

To Rescue a Child from Foster Care, Adopt

Sarah Watson was moved over seven times during the seven years she was in foster care. “I was always wondering what was wrong, you know, I got straight A’s and they moved me, I tried to behave, and they moved me” says the dark haired twenty-one-year. Sarah now works with the BC Adoptive Parents Association. She recognizes that offering one child a home forever has a much more significant impact than offering dozens of children a temporary place to rest their head.

If we adults know this what's our problem with adopting these kids, eh!

[August1991]

From link above:

But when there’s information, there’s misconception. Like for FASD (Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder), which is one of the conditions that makes would-be adoptive parents wary. Nearly 70 percent of the children in care have some degree of prenatal exposure to drugs or alcohol making this is a major adoption issue.

"A diagnosis of FASD is life long and has a lasting impact, but there are many people who have that diagnosis and are healthy members of society" Clayton points out. "It doesn't mean you're a write off,”

Provinces are passing many laws to restrict smoking tobacco and one argument used is the danger of "second-hand smoke". But I have never seen any law to forbid pregnant women from drinking alcohol.

If an adult wants to get drunk or high, I guess that's their choice. But why should another person, in this case in the mother's womb, suffer? The danger is arguably greater than second-hand smoke.

Should we lock up pregnant women who drink alcohol?

[Riverwind]

If an adult wants to get drunk or high, I guess that's their choice.  But why should another person, in this case in the mother's womb, suffer?  The danger is arguably greater than second-hand smoke.

Should we lock up pregnant women who drink alcohol?

There was a case in Manitoba where social services tried to lock up a drug addicted young mother who already had 3 FAS kids under the care of social services. The court ruled that they could not kept the girl in custody because she had commited no crime and a fetus was not a person in need of protection.

This is really a case where the lack of compromise on abortion hurts society. We cannot have laws that declare a fetus a person because that would lead to abortion being banned. But we also cannot use the age of the fetus to justify intervention because alcohol abuse damages a fetus in the very early stages of pregnacy.

One option I was thinking of was requiring high risk expecting mothers to make a choice between mandatory in-patient treatment for substance abuse or an abortion. In other words, society has no right to intervene until the woman makes the decision to carry the child to term. Once a woman makes that decision she must be bound by all laws which normally protect children from neglect by their parents.

Any thoughts?

[Melanie_]

Bigdude - in response to your post about adoption... (Warning - sappy post to follow - I have had a glass of wine)

I carry guilt over not taking on the care of a little boy I came into contact with as a consultant in an inner city child care program two years ago. He was three years old, and had already been in a few foster homes. It was coming up to Christmas, and he was trying so hard to be "good", because if he was good Santa would bring him a Nintendo machine, or so he believed. He got moved to another foster home just a few weeks later, and I don't know what happened to him after that. He had the brightest little face, and such a belief that the world was open to him - I hope that belief stays with him, but I doubt very much it will.

You ask what our problem is with adopting these children, and I rationalize - I already have four children of my own, I have no room in my house, would my husband embrace another child, how many am I prepared to take on if I start with this one? I just let it go, but it hasn't let me go yet. This thread ties in, though, to the one about the over representation of First Nations Canadians in the justice system - how long will it take him to realize that, no matter how good he is, the system is weighted against him? Santa won't bring him a Nintendo.

OK, no more wine for me!

[bigdude]

Melanie......as I have a feeling you already know, it is amazin what love can do for starters.

From what I have seen of children it seems that most children get either too much praise or not enough, and my experience is that if an adult has to err, a child is better off by receiving too much love, as opposed to not receiving enough love.