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The Gaffer's Philosophy:
Part 40: Child Welfare:
Abuse and Nurturing:
March 3, 2003:
I do not think we can treat these two issues, of abuse and nurturing
separately. They are really flip sides of the same coin. Education,
to some extent, can be treated as a separate issue and we will
do that. Even there, however, nurturing and child abuse come into
play. This is about protecting and nurturing the child in the
home, community, religious institutions, and schools. As I pointed
out, the form of abuse runs the full gamut from very subtle mind
games to torture and murder. If we consider all forms of child
abuse, we can easily conclude that most cases occur in the home
with the perpetrator being a relative. It must stop. I will repeat
a theme. The victimization of kids is the most important problem
in our culture. If we do not deal effectively with this, nothing
else we do will matter.
Many of us middle class folk would like to pretend that child abuse only occurs in low income homes. That is pure nonsense. It occurs in virtually ever home. The form it takes may vary, but it will be ever present. We can only pretend otherwise by ignoring the effects of neglect and the ongoing shabby ego damaging emotional tricks we play on our kids. If there is no damage, why do middle class and upper middle class teenage kids commit suicide or go crazy? We need look no further than Littleton to get a sense of the long term effects of this abuse.
There are many subtle forms of child abuse. One I call branding is a very insidious form. We should be really careful about what we say to and about our children because they will make it come true. I know for sure that mothers brand their children through what they say about them. Let me offer some of my personal experience. My mother had six kids that lived. She branded every one of them, including me. She did it by saying the same things over and over again. As kids, we heard these things, and wishing to please the "witch-mother," we tried to make them come true.
One phase she used often with one of my sisters was, "She is the reliable one." That particular sister spent her whole life being an adviser, caretaker, midwife, and witch-doctor to many other people. When she came to the final days of her life, she suddenly realized she had not cared for herself. She had given it all to others. She was suddenly asking, "Is that all there is?" She had not realized her own potential, which I believe was enormous. She died a very disappointed and angry woman.
I have already cited the extreme pressure we put on kids with respect to authority. We learn early on that sucking up gets rewarded and questioning gets punished. So most of us learn to obey. In addition to branding them and conditioning them to obey authority no-matter-what, another really bad thing we do to our kids is put them down. I don't know how many times I heard the phrase, "Mr big shot," from various adults when I was a kid, yet people still do it. My God, don't you remember how bad that made you feel? I do!
That is just one phrase. There are hundreds of them used every day to keep kids in line. Who do you thing you are? Look what you made me do. Now you've done it! Shut your fool mouth! Shame on you. Well, you got what you deserved. My mother's favorite was, "Some day I'm just going to go away and never come back." Think about the effect that has on a totally dependent and vulnerable six year old.
All of this begs the question, what is the extent to which the community has a right to interfere in the home? I contend that this is an area where our social workers have failed miserably. The do-gooder, social worker, feather merchants would have us believe that a child is always better off in a home with parents no-matter-what. This is how they get kids killed time after time. They simply do not take them out of the murderous situation soon enough. The kids end up fending as best they can against insane giants.
I insist we must become much more proactive in getting children out of abusive situations. I would advocate quickly taking children away from parents who abuse them. As soon as it is known that the child is being abused, they should be taken out of the abusive environment. The cost of protecting and caring for children will be enormous at first. The cost of dealing with dysfunctional adults is already enormous. The question is really quite simple. Will we have better child welfare, or will we have more and more prisons and institutions supported by fewer and fewer productive people?
The current practice is nonsense and everyone know it. Telling parents they must go to counseling one hour a week for a few weeks to get their kids back does not work. In most case, even with good intentions, counseling does not work. You do not heal a life time of abuse, frustration, and failure with a few sessions of pep talk and a pat on the back. When we try that, the kids are put back into a dangerous environment and too many of them die. Even the ones who survive end up as dysfunctional as their parents and their social workers.
Of course, in this situation, we can forget about good intentions. The parents know they can beat the system. All they need do is show up and they will get the kids back. Furthermore, the counselor is no more qualified than any other social worker. If they were qualified, they would be in private practice earning millions instead of where they are earning civil service pay.
Inept people in these social worker positions is a serious problem. I can recall the case in Florida where a kid was missing for several months and the social worker did not even know it. It was reported to us by ABC news. That is unconscionable, but it is not the only case. Many others have been reported in other states. I suspect the reported cases are only the tip of an iceberg. We should wonder how much social worker bungling is not even reported?
Here is how I see it. Because of affirmative action policies, the government is caught in the bind of having to employ unemployable people. Too many of them end up as civil service welfare workers of one form or another. In addition, even when the social worker has the proper credentials it hardly matters. I have personally known a number of so called social workers. I have never known one whose personal life was in good order. These are people who cannot even manage their own lives yet they are pretending to manage other peoples affairs. They are pretending they understand situations that are completely beyond their range of experience.
Of course, our social agencies only get involved in very extreme cases of abuse. The occasional beating and cursing of kids is normally not even reported. When a kid does report it or complain, the perpetrator pooh poohs the complaint and Mr. authority goes along. It was just a little incident. I would like to report that getting beat up by adults is not just a little incident for a ten year old kid. It is a life altering experience. As I pointed out, the emotional abuse that occurs In middle and upper middle income homes is not even consider to be abuse. How do we deal with that blatant denial?
In the following weeks I will continue with this theme.
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