What is Right for the Children?
very Child need protection, the needs however, are diverse and situation specific, Being weak, vulnerable, small and defenseless, it is easy to exploit, harm and abuse a child with impunity and particularly when left without parental care.
The issue of protection of children is a tricky one and one that has generally not received much attention. And the attention when given is based more on what the adult thinks is the ‘right’ protection and according to them is ‘in the best interest of the child’.
The paradox, however, is that with their best intentions, adults, at times cause more harm to the best interest of children when planning or formulating policies and action to protect them. The reason being that no one solution can be generalized to fit every case. However, this by no means says that there should be no sound and appropriate policy to protect children from harm whether during normal times or in emergencies. Uncertainty and probability of success will always be an issue when working on ways and means to protect children. Even the most comprehensive and perfect assessments of protection needs will sometimes prove to be unacceptable and therefore flawed. The final decisions, eventually depends on priority and significance of protection.
The moot point in formulating the protection mechanisms are whether the child especially an orphan should be placed in the institution or allowed to remain with the extended family. In Pakistan extended family plays a important role in providing support for children without parental care. Here, a child will seldom find her/himself left at the mercy of the world. The immediate family will share the responsibility even in cases where the family is economically not so well off.
The detractors of family care system feel that orphaned or children living with extended family may not receive proper care and attention as compared to in the institution, and especially where resources are scarce. In many cases children are abused and discriminated, especially if the family has their own children to take care of. One cannot rule out the possibility of such incidents. But then there are numerous stories of abuse of children in orphanages and shelter homes.
Institutional care has its own advantages, but when compared to that of child growing up within the family fold, holds less ground when discussing child’s emotional and mental well being. The child grows up in an environment known to him. The people around him/her espouse the same culture, belief, and kinship among other commonalities. This gives strength and stability to the otherwise shattered life of the child, who feels abandoned and isolated after having lost his/her dear and near ones.
At the same time it is important to keep in mind that the protection strategies should strengthen the systems that are already in place. For Pakistan, extended families are already providing this service. For good results it would be expedient to identify families who are taking care of children without parental care, provide them with additional resources to compensate for the financial burden, monitor the child’s well being in the house, see that his/her rights are not violated and that child is growing up in an environment of love and care. It would be less burdensome then opening new institutions, which are below standard, inefficient and abusive.
The key question here is what does the child feel, want and deserve in order to lead a happy, safe and fulfilled life? Are the present systems foolproof and fulfill the needs of a child? A child is resilient and at the same time fragile. Children have special needs relating to their physical maturity, social experience, psychological and emotional vulnerability. Children need attention, understanding, compassion, patience and trust, unless the protection mechanisms take into consideration these human dimensions, it will not achieve the goal of safeguarding the needs which is in the best interest of the child whether in the home or in the institutions.
By: Abdul Khaliq Mashori
Mobile: 03003412808
Email: mashori_s@Yahoo.com
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Parents & Children
Experienced parents, when children’s rights are preached to them, very naturally ask whether children are to be allowed to do what they like. The best reply is to ask whether adults are to be allowed to do what they like. The two cases are the same. The adult who is nasty is not allowed to do what he likes: neither can the child who likes to be nasty.
There is no difference in principle between the rights of a child and those of an adult: the difference in their cases is one of circumstance. An adult is not supposed to be punished except by process of law: no, when he is so punished, is the person whom he has injured allowed to act as judge, jury, and executioner. It is true that employers do act in this way every day to their workpeople: but this is not a justified and intended part of the situation it is an abuse of Capitalism which nobody defends in principle. As between child and parent or nurse is not argued about because it is inevitable. You cannot hold as impartial judicial inquiry every time a child misbehaves itself. To allow the child to misbehave without instantly making it unpleasantly conscious of the face would be to spoil it. The adult has therefore to take action of some sort with nothing but his conscience to shield the child from injustice or unkindness.
Torrent of Scolding
The action may be a torrent of scolding culminating in a furious smack causing terror and pain, or it may be a remonstrance causing remorse, or it may be a sarcasm causing shame and humiliation, or it may be a sermon causing the child to believe that it is a little reprobate on the road to hell. The child has no defense in any case except the kindness and conscience of the adult; and the adult had better not forget this; for it involves a heavy responsibility.
And now comes our difficulty. The responsibility, being so heavy, cannot be discharged by persons of feeble character or intelligence. And yet people of high character and intelligence cannot be plagued with the care of children. A child is a restless, noisy little animal, with an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and consequently a maddening persistence in asking questions. If the child is to remain in the room with a highly intelligent and sensitive adult, it must be told, and if necessary forced, to sit still and not speak, which is injurious to its health, unnatural, unjust, and therefore cruel and selfish beyond toleration. Consequently the highly intelligent and sensitive adult hand the child over to a nursery maid who has no nerves and can therefore stand more noise, but who has also no scruples, and may therefore be very bad company for the child.
Corporal Punishment
Here we have come to the central fact of the question: a fact nobody avows, which is yet the true explanation of the monstrous system of child imprisonment and torture which we disguise under such hypocrisies as education, training, formation of character and the rest of it, this fact is simply that a child is a nuisance to a grown-up person. What is more, the nuisance becomes more and more intolerable as the as the grown-up person becomes more cultivated, more sensitive, and more deeply engaged in the highest methods of adult work. The child at play is noisy and ought to be noisy: Sir Isaac Newton at work is quiet and ought to be quiet. And the child should spend most of its time at play, whilst the adult should spend most of his time at work.
I am not now writing on behalf of persons who coddle themselves into a ridiculous condition of nervous feebleness, and at last imagine themselves unable to work under conditions of bustle which to healthy people are cheerful and stimulating. I am sure that if people had to choose between living where the noise of children never stopped and where it was never heard, all the good natured and sound people would prefer the incessant noise to the incessant silence. But that choice is not thrust upon us by the nature of things.
Enduring Children’s Company
There is no reason why children and adults should not see just as much of one another as is good for them, no more and no less. Even at present you are not compelled to choose between sending your child to a boarding school (which means getting rid of it altogether on more or less hypocritical pretences) and keeping it continually at home. Most working folk today either send their children to day schools or turn them out of doors. This solves the problem for the parents. It does not solve it for the children, any more than the tethering of a goat in a field or the chasing of an unlicensed dog into the streets solves it for the goat or the dog; but it shows that in no class are people willing to endure the society of their children, and consequently that it is an error to believe that the family provides children with edifying adult society, or that the family is a social unit.
The family is in that, as in so many other respects, a humbug. Old people and young people cannot walk at the same pace without distress and final loss of health to one of the parties. When they are sitting indoors they cannot endure the same degrees of temperature and the same supplies of fresh air. Even if the main factors of noise, children can stand with indifference sights, sound, smells, and disorders that would make an adult of fifty utterly miserable; whilst on the other hand such adults find a tranquil happiness in conditions which to children mean unspeakable boredom. And since our system is nevertheless to pack them all into the same house and pretend that they are happy, and that this particular sort of happiness is the foundation of virtue, it is found that in discussing family life we never speak of actual adults or actual children, or of realities of any sort, but always of ideals such as The Home, a Mother’s Influence, a Father’s Care, filial Piety, Duty, Affection, Family Life, etc, etc,, which are no doubt very comforting phrases, but which beg the question of what a home and a mother’s influence and a father’s care and so forth really come to in practice…..
Mobile: 03013476106
Email: javedmashori@yahoo.com
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