Children are in the news, and not
all for the right reasons. There have been student protests
where parents have actively encouraged their children to take part, if for no
other reason than to get them off their backsides and away from the
Playstation. Something, anything, to
motivate the little darlings!
Then there was the comment by a
soon to be ennobled politician who complained of serial breeding by pond life
mothers to exploit the benefits system. This was greeted with an element of teeth clicking by the powers that
be, but judging from the reaction in the press and the media, it had struck a
raw nerve.
The Sunday Times, as ever at the
forefront of investigative journalism, discovered some oik from oop north, now
aged 25, and the ‘father’ of 14 children by 7 different women, who had left
school at the age of 15, and had been on incapacity benefits for as long as he
could remember with a bad back. I leave
it to your imagination to determine the cause of this long running disability.
On a more serious note, Mr.
Justice Coleridge, a senior family court judge, has bemoaned the indecision of
family courts in cases involving children, and in particular contact and
residence orders, where too much emphasis is put on the wishes of the children,
and not enough on the merits of good parenting.
The wishes of children should not
be discarded lightly, as they are the ones at the sharp end of parenting, but
experience has shown that their wishes can be massaged by the carer parent at
the expense of the non carer. Material
rewards, such as presents, money, treats and over indulgence, may seduce the
child in the short term, but may not be in the child’s long term best
interests.
As Mr. Justice Coleridge
observed, the goal posts have been moved too far by the professional agencies
and in particular the overworked court appointed family officers, who sometimes
opt for the wishes of the child as an easy option and a way of reducing their
workload. Time and again, these
arrangements fall apart, and the family courts are left having to pick up the
pieces and start all over again. It is
desperately unsettling for the child and his increasingly embittered parents.
All too often when relationships
break down, the parents use their children as bargaining tools to serve their
own selfish purposes. Who gets the
house, and the car, and the clockwork Father Christmas? This is unforgivable, but as they say: “When
loves flies out the window, reason is not far behind.”
Children do not ask to be born to
dysfunctional single parents who may have an agenda of their own. It will be those same children who will turn
into dysfunctional parents, just like Mum, and often at a time of their lives
when they are far too young and ill equipped to offer even the most basic
parenting skills.
Children deserve a
childhood. They should not be encouraged
by selfish parents to join protest marches, but to enjoy a safe, warm and
loving family environment, ideally with two supportive parents. This should be the aim of the family courts,
and procrastination simply adds to the trauma and the bitterness.
The carrot and stick argument
about removing child benefits from serial breeders after the second child does
not help the third, fourth or fourteenth child, but the professional agencies
must be far more proactive in offering up these children to adoption. As the
rules presently stand, adoptive parents offer all the advantages to adopted
children, and none of the disadvantages.
Let abused and disadvantaged
children suffer no more.
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