Each week, the passengers of the @ecotrain are asked one meaningful, thoughtful and impactful question that they all have to answer. Of all the questions that I have answered so far being on the @ecotrain, I think this week’s question is the most painful. This week we have to talk about the different issues that lay the foundation behind the increasing trend of the state taking kids away from their parents and families and give our input on how we think this issue can be resolved. This is the complete qotw:
ecoTrain Question Of The Week: Lawful kidnapping by the State (Child Protection, Social Services) is a symptom of a modern day crisis. What are the issues that lay behind the increasing trend of State taking children away from their parents, and what can be done to prevent abhorrent injustice?
My Feelings
When I was about 12, I saw a movie whose name I cannot recall at all in which a young girl is taken by the social services from her family. She goes through quite a hard time finding her place in the world and runs away from the different foster homes she is put in because she is unable to adjust in all those homes. I still remember feeling strongly for that girl and crying throughout the movie. As I grew older, I saw more shows, movies and read articles on how children are taken away from their families by the social services and child protection facilities and how this often traumatizes them. Yes, there have been cases where the social services were indeed at right to take away kids from abusive parents, but in a lot of cases, this wasn’t the case.
At that time, I felt quite happy that there wasn’t any state owned and run child protection service in Pakistan or else, I may be taken away from my family too. My parents were never abusive and took quite great care of us, but I don’t know why I always feared that someone may split us apart and take me and my siblings away from them when we were younger. Maybe, I thought that way because I read a lot on the topic.
Anyhow, as I grew older, I found out about the many dilemmas prevalent in my country, one of them being child abuse especially at the hands of family members, sadly sometimes the fathers in the family. When I found out about that, I wished for a proper child protection service here that could save those kids. There are lots of NGOs here that are doing great work, but there is no organization run by the state that works in the favor of the kids and their well-being.
The situation is different in the West where there are child protection agencies run by the state that assumingly work for the welfare of the children, but even then, they aren’t always working for the betterment of the kids. Child protection services often act as God when it comes to deciding the fate of kids and without even thinking twice about the children or their parents take away kids away from parents when they feel they need to. I was just reading an account by a woman whose mother called child protection services to take away her younger daughter from her. That woman’s daughter got her legs burned during an accident at home and on seeing the blisters, the child’s grandmother felt her daughter was incapable of protecting and nurturing her daughter.
That woman had gone through abuse several times in her life- at the hands of her father, her boyfriend and the father of her older kid. All of that had impacted her strongly and she cared deeply for her children. You can read the full account here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/08/07/when-should-a-child-be-taken-from-his-parents
Having an accident at home wherein a child gets burned is bad, but it is not the end of the world. Accidents happen all the time. When my child was learning how to roll over and then crawl when he was about 4 to 5 months old, he used to fall off the bed quite often. Even though I used to be around him all the time, if I ever used to go away for even a minute even with keeping lots of pillows, he used to somehow manage to get close to the edge of the bed and fall down. Did that mean I needed to be more careful? Hell, yes. But did that mean I was a bad mother and couldn’t care well for my son? Hell, no. Only I know all the pain and discomforts I have gone through to raise my son and to give him the best of everything and I love him so much that now I don’t even call the pain, pain anymore. It is just what a mother’s gotta do. I cannot even imagine my son being taken away from me and if someone even lay a finger on him, I swear, I’ll break all the 206 bones in his/ her body.
So you see, I feel strongly about the subject and I just cannot imagine kids being taken away from their parents. However, no matter how much I despise that, it is happening. But what are the underlying issues behind this dilemma?
The Underlying Causes
Firstly, I think poverty definitely has a lot to do with this issue. The poor families are the ones that mostly suffer a lot in this case. While, abuse of all sorts occur at bigger and more heinous levels in rich families, they have lots of ways to hide them under the carpet. Power, influence and money has a lot of charm and it can make a lot of us go blind. Throw some dollars on the caseworker or protective agency and see how quickly they’ll leave your sight. Since the poor families don’t have anything else besides prayers to offer to the agencies, they don’t get the same favors in return too.
In my opinion, poverty is definitely an issue and a problem that keeps parents from raising their children as desired, but it is not an issue that gives anybody the right to take kids away from their family. I have seen many poor parents raise happy, confident and successful kids who go on to live healthy, beautiful lives. I know of one such family personally. My music sir back when I was in kindergarten has 7 kids. They were quite a poor family back then. 7 kids and 2 parents lived in a very small one room house and not enough money, food and resources to take care of them all. However, the parents did whatever they could for their kids and showered all their love and affection on to their kids. All the kids are grown up, happy and successful now and are living abundant lives too. Had any NGO taken away those 7 precious lives from their parents back then, I am quite sure all of them wouldn’t have grown up into such amazing individuals.
I really wish the state could somehow become more understanding and sensitive towards the needs of the kids and the sentiments of the family before taking the big decision. This is another underlying cause- lack of sentiments and feeling that you have the authority to do what you think is right. The state definitely has a lot of authority, but even in that case, I don’t think it should be given the authority to decide the fate of children.
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How to Prevent Injustice from Happening
If the state feels a certain family lacks enough resources or isn’t somehow caring well for the kids, they should step up to provide for the family. I think this is the best way to resolve the issue. The state and the agencies should provide the bread winner of the family a better job and financial support to take better care of the children. If the parents have a negligent attitude, the state should ask them to take counseling and provide them with guidance on how to take better care of their kids. They could supervise them for some time and if they find improvement, they should drop the case. However, if the parents fail to properly care for their kids, in that case, the state can step up. There are lots of things the state can do to prevent this injustice from happening only if it wishes too.
Also, I believe communities like @familyprotection are doing a good job in trying to prevent this injustice from happening and more such organizations need to be created. I also believe that more awareness needs to be created in this regard because the more people become aware on how unjust social services and the state can be, the more they will actively participate in forums that work to stop this injustice.
I sincerely hope, wish and pray that one day, we won’t have to witness any child being unrightfully taken away from his/ her parents and will be able to decide the best for his/ her own self. I am a little overwhelmed after writing on this so sorry if you feel I ended this abruptly.
Thank you for going through this account and do share your thoughts on this one.
Love and light,
Sharoon.
This post is part of the ecoTrain Question of the Week
Keep an eye out this week on #ecotrain for what our other passengers write on the same question.
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