Poverty should not be used as a justification for poor parenting, Senator John King declared on Wednesday as the upper chamber took up the Child Protection Bill passed last week by the House of Assembly.
He said that while poverty and its associated problems can contribute to children’s delinquent behaviour at home and outside, they can never excuse the bad parenting witnessed in many communities.
“That does not mean because you are in poverty or you experience these things that automatically you get a pass for bad parenting,” he said. “I know a lot of people would like to pretend that this is a mitigating factor…. I am not in that and I will never be in it. I’ve seen too many things over the years that point to some people who get children, but really do not care about them.
“You know what it leads to? Something I call welfare fraud. They have no intention of providing for these children…. In some of these cases, yes, I understand, but I am also clear in my mind that there is something called the power of choice that we as individuals have.”
The government senator stressed that children are still far too often exploited as pawns to bring money into struggling households, and though the topic may be an uncomfortable one, it was one the whole country must address as a matter of urgency.
“We hear all the stories about young daughters who have to suffer abuse by people who putting money in the house. They ain’t now start… but this society likes to pretend that nothing is happening. We have reached the stage that if it’s not happening to me, it’s not happening. Broken people become broken adults, and broken adults don’t get fixed so. So when you do these things to children, what are we saying?” he said.
Senator King also said that far too many parents are too willing to give tablets and other devices to their children as a way to avoid taking responsibility for raising them properly. He said the devices are unfortunately often used as gateways by predators and other individuals to harm children, often without parents’ knowledge.
He continued: “In too many cases we have situations where men, still playing village rams, got four and five [children] all across the country, don’t look at none, have no relationship with them at all; just get them and drop them, and then where do they end up? 99.9 per cent of the time they end up under the State. I am saying to you that the time has come where we as men must own up to these things.
“We cannot keep coming into the senate or the other chamber and making out everybody to be victims. There is a word called responsibility – where does it begin and where does it end? You decide to get children, you made that decision, you get them and you are responsible for them. If we don’t fix the parenting problem, future generations are going to be coming into this senate to discuss expansion of this bill in order to deal with the new problems that are going to arise.”
