Oh - jeez - now what
Oct. 26th, 2003 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgLooks like a news story jumped out and bit ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
unclejimbo on the nose. I don't want to remind him of similar stories nearer to home - like the woman arrested in Temecula who had three children, and a massive meth jones. She ended up with a dead baby when it OD'd on the methamphetamine in her breast milk.
Another story in Gardena earlier this summer was an 11-year old girl who came out to her counselor at school, saying "I just can't live like this anymore." At home were four adopted children in addition to her three biological siblings - all starving and beaten.
The difference between conservative and liberal. Conservatives largely believe that the human condition is evil and unchangeable - liberals believe that the human condition is improvable, with effort and support. A conservative is comfortable only with conformity. A liberal questions that conformity.
Conservatives don't believe throwing money at problems like these help any. Not to sound like a case-study liberal, but nothing else has ever been proved to prevent them.
Take a gander at this story. I'm reminded of the television documentary that was done in 1968 (and we were still seeing in classrooms when I was a sophomore in college in 1979), called "Hunger in America." I remember how surprised I was to find that people older, and allegedly smarter than me, were feeding infants a steady supply of sugar water and not much else. Then, it was due to poverty.
Now - convenience? Is it then more true that we are poor while we work every spare minute of the day? I plead for understanding of how this thinking works.
I want to see it coming.
Hold people accountable. Oh, absolutely. The parents, and every last person responsible for their care and protection. That includes overloaded caseworkers, their supervisors and everyone on that food chain. A kid dies on your watch, you don't lose your job - you get tried for murder. All of you.
But threatening violence does nothing. Further isolating families by turning away, does nothing. They don't need money - but they need the things money buys. Like education and support. In the end, you may only end up with a parent who can be a better parent. They may never leave the system. This has to be accepted as a given.
Think of how damaged a person who has never had a decent meal can be at 19. No amount of Christmas baskets, food stamps, section 8 housing - none of that - can overcome poor nutrition while a child is building brain cells. That's up to age 9 or so. You have someone who can't possibly be expected to function at the level of a normal adult - hence, you have someone who must function outside of the norm to survive.
Drugs, crime, violence - all of the above. We incarcerate more people in this country per capita than any other industrialized nation - and the newest figures show most of them are mentally ill and not getting any better in jail.
President Carter was the one who said if we could eliminate child abuse for one generation - just one - we would eliminate the need for most of the penal systems and welfare programs we have.
Imagine a world where for one generation, nobody abuses a child. Could you imagine the outrage when it did occur after that?
Child abuse is a function of societal stressors, personal stressors, personal experience (or lack of it) and just sheer incompetence. You can measure the potential for it just by studying what kinds of stress a society falls under. It isn't a race thing, a religious thing, a city thing, a rural thing - an American thing, a whatever thing. It's stupidity, anger, ignorance and apathy. It breeds in poverty.
It's not going to go away. Certainly not with arrogance and indifference.
I don't have all the answers - I'm just certain I can't do it all myself. And I'm finding it harder and harder to find support.
unclejimbo on the nose. I don't want to remind him of similar stories nearer to home - like the woman arrested in Temecula who had three children, and a massive meth jones. She ended up with a dead baby when it OD'd on the methamphetamine in her breast milk.Another story in Gardena earlier this summer was an 11-year old girl who came out to her counselor at school, saying "I just can't live like this anymore." At home were four adopted children in addition to her three biological siblings - all starving and beaten.
The difference between conservative and liberal. Conservatives largely believe that the human condition is evil and unchangeable - liberals believe that the human condition is improvable, with effort and support. A conservative is comfortable only with conformity. A liberal questions that conformity.
Conservatives don't believe throwing money at problems like these help any. Not to sound like a case-study liberal, but nothing else has ever been proved to prevent them.
Take a gander at this story. I'm reminded of the television documentary that was done in 1968 (and we were still seeing in classrooms when I was a sophomore in college in 1979), called "Hunger in America." I remember how surprised I was to find that people older, and allegedly smarter than me, were feeding infants a steady supply of sugar water and not much else. Then, it was due to poverty.
Now - convenience? Is it then more true that we are poor while we work every spare minute of the day? I plead for understanding of how this thinking works.
I want to see it coming.
Hold people accountable. Oh, absolutely. The parents, and every last person responsible for their care and protection. That includes overloaded caseworkers, their supervisors and everyone on that food chain. A kid dies on your watch, you don't lose your job - you get tried for murder. All of you.
But threatening violence does nothing. Further isolating families by turning away, does nothing. They don't need money - but they need the things money buys. Like education and support. In the end, you may only end up with a parent who can be a better parent. They may never leave the system. This has to be accepted as a given.
Think of how damaged a person who has never had a decent meal can be at 19. No amount of Christmas baskets, food stamps, section 8 housing - none of that - can overcome poor nutrition while a child is building brain cells. That's up to age 9 or so. You have someone who can't possibly be expected to function at the level of a normal adult - hence, you have someone who must function outside of the norm to survive.
Drugs, crime, violence - all of the above. We incarcerate more people in this country per capita than any other industrialized nation - and the newest figures show most of them are mentally ill and not getting any better in jail.
President Carter was the one who said if we could eliminate child abuse for one generation - just one - we would eliminate the need for most of the penal systems and welfare programs we have.
Imagine a world where for one generation, nobody abuses a child. Could you imagine the outrage when it did occur after that?
Child abuse is a function of societal stressors, personal stressors, personal experience (or lack of it) and just sheer incompetence. You can measure the potential for it just by studying what kinds of stress a society falls under. It isn't a race thing, a religious thing, a city thing, a rural thing - an American thing, a whatever thing. It's stupidity, anger, ignorance and apathy. It breeds in poverty.
It's not going to go away. Certainly not with arrogance and indifference.
I don't have all the answers - I'm just certain I can't do it all myself. And I'm finding it harder and harder to find support.
