It makes me so sick that adults toy with the lives of children just because laws, regulations and legislations are what we think makes us democratic societies!
I'm not even going to explain the stories behind the mediatic cases of Iara and Esmeralda, because we've been abundantly showered with them by the media. What disgusts me is that children still have no real protection as individuals and can be left to the whims of adults. Now you have a family, now you are institutionalised, now you have another family, now you don't have a family anymore. Yes, this is good policy!
And I also think it's good policy that when you remember that you are a biological parent of someone, you can just look at the judicial system and have that biological stranger with you, because that is your God ordained right. You donated cells, so you can claim the product when you best think you should. Nice!
Now, I've just heard on the one o'clock news that there is a petition going on for Iara not to be taken from her foster family, just when Esmeralda is about to spend her last, and traumatic, Christmas with the people she calls Mummy and Daddy. I am amased at how things are done. Laws have been made to secure the rights of biological parents, but shouldn't there be a vice-versa premise here?
Did you know that childhood and adolescence were only discovered in the 19th century? Well, they were. Until then children were either infants or miniature adults, ignored most of the times and legally abused. Author Jeffrey Richards explains, in Imperialism and Juvenile Literature (1989), that the decline in child mortality and the economic prosperity of the middle classes in the last quarter of the 19th century made people realise that children were distinct from adults. They were physiologically and psychologically different and therefore had different needs. And it was in this period that compulsory schooling was extended and even a period when books started to be compartimentalised so that there was literature for small children, literature for juveniles and literature for adults. This was more than one hundred years ago.
It seems to me that from then on we have evolved little.
P.S. - Obviously there are no images to illustrate this.
22 comentários:
Lara and Esmeralda are just two names on a list of children who have seen their childhood betrayed by adults.
In this cases why can´t people be reasonable?
Why don't they stop for a moment to think about what´s best for them and the child?
Does Baltasar stopped one minute to think about his daughter? Or he just thinking about his pride?
And why do the other parents have to have that attitude of ownership?
I saw one of these days that little man, the sarg., speaking... his he wacko or what?
Esmeralda and Lara, saddly, seems like pieces of a chess game...
And Quinn, what was the Sarg. saying? I didn't get that part. Why "wacko"? In any case, they're all wacko for me. Toying with children... all wacko!
Blonde, he was talking about the court that sentenced thta Esmeralda should go to her biological father. When asked if he was doing anything to prepare the child, he just started looking lunatic or possesed and said something of the kind: I don´t have to do any thing. The technicians, that's up to them. I won't do anything!
-As crianças são sempre as principais vitimas, concordo, mas Portugal é um estado de Direito, que não pode permitir, que se criem situações de facto, para a partir das mesmas, justificar-se regimes de excepção, que apenas se invocam, porque anteriormente se desrespeitou a lei, e ordens do tribunal. Seria fazer com que o crime compensasse.
Quinn dearest,
Can't say I blame him, but, yes, he should have watched what he said.
Dear Anónio de Almeida,
I agree with your perspective too! But given the muddle of our adoption laws, I have to say that I can't totally disregard and condemn what these foster parents did. It's as you say, no matter the perspective, children are the main victims.
Um dia, iremos perceber que a lei tem que ser mudada deixando a criança de ser propriedade dos pais biológicos, para passar a ter os seus direitos reconhecidos.
Nas instituições, basta um telefonema de um dos pais biológicos por ano para inviabilizar adopção dessa criança.
É cómodo não querer saber do filho recem-nascido, não lhe mudar as fraldas, não passar noites mal dormidas porque o bébé acorda e chora, vacinas, doenças, etc, etc
Depois, quando o "produto" está pronto e já não dá trabalho, vem-se reclamar a sua "posse" e a Justiça "dá".
Qual o interesse que a Justiça deve prosseguir? Necessariamente o da criança. Não está a ser julgado um "direito de posse". É um ser humano em formação que deverá ser protegido e o seu futuro acautelado. Os Juízes têm de aplicar a Lei, mas se esta não defende os intereses da criança, tem de ser modificada.
Obrigado por responderes ao meu desafio, pela confissão e pela confiança depositada... a amizade é muito bonita e compensadora.
Mas podias ter um pouco mais de fé em mim...
Pois eu não gosto de uma lei que trata uma criança como um objecto.
A lei deveria ser feita para defender sempre a criança.
A lei deve ser cega mas um juiz não, para alem de juiz teria de ver o lado da criança, o que pensam verdadeiramente os especialistas e só depois avançar com a lei.
My dear golden friend (can I treat this way?),
the story I'm about to tell you happened to me, so it's obviously real. It chocked me because we were in the XXth century and it felt like we were back in the XVth.
I was pregnant with my first child. Me and my husband were going about, buying everything we could for the coming of the little prince and that meant a bed, a little car, the wardrobe, toys, you name it...
My husband's grandma came to visit one day and asked me how come we had all those things for the baby already. I was surprised with the question, didn't quite understand it. She then asked what if, the baby was born dead, or if he died during birth, or during the first few weeks. Nothing a soon to be mom would like to think of, or ear...
Today I understand her question. My grandma had 7 children, 12 pregnancies. 2 of them dead in the first few years, 1 dead an adult, the others natural abortions.
These women were from a time when they had children by the dozen, because only a few would survive. You didn't expect children to survive a flu, you didn't count on them until they were already teenagers and then, only for them to go and help keep the economy of the household.
Today we do the exact opposite. We take children to the psychologist because they refuse to eat, for god sake. And then you have children having children to take care of. And then you have adults who just don't know how to take care of themselves in the first place.
These days you care about what goes on in television more than what goes on in your own house, in you own family. No wonder you look over your shoulder and you find sad, deeply emotionally ill children, who don't really know how to grow up in sanity and safety.
Dear Antonio,
Now you said it! Quite true: children are property!
(more faith in you?!)
Dear Peter,
It's very easy to have a child, raising it is quite difficult. As I see it you're more of a father or of a mother when you raise a child, not when you have it!
Dear Tiago,
Sure! But what happens is that law is blind, so blind it just sees itself!
Dear Blue,
I also agree that parenthood is love and worries and a lot of problems. People that go through it are real parents, the others just don't have it in themselves. nd at 11 or 12 we know who a child would choose for parents, right?
Dear Indy,
(call me by whatever name!)
I don't have a story like that to share because I have no kids, but I have many godchildren and I understand that today we have subverted things a bit as society. We went from an extreme of pauperism to an extreme of radicalism. Neither way is good and I think that, generally speaking as society, we are not doing children much good: we spoil them on the one hand and we let justice neglect them on the other. There's still a long way to go...
Dear Blonde,
I had to come back, I didn't finish my comment.
The laws have been protecting the strongest link, the parents, because they are the ones who care (or should) for the child's best interests. 'thing is, not always...
Being a parent is obviously a very important part of our lives. I could tell you how I'd go under a train to prevent my children from feeling any kind of pain. But I can also tell you I wouldn't move a muscle to prevent them from falling if I thought that would teach them their limits. sometimes a little pain is better than a big one, and learning how to fall can keep you from big pains.
Today I was told from the pediatrician that probably my eldest has a heart condition that in time may prevent him from exercising... In pain I can assure you I'd rather be dying than keeping him from running or jumping up and down because I know the importance of that for a child!
But, I also know many parents don't care when their child is crying of hurt, sadness, distress, or simply because their sleepy.
It's not easy being a parent, but it's so much more difficult being a child nowadays, when most parents have to work so much and have so little time to spend with them.
I don't have to go very far to see those kinds of children. I go pick my boys up from school and some of their coleagues, from very "normal" families are sad, unhappy kids. I go about kissing and hugging as many as I can, but I'm not there all the time and my love won't be enough to keep them happy. But it's incredible to see their eyes glowing when I throw a kiss at them, or when I hug them...
If only I could hug and kiss them all... If only I could...
Amor de pais, não é só biológico,o cuidar, tratar é tão ou mais importante, a justiça será cega, mas quem muita das vezes a pratica, não só é cego como surdo
Saudações amigas
PS tenho um convite para lhe fazer
Dear Indy,
You don't have to apologise for coming back!!! Door's always open!
I'm so sorry to hear about your boy, but I agree with you, don't go overprotecting him. I think parents' job is to raise people fit for survival not overprotected beings.
And please don't tell me about all those kids whose parents are overworked and don't have time for them because it breaks my heart so much. It's such an awful truth, so much pain in kids today, so much pain... So much loneliness...
Dear CValente,
I'd say blind, deaf and stupid!!
(an invitation for me?)
Detesto rapidinhas, sabem a pouco... ;)
Hum! Rapidinha na resposta, gosto mais.
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