Rigorous assessments are in place for anyone who wishes to adopt a child and rightly so. Every single aspect of a person's life is under investigation, including the relationship they have with their partner, who will be the other adopter. Questions of an intensely personal nature are asked and used in
a bid to discover whether or not a person is suitable to adopt a child.
In addition every member of the extended family has to be assessed too. Clearly, this has to be done because the likelihood is that close relatives will be asked to babysit and will probably have contact with the child at Christmas and other family occasions.
All this is right and necessary. I never thought I would feel like this but my brother, who is a foster father, has had involvement with children who have had truly dreadful beginnings. It seems undeniable that children are scarred by this pitifully poor start in life. Some, incredibly, do thrive despite their early experiences, though in later years, neglect, abuse and an absence of love can and sometimes will, turn to anger, which may result in violence.
Many of these children, when they are born are not looked after properly, are sometimes not really wanted and almost always do not get what should be every child'd right, the all encompassing love of a mother or a father, preferably both, or the love of a same sex couple - it really doesn't matter - as long as the child is loved.
Anyone, anyone at all can have a child as long as they are not in prison. Anyone can produce a child and neglect him/her or abuse the child. This strikes me as outrageous. But what can we do? Is it possible or even desirable to limit people or prevent them from having children. Part of me screams yes, we must! But another part says that would be entirely wrong. Forced contraception? How would that work? No checks, no family investigation, anyone can have a child.
Whatever the moral arguments are, the fact remains that some children are born, mistreated and have to go to foster homes or are adopted. The adopted ones, if it works out, are the lucky ones. The worst result is that the ones who are fostered are passed around from one home to another and never arrive at a permanent loving home. It is tragic, truly tragic.
Friday 25 April 2014
Wednesday 9 April 2014
Motherless children
When my children were growing up my greatest fear was that I would die. I wasn't afraid of dying in itself (or per se, as some might say) but the fear which haunted me was because if I died, then who would look after my children? No, that's not exactly the right question. It was a question though, and I decided that the person/s I would like to look after my children would be my brother and his wife. I asked them if they would do that and they said yes. A relief, undoubtedly, but it didn't satisfy satisfy me.
My brother and his wife have four children between them and three foster children, all of whom they look after very well. I didn't doubt that my children would have love directed their way, but, and this is the real insurmountable difficulty, they would not have a mother's love.
There is nothing unusual about my sense that if I died, nobody, not anybody, including their father and their grand-parents, would love them like I do. And, arrogant though this thought may be, it's true.
Though I have no statistics, I believe that mother are hard-wired to love their children more than anyone else, a claim which contains two meanings. First - mothers love their children more than they love any other person and second, that mothers love their children more than anyone else would love their children.
These two claims are not universal, just as any other generalisation about human behaviour and feelings are not universal. I have a friend who would have sold her children to the slave trade if the man she was in love with would have asked her to live with him. Some mothers find life too difficult and put drugs and alcohol, for all sorts of reasons, before their children, often resulting in those children going into foster care.
My fear of dying before my children grew up was to do with the intensity a mother feels regarding her children. Mothers know their children, usually, more than anyone else knows them. Children deserve to know that there will be, always, someone who will love them no matter what. This does not mean that a child should not be reprimanded for wrongdoing - of course they should. Most children know when they have done wrong and take the punishment. To love a child no matter what means that hey will not be let down at important times, or indeed any time, any time at all, important or trivial.
When my youngest child reached the age of twenty-one, a huge weight fell off my shoulders. Much as it was far from what I wanted, if I did die, at least my children were old enough to see their way through life and to remember that they were very much loved - very much.
My brother and his wife have four children between them and three foster children, all of whom they look after very well. I didn't doubt that my children would have love directed their way, but, and this is the real insurmountable difficulty, they would not have a mother's love.
There is nothing unusual about my sense that if I died, nobody, not anybody, including their father and their grand-parents, would love them like I do. And, arrogant though this thought may be, it's true.
Though I have no statistics, I believe that mother are hard-wired to love their children more than anyone else, a claim which contains two meanings. First - mothers love their children more than they love any other person and second, that mothers love their children more than anyone else would love their children.
These two claims are not universal, just as any other generalisation about human behaviour and feelings are not universal. I have a friend who would have sold her children to the slave trade if the man she was in love with would have asked her to live with him. Some mothers find life too difficult and put drugs and alcohol, for all sorts of reasons, before their children, often resulting in those children going into foster care.
My fear of dying before my children grew up was to do with the intensity a mother feels regarding her children. Mothers know their children, usually, more than anyone else knows them. Children deserve to know that there will be, always, someone who will love them no matter what. This does not mean that a child should not be reprimanded for wrongdoing - of course they should. Most children know when they have done wrong and take the punishment. To love a child no matter what means that hey will not be let down at important times, or indeed any time, any time at all, important or trivial.
When my youngest child reached the age of twenty-one, a huge weight fell off my shoulders. Much as it was far from what I wanted, if I did die, at least my children were old enough to see their way through life and to remember that they were very much loved - very much.
Tuesday 1 April 2014
Do we ever really change?
'That was then,' people say, 'but I'm different now, I've changed.' But do we ever really change?
Our life continues , we get older, we meet different people, we do different jobs, or the same job for a long time, hopefully getting better at it. Many of us become parents, thereby taking on responsibilities for the lives of others. Mortgages, cars, in-laws - the outward signs of having grown up.
Though we do undoubtedly take on these indicators of a life maturing, our basic character remains unchanged. Often this is most obvious in situations which are unfamiliar to us. For instance, on our own in a strange place, at a job interview, at a party where we know no one, the fear that you might have felt as a small child when you couldn't spot your parents for a short while, returns, and the distress you experience and the fear you feel is, more or less, the same.
So what about our personalities and our own specific characteristics? My eldest son used to play football on a Sunday morning for several years. In my son's team was a boy whose father I knew - we had been at primary school together. On the touch line, in some god forsaken place, on a freezing cold Sunday morning, with a mountain of work waiting for me at home, I saw, acted out in front of me the same madly competitive behaviour of my old school friend, who was now about forty, as I had seen over thirty years earlier at any sporting event or PE lesson in which he was involved.
Roars came from him, sometimes of praise, but mainly of disapproval, along the lines of, 'E's nowt! He's a rate pansy. What have you let 'im get the better of you for, you dickhead?' These comments directed to his own son. There were more similar statements, some directed at the referee, a hapless bloke who had come out to referee the match for the princely sum of five pounds. The referee is a sitting duck for the wrath of parents who imagine their children being scouted by Manchester United and a place in the champions League. My 'friend' was right there, in the very thick of it.
Infuriated by one incident when his son didn't get the benefit of the doubt in a tackle, a free kick being awarded to the opposition, I thought my ersatz classmate might have a heart attack, right there on the pitch on which he was remonstrating. Mouth wide open and yelling, face bright red, arms wheeling round, he reminded me of the day his relay team came second at sports day, aged eleven. One child in his team had fallen down, and had slowed them down. The child bravely carried on, but was not fast enough.With knees ripped to shreds,tears pouring down his face, my classmate shouted his head of at him until a teacher puled him away. That day at the football match, it felt as if that relay race, three decades ago, could have been yesterday and the intervening thirty years were as a blink of an eye.
This is, of course, only one instance, but it seems to me that our basic character is formed at an early age, whether that is through nature or nurture, remains a mystery. Once formed, it stays with us; maybe hidden at times, but it's there and it will emerge.
Our life continues , we get older, we meet different people, we do different jobs, or the same job for a long time, hopefully getting better at it. Many of us become parents, thereby taking on responsibilities for the lives of others. Mortgages, cars, in-laws - the outward signs of having grown up.
Though we do undoubtedly take on these indicators of a life maturing, our basic character remains unchanged. Often this is most obvious in situations which are unfamiliar to us. For instance, on our own in a strange place, at a job interview, at a party where we know no one, the fear that you might have felt as a small child when you couldn't spot your parents for a short while, returns, and the distress you experience and the fear you feel is, more or less, the same.
So what about our personalities and our own specific characteristics? My eldest son used to play football on a Sunday morning for several years. In my son's team was a boy whose father I knew - we had been at primary school together. On the touch line, in some god forsaken place, on a freezing cold Sunday morning, with a mountain of work waiting for me at home, I saw, acted out in front of me the same madly competitive behaviour of my old school friend, who was now about forty, as I had seen over thirty years earlier at any sporting event or PE lesson in which he was involved.
Roars came from him, sometimes of praise, but mainly of disapproval, along the lines of, 'E's nowt! He's a rate pansy. What have you let 'im get the better of you for, you dickhead?' These comments directed to his own son. There were more similar statements, some directed at the referee, a hapless bloke who had come out to referee the match for the princely sum of five pounds. The referee is a sitting duck for the wrath of parents who imagine their children being scouted by Manchester United and a place in the champions League. My 'friend' was right there, in the very thick of it.
Infuriated by one incident when his son didn't get the benefit of the doubt in a tackle, a free kick being awarded to the opposition, I thought my ersatz classmate might have a heart attack, right there on the pitch on which he was remonstrating. Mouth wide open and yelling, face bright red, arms wheeling round, he reminded me of the day his relay team came second at sports day, aged eleven. One child in his team had fallen down, and had slowed them down. The child bravely carried on, but was not fast enough.With knees ripped to shreds,tears pouring down his face, my classmate shouted his head of at him until a teacher puled him away. That day at the football match, it felt as if that relay race, three decades ago, could have been yesterday and the intervening thirty years were as a blink of an eye.
This is, of course, only one instance, but it seems to me that our basic character is formed at an early age, whether that is through nature or nurture, remains a mystery. Once formed, it stays with us; maybe hidden at times, but it's there and it will emerge.
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