If you subscribe to the idea that women should be sexually available outside of a married relationship and act in such a way to take advantage of such women, then child abuse is your problem and your fault. Because you help perpetuate the type of society in which it becomes common for children to be in situations where they are around men (who are not their fathers) living with their mothers.
Until society looks squarely in the eye at the problem of men and women shacking up temporarily and oops, there's a baby, child abuse will remain everyone's problem.
More often than not child abuse happens in homes where partner abuse is also occurring. Below shows the relationship between people perpetrating violence in the presence of children. It is from research undertaken in Hamilton and each of these cases involved the police attending.
3 comments:
I think you've missed the entire point of the post there Lindsay.
But when you go on to say "marriage is no protection" by marriage do you lump in partners and step fathers?
And if you are making out the whole point of the post is that marriage, being no protection, isn't important, does that mean (statistically) its no big deal for children to be raised in single parent families, or where the father isn't the natural father?
Will these kind of arrangements lead to the same kind of society as one that does (1) value marriage as an institution (2) value the importance of the family and having children raised by two parents, committed to children and each other (3) values the importance of motherhood and shows it (4) realise the constant objectification of men and women ultimately alters our attitudes towards relationships and connecting on a deeper level.
But this is beside the point. I think Lucyna was trying to point out something far more subtle with her provocative statement.
The concept of personal responsibility has been both munted and at the same time, raised as society's ultimate goal.
Gone is the sense of duty and commitment and the wider social responsibility we must take to ensure the improvement in society.
We are facing a civilisation in decline and the solution is not one of working out monetary compensation for a father not being there. It's not withdrawing dollars from people on welfare to starve them all to death just so a small percentage buck up their ideas. Actually, its not going to be about money at all, and that seems to be the only way we respond to these issues.
That makes me wonder if we are missing something more fundamental to the discussion.
Lindsay,
What your table does not show are the number of married couples that cohabitated prior to marriage. Cohabitation increases the risk of any future marriage not being as stable as those of couples who have never cohabitated.
Zentiger, I didn't say marriage was no protection - I said it was no guarantee.
I am not taking any more from the research than can be. I don't know whether the marriages were second marriages or anything else. I was merely making the point that this particular research found partner abuse among marriages as well as non-marriage partnerships and child abuse is known to often occur in the same environments.
You know that I believe commitment is so very important but that's a personal view. A civilisation in decline? I doubt it. It might not be that flash in some quarters but history shows it's been like this before.
Lucyna, sorry but your comment introduces a whole new proposition which isn't actually relevant to my post.
Both of you are reading more than what I wrote.
Post a Comment