The Tribune

By KHALILA NICOLLS

The Bahamas Crisis Centre held a peace conference in October that was another commendable example of the important work being done by the non-profit organisation. For some 30 years, the organisation has been supporting victims of violence in the Bahamas.

Michael Neville, consultant psychiatrist at Sandilands Rehabilitation, delivered one of the presentations that really stuck with me at the conference. He basically laid out an argument against corporal punishment and for perpetrator reintegration, while pointing to some sobering societal dynamics in the process.

In his presentation, he posed an important question which is the subject of my discussion here: Why is it that our young boys are being raised by mothers, schooled by female teachers and surrounded by women and yet they are still growing up to perpetuate a culture of violence against women?

Clearly, someone is teaching the children that violence against women is acceptable. Or perhaps they are simply learning that violence is acceptable, and in their young minds with no concept of the sacred mother or the divine feminine, they have no mechanism to filter their violent responses when directed towards women.

A few months ago I was in the accident and emergency waiting room at the hospital and I witnessed a woman drape up a little boy. She was a heavy woman, whose stature suggested a certain amount of might. The little boy between her legs – not more than three years old –was being playful. A few times he obstructed traffic in the walkway, but not in any meaningful way.

On one dramatic occasion, the mother grabbed the little boy by the waste of his pants in a militant fashion and dragged him towards her. She used such force he was lifted off the ground like a rag doll. It was very abrasive. The little boy proceeded to cry. No doubt. In what must have been confusing for the little boy, her almost schizophrenic embrace (an attempt to be nurturing I presume or stave off the embarrassment) also went awry. As she coddled him, she shouted at him to shut up and stop crying.

The story is a mere anecdote but it is revealing none the less. There must be something about the way the society is mothering and something about the way we are using and teaching the use of violence that is producing the very destructive results we are living with.

And I say society, because motherhood is not the sole responsibility of an individual woman. In a functioning community, the shortfalls of one person should not be the undoing of the entire community.

I had a discussion with children at the after school programme where I volunteer about gender and violence. One of the questions posed was who beats more: mummy or daddy? The unanimous response from the group of 10 to 12 year old children was mummy. Who rows more? Mummy. Who gets more beatings: girls or boys? Boys.

The children did not intend their responses to be a critique, but in fact I believe their views suggest an important critique that we must assert and examine as women. Are our mothering practices a part of the problem? Are we teaching our children the violent behaviour we say we abhor? Are our mothering practices allowing our children to develop emotional intelligence? Are we truly serving our boys and girls as mothers?

I can hear the chorus cuing up now: oh the father’s this, the men that. Yes, yes, yes. The fathers this and the men that. Now for the reality check. Women cannot be responsible for men, except that we are responsible for ourselves and responsible for our children (boys who become men and girls who become women). So women must take responsibility for that which they are responsible for.

A woman’s womb is the creative space that gives birth to both men and women. The energy we feed our children in the womb, including our thought patterns and behaviour goes to the core of who are children are programmed to be at a very rudimentary level.

The responsibility of motherhood is so sacred and I wonder if we are truly honouring that responsibility if we perpetuate the normalisation of violence in our homes through verbal abuse, corporal punishment or resigning ourselves to the status quo in an abusive relationships.

Violence begets violence. As a community of women we need to do better by our sisters and better by our children by addressing the ways in which we as perpetrators or victims of violence consciously and subconsciously, passively and actively normalize violence in the home.

The conference’s theme was based on the Ashanti proverb: “The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.” I am suggesting that not only do we have to look at the so called absence of the father in the home, but we also need to look at the presence of the mother in the home.

• Pan-African writer and cultural scholar Noelle Khalila Nicolls is a practising journalist in the Bahamas. She is a senior writer and section editor at the Tribune newspaper, with responsibility for the women, health, arts and entertainment sections. She regularly contributes to the newspaper’s flagship column, Insight. You can follow her online at Twitter.com/noelle_elleon.