The Tribune

By DR IAN BETHELL BENNETT

Research shows that children who grow up in dysfunctional homes are more likely to be violent and to have problems with addiction. It is therefore not surprising how high our national levels of violence and dysfunctions are, especially when we look at the way our homes work. In families where children do not have sufficient guidance from parents, there are far more problems with them being disruptive and falling in line with peers who are troublesome.

If homes lack structure, more often than not research finds that those children also lack discipline and a moral compass. They are more likely to fail in school and they are also more likely to have emotional problems.

These words, moral compass and discipline, we use constantly. Yet we seem to think that children will acquire them from somewhere even when parents do not impart such traits. We often declare that a person has no moral compass, yet it is our job to create a moral compass. We are quick to cast blame, but slow to make any efforts to work differently.

Many households have extremely disengaged persons who care little for what their children do and so create a vortex of more violence and usually increased abuse, sometimes not intentionally, but totally unintentionally.

What are disengaged parents? We see disengaged parents as those who impose little or no discipline on their children, discipline should not be understood to mean beating, licks, cussings, slaps, but rather the creation of an orderly, controlled space with obvious and clear guidelines, rules and regulations that define how people interact and what is acceptable and unacceptable. Engaged parents are persons who spent time with their children, they guide them and care for them; they do not abandon them to their own affairs because they are too busy to get involved.

As a society, we have a lot of parents who are too busy to get involved.

As levels of poverty rise, real employment shrinks, and inequalities within society increase, we find homes where parents are quick to shirk their parental responsibilities because they are busy trying to earn enough to keep the roof over their heads. Given their lack of availability at home, their children find it easy to be led astray. This kind of absence of leadership means that anything from gang involvement to drug and alcohol addiction as well as prostitution are probable. Engaged parenting is extremely important to development of resourceful and well-developed young people.

We also talk about young people’s anger. They are angry for many reasons and their anger is usually very justified. We tend to treat young people as if they do not have minds of their own; we tell them they cannot think for themselves, rather than encouraging them to think with guidance and answering their questions with adequate information, instead of ‘because I said so’. In one study that does not include the Bahamas, we see that teens who are left alone fight and drink more, they also have more sexual relations with various partners. One of the main drivers of HIV is having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and, today, we also understand that a huge percentage of this sex is rough or violent.

Many young men think they must demonstrate domination in sex, and many young girls expect sex to be violent because of what they see in popular culture and via the internet. As a society, we have done little to safeguard our children from such problems. In fact, the nature of many communities, means that the more violent one is the more successful one will be.

As I sit and write this school children are spilling onto Poinciana Drive. One youngster has just kicked a man’s car and is now taking off his belt to beat the man who got out of his car. A group of young girls is watching and cheering. A small group of obviously influential boys is encouraging him to fight the man.

All of this is now a normal afternoon of events in Oakes Field. Many people say nothing. There is no real action taken. How many parents come to really sit down and work with their children and talk to teachers?

They will complain about being called to school because they will have to miss work so they will not go. The children are left unsupervised and if a teacher attempts to discipline them, parents descend on the school. The discipline does not even have to be physical. Our lack of good leadership and our disposition for disengaged parenting translates into serious gender-based violence. We often choose not to see what is happening in our own homes. We inculcate into our children that men should beat women and that women should beat children. This does not mean discipline, it means beating to the extend of causing serious bodily harm.

Apparently, as it has bene expressed to me by young men, “I is man, I need to beat”.

These facts translate into serious social problems. We encourage girls to kick arse now. We also encourage boys to beat up anyone who disrespects them. We tell boys that they can slap girls, because this is what they see at home and what they hear on the streets. The event described above is only one minor blip on a regular weekday afternoon.