Handling Own Children - Does The Law Prescribe Limits?

The social vicissitudes of modern-day life is simply unimaginable. Where they involve children, they have become a headache for families and child rights activists. Clearly, ours is a generation that has outstepped its bounds as far as concern and care for children are concerned.

Child injustices of all dimensions keep rearing their head in our society. Child molestation, sexual and physical abuses, rejection, cruelty and in some cases, barbarism are some of the ills the children of today are having to grapple with in the world of adult selfishness.

One cannot be far from wrong to simply describe families today as being in crisis as both parents and children head off in opposite directions pursuing the type of agenda that never brings parents and children together.

Parents who should be shaping their children's agenda and carrying them along have rather failed their children. They have put themselves first with very little time for the child.

Parents are busy with chasing wealth, mansions, cars, running after careers, high positions at work and fame in society. Academic degrees are now in vogue and parents are sacrificing their children's time and attention following the crowd.

Regrettably, children are becoming a nuisance for some rather than a joy in bringing them up. That is why two media stories happening distance apart last week have been of concern since reading them.

One was a Ghana News Agency (GNA) story carried on the Internet by the Ghana Web. Wow! I surf the web on a daily basis when away from home to catch up with home news.

And the comments that readers post on specific stories are so interesting. The other story was a front page story which necessitated an editorial comment in The Mail of London.

While both stories were on children, the content and focus were two poles apart, yet worrisome in their own rights.

The GNA story posted on the Ghana Web carried a deceptive headline: “Police rescues VAT official's daughter.” For a second, I thought it was a kidnapping story, but no, it was not.

According to the story, the Brong Ahafo Regional Office of the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Police last week rescued a kindergarten one pupil, who was found locked up in a room by the father instead of being in school.

We are not told where her mother was, but according to the story, a team of police personnel of the Unit, led by a deputy superintendent broke into the room and found the girl lying naked on the floor of the room with bruises all over the body and a big wound on her forehead.

What is good about this unfortunate story is that it was some residents who raised the alarm and alerted the police about the cruelty a parent could visit on his own biological child to the extent that he refused to give her food.

The story does not specify the age of the child, but if she is in kindergarten one, then the child should not be more than six years.

No matter the offence of a child as young as less than 10 years, no parent has the right to subject him or her to the kind of wickedness the child in this story is said to have suffered.

The question I am eager to have an answer to is, where was the mother of the child? Where were the school authorities too? This brings me back to a point I have raised a few times regarding the disconnect between school authorities and parents.

Education officers and school authorities should be empowered, if for nothing at all, for the success and in the interest of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) to ensure that child absenteeism from school is followed up. If such keenness is shown, many more abused children like the one in the Brong Ahafo Region could be saved from all forms of dehumanising treatments.

The other story on a parent and child which caught some media focus in London last week is a “caring” mother's fallout with the law for telling off hard her two children who were “harassing” her with cries and shouts as they followed in the shops.

According to the story, a mother who gave her four-year old son and an 11-year old daughter a ticking-off in a supermarket was secretly followed home by an off-duty policeman, who overheard her threatening to smack them unless they behaved.

Six weeks later, two officers arrived at her home and quizzed her about disciplining the youngsters. To her horror, she then received a letter from the local council, saying her “chastisement” of them had been put on record for at least the next 14 years.

Amazingly, this was scene played out in supermarkets and homes all over. Mothers get harassed by fractious kids who are bored or irritated by one thing or another. All a mother needs to do is to give that famous ultimatum that every mother gives every now and then.

Invariably, these are mere threats of chastisements which are enough to calm any little tormentors. But no. This story, as it is played out in London, is clearly dictating how a parent should raise his or her children.

As per our tradition of raising up children, I bet many mothers and fathers and even grandmothers would have received for umpteenth times close following of police officers.

As for the Brong Ahafo Regional VAT officer, I can hazard a guess as to what the contents of his letter from DOVVSU would have sounded like.

The morale of both stories? Children have a special position in every society. As such, a lot is expected of the parents who are responsible for the care and welfare of their children, regardless.

While the cruelty and untoward behaviour of a parent towards his or her children will not pass unpunished, another parent's tough love for his or her children will not go unnoticed.

In both cases, whether for the good of the child or for the worse, observers definitely are concerned, especially the law. But should they?

Credit: Vicky Wireko/Daily Graphic