Protecting Our Children From Debauchery

Our children are the future. We have a good idea of what kind of future our country will have when we take a critical look at what kind of children we have today. Our situation today is the results of what kind of children we were some decades back. If our country is so polarized by politics, corrupted by greed and lawless with unreasonable convenience, then the children of the last generation, about thirty to forty years ago are failing us today.

But many will argue that the children of those past years were trained in a disciplined manner. There was no proliferation of the computer and internet was not ubiquitous. In the late 1980s and early 1990s globalization was not entrenched and the family unit was well knit. But even with such a generation, the results we have from the adults of today cannot be said to be what we would like.

The issue of child training and development is both critical and complex. It is work we cannot afford to do in mediocrity. This is why the national dialogue held in Accra last week by the Ministry of Gender Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP) to garner consensus on legislation regarding age of consent to sex, corporal punishment and internet laws is worth a wider and deeper platform for public more discourse.

Every society is as good as its laws. Good laws produce a worthy country and mediocre laws yield a mediocre country. Our problem is that many times laws made are not enforced so no matter well intended and crafted they are, such laws do not affect any good to the country. Ghana has a challenge with law enforcement. There are many good laws which have been enacted with a lot of resources. But their enforcement is near zero. Therefore our society does not benefit from these laws.

When social difficulties arise and remain because of the poor enforcement of the laws what should be done? Change the laws and lower the standards to meet so called realities? Or should we correct the social challenges causing the poor law enforcement? When we refuse to address the challenges affecting enforcement and blame the law to be ineffective we are being dishonest and unwise.

Some argue that a law that is not enforced is not a good law. This is a disingenuous argument because it neglects the responsibility of the state to ensure adequate resources for the enforcement of the laws. Any government that blames poor law enforcement on lack of resources is unskillful in governance, to say the least, and does not deserve to be elected into the high office of leading the destiny of many millions. What we have to be doing instead is to enforce our laws so well that our progress is reflected by increasing legal standards. A key aspect of governance is the skill to mobilise civil society to actively support law enforcement. A government unable to do this is unfit for purpose.

The law on Consent to sex
The present age for consent to sex is 16 years. The age for marriage is 18 years. There are those advocating that the current age for consent to sex be maintained; and there are those who want it raised to parity with the age of marriage. As it is now, two children between 16 and 18 years can be sexually engaged without being guilty of the law, once they had mutual consent. In reality, this is not an uncommon practice among our children. Is this good for our children and our country? Those who say the age of sexual consent must be raised to the age of marriage argue that, this provides an opportunity to manage the consequences of sex in a more responsible and secured context that marriage provides. While there may be no obligation to marry someone because one has had a sexual experience with that fellow, there is an opportunity to marry. As may be noted, marriage may not be a guarantee for responsibility, yet it provides a context for maturity. Immature persons have no business getting married. They cannot bear the responsibilities and so do not warrant the rights and privileges of marriage.

The critical assumption is that age is proportional to maturity. Some say the science tells us a person is capable of making matured decisions at 21 years; the age at which their hypothalamus is functioning optimally. The universal age of majority, at least in the contest of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is 18 years. We need some more education on this by our health professionals.

Is it presumptuous to say persons below 18 years, children, have a right to personhood including the right to sexual pleasure? May be it is not. Should the vulnerability of their immaturity be a reason for preventing them from the right to sexual pleasure? Yes, I think so. The ecstatic pleasure of sex has destructive and evil consequences on society when not brewed in a context of security and responsibility. Security and responsibility are brewed in the crucible of maturity provided by the framework of marriage. The multi-dimensional outcomes, implications and consequences of sex and sexual pleasure provide the ingredients needed in the fundamental resource of society, reproduction. Sex is the only way the human race is propagated. Without the framework of maturity provided by marriage, sexual propagation is mismanaged. This is why we have unwanted teenage pregnancies, defiled boys and girls quickly losing their moral dignity; and malicious adults with unbridled animalistic lusts. Any law that allows sex for children is unacceptable and not in the best interest of our children and country; given that children are neither matured nor equipped enough to meet the associated responsibilities. What we ought to be busy about is how to reinforce preventive measures. Our children should be helped to appropriately manage their natural drives in manner that upholds their moral dignity and physical wellbeing.

Implications of “Romeo and Juliet” (R&J) Laws

The essential feature of the R&J provision is that it largely purports to permit under-aged children to engage in consensual sex without facing the full rigours of the law. It reduces or eliminates the statutory penalty for a sexual offence. One argument is that, our children are already doing this and it is better to “allow” them than to hang a yoke of crime on them. Another is that, if sex is a natural urge that drives at the age it does until the desire is satisfied, why do we criminalize anyone who merely satisfies this natural desire. The response is simple: we are not animals. We are moral agents, reasonable beings not controlled by instincts and habits alone but essentially by reasonable morals; not mere religious dogmas but godly principles. We are human beings created in the image and likeness of God to uphold moral sanity as the basis for socio-economic development devoid of the control of a global political economy unequally driven by neo-colonialist and already debauched societies masked by so-called economic success. We are morally more developed than many of the countries trying to use aid money to destroy the moral fabric holding our society together. Their societies are tearing apart and we should not allow them to pull as along that debauched highway.

“Paapa and Maame” is better than “Romeo and Juliet”

The “Paapa and Maame” (P&M) concept represents that strong sense of responsibility our indigenous culture of godliness instills in our children while they simulate the exemplary character of their parents and elders in the community. For those who experienced and remember children’s role-play during the village-yard moon-light play times, we recollect how we preferred to play the role of the responsible father and mother who go out to the farm to work and bring food home. Before going, they give each child a specific instruction to do this and that and the obedient child gets rewarded while the disobedient child gets an undesired consequence such as being caught by a big animal in the forest or caned by “Paapa and Maame”. “ Paapa and Maame” engenders a sense of responsibility but “Romeo and Juliet” promotes inordinate rights. The twisted concept of human rights and the associated perverse understanding children’s rights should be corrected, instead being exported from so-called developed countries to countries like ours.

Many of our children are unhappy and frustrated by the immoral lifestyles they have been trapped in. they are looking to intelligent adults to liberate them not to worsen their situation. They want to stop having irresponsible sex. They want a way out of the captivity the wrong choices they make in the face of pressing natural desires. The way out is not to push them further into it. The desire for sex is a strong instinct upon puberty so there must be a diligent and consist work of parents, churches, teachers, and the relevant professionals to provide a solution not a mere and useless response.

By Emmanuel Kwame Mensah a Child Development Specialist