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Poll result
28 October 05
The
fatherless generation
This
week concerns over youth gangs and violence have hit the
headlines. It is a problem that can be found to a greater or
lesser degree in many towns and cities throughout the country.
The
debate over what can be done has ranged widely from more
council amenities for young people, making education more
relevant and improving after-school activities, to more
pro-active truancy monitoring, more effective parenting,
greater coordination between social agencies, and better
policing.
While
suggestions on what should be done to improve the situation
have been free flowing, little has been said about the
underlying causes of the problem. The reason is that it is no
longer considered to be politically correct to discuss issues
relating to personal responsibility, the home and the family.
Yet the reality is that these are at the heart of the problem:
children raised in stable, loving families, are more likely to
join sports teams, rather than gangs.
Any
discussion with police or those who work with troubled youth
will quickly identify that the largest proportion of them come
from homes where their biological father is absent: children
raised in families without a father, where there is inadequate
supervision and a lack of socialisation, are far more likely
to become involved in anti-social behaviour and crime, than
those raised with a dad.
Chief
Youth Court Judge, Andrew Beecroft, in a speech at Parliament
a few years ago identified six characteristics of serious
youth offenders: “85 percent are male, the majority have no
contact with their father, 80 percent do not go to school and
have chronic drug or alcohol addictions, most have
psychological or psychiatric issues, and 50 percent – up to
90 percent in some courts – are Maori”.
He
explained that many of these boys have no adult male role
model: “14, 15, and 16 year-old boys seek out role models
like ‘heat seeking missiles’. It’s either the
leader of the Mongrel Mob or it’s a sports coach or it’s
Dad. But an overwhelming majority of boys who I see in
the Youth Court have lost contact with their father. …What
I’m saying is that I’m dealing in the Youth Court with
boys for whom their Dad is simply not there, never has been,
gone, vanished and disappeared”.
Judge
Beecroft went on to say: “…every single young boy that we
have dealt with has been abused as a child”.
This
is why I am so passionately opposed to public policy and
practice that encourages family breakdown and excludes
biological fathers. A biological father is a child’s
traditional protector. Removing him from the lives of his
children leaves them extremely vulnerable to abuse, neglect
and failure.
That
is not to say that every child being raised without a dad that
ends up in trouble, or for that matter that every child raised
in a loving two parent household by their biological parents,
turn out to be little angels. But, on the balance of
probability, children raised without their natural father,
will face greater difficulties in life, than children brought
up with their dad to love, guide and protect them.
In
1990, Dr Daniel Amneus, Professor of English at California
State University, in his book The Garbage Generation
put it this way:
“Most criminals come from female-headed
families. Most gang members come from female-headed families.
Most addicts come from female-headed families. Most rapists
come from female-headed families. Most educational failures
come from female-headed families. Most illegitimate births
occur to females who themselves grew up in female-headed
families”.
He
then went on to say: “If we are to deal meaningfully
with crime, what we must do is reduce the number of
female-headed families; what we must do is prevent the divorce
courts from expelling half of society's fathers from their
homes; what we must do is terminate a welfare system which
displaces millions of men from the principal male role, that
of family-provider. What we must do is make the father the
head of the family”.
Here
in New Zealand over the years, our policy makers have
steadfastly ignored that wisdom. Instead, driven by a feminist
agenda, which seeks to create equality for women by
undermining men, society has now reached a sorry state:
taxpayers are funding a hundred thousand women and girls to
struggle to raise their children on their own, there is an
epidemic of tens of thousands of abused children, and there is
now an escalation in youth gangs and violence.
Boys
are falling further and further behind at school now that we
have taken away an external examination system that encouraged
them to strive and excel. Men are finding themselves excluded
from more and more of the professions like teaching that used
to largely be their domain. Increasing numbers of fathers are
being alienated from their children by our female-biased
family court. Dads and grandfathers up and down the country
are now afraid to hug and kiss their children in public.
It
has all gone too far, and the sooner we return to some balance
and common sense, the better.
To
turn the situation around, we need to realise that New Zealand
society is stronger when men and women both play an equal
role, and that it is not in anyone’s interest to marginalize
either. Further, we should be encouraging and supporting
strong and committed families by removing the incentives in
the welfare system and in family law that have lead to the
massive undermining of the family.
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youth crime?
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Poll result
Your
Comments:
To make
up for the lack of a husband/partner in a child’s life
single, sole girls with their babies need to be in supported
living. The girls need to learn to care for themselves as well
as their children. They need to get educated. Look at
childcare options, open adoptions. Have a strong positive male
mirror to reflect male virtues and strength. Additional
children to the girl, by different fathers, must present a red
flag that the children are at risk. Forget the P.C. the
children have the primal right to sound care. They are at risk
to start with; things can only deteriorate with more siblings.
It’s as newborns they need to be on watch. Plunket once was
the filter, now its optional, and the really needy fall
through the net.
TV
is the worst offender. Too many programs of either violence or
sex and which the most vulnerable believe are what is the
norm. Partnerships are easy to break up & divorce is
pretty simple. Couples have lost the ability to work together
through problems. Discipline is also lacking in schools
thanks to our PC system. Respect for the elderly has
disappeared. Maybe this is the PC way.
Poor
parents do not educate their children in a positive way. They
provide no stimulus, take no interest. Children from such
homes arrive at primary school well behind those who have
reading writing language and numeracy skills already well
developed. Some are not even toilet trained and communicate in
grunts only --that’s all they have ever experienced.
Once behind, they stay behind, forever discouraged, and the
cycle goes on. Parenting license should be required before
they can keep their children. Parenting is the most
responsible thing in the world, yet treated in the most
irresponsible manner by some. [Retd High School Principal]
I
see the imported hip-hop "culture", which includes
anti-social behaviour, aggressive "music", graffiti,
boy racers, noisy cars, youth crime etc. as all being linked.
I view with dismay the increasing legitimising of this crass
and appalling culture in the news media and on TV programmes.
I
cannot understand all the talk about poverty. Sure,
there are people who need that "safety net" provided
by Nanny State, but benefits should be sufficient to feed and
clothe families (frugally -I admit) and able-bodied people
should be able to work at least part time and be topped up
with a handout. The whole welfare system is a crock, and
continues to be stuffed up by inept idiots like the present
batch who we have had for the last 6 years and continue to
have stuffing up what should be Godzone. They have taken
away incentive to be self-reliant - I have an example of this
in my own family who say if both parents work they lose their
working for families’ handout. And these are
self-reliant young parents... I despair…
Families
brought up in homes dependent on welfare, where nobody, works
or gets out of bed and where hopelessness and helplessness is
the norm. Education is not valued and truancy is a normal way
of life adding to despair, boredom and the tendency to gather
with others of similar ilk. Successive governments subscribe
to this malaise by continuing to fund it without demanding any
return from the recipients.
This
is a community responsibility. When a family is not
functioning healthily, the whole community needs to take a
part in providing support and mentoring for that family.
We live too much in isolation of others (in terms of giving
meaningful support) and men need to be esteemed and encouraged
to take an active part in the community. Seeing men
involved with children at rugby, martial arts, and other
activities is wonderful and needs to be recognised and valued.
I
believe we need to teach kids what I was taught by my parents
... every action has a consequence. That consequence can
either be negative or positive, but there WILL be a
consequence. These days, PC behaviour means no discipline
(apart from time out - whoopee!) in either the homes or
schools and certainly not in our youth justice system. Gone
are the days where kids, when threatened with the thought of
having to front to police, trembled and made good on their
behaviour. Today, kids laugh at the Law, they swear at
teachers, they berate and abuse their parents ... all due to
lack of discipline and respect. I honestly believe a return to
corporal punishment, threat of being expelled from school and
sent to a reform school, and proper youth criminal facilities
will soon put a stop to it all. I further believe our
government needs to stop pandering to the gangs (Mongrel,
Black Power, whatever).
My
responses are subjectively, but I agree with the proposal that
family breakdown is the single most important causal
influence. Ethnicity is also, I believe, an important factor:
Maori tribal "culture" is not conducive to stability
in modern society. Pre-literate Neolithic social structures
are not a good model in the modern world.
Families
must be responsible for their own children. Schools
should be able to punish children at the school. People
should not be encouraged to have children out of wedlock or a
permanent relationship. There shouldn't be policies,
which favour women going back to work but don't give the same
consideration (financial - subsidised day care) to women
staying at home to look after their children. We need to
teach more life skills at school.
There
are significant times in a child life when a father’s
discipline is required. Fathers cannot provide this if they
are absent from the home, in another relationship or in jail
or away in the armed services. A mother’s nurture is
required especially after school when children want to talk
about their day. Some mothers have been unable to juggle their
work and home lives over the past thirty years, we are now
reaping the youth crime that comes from the breakdown of basic
family life. The absence of knowledge of the Love of God
in young peoples lives is also a factor in youth crime. How
can they Love unless they know they are loved? It is the whole
communities responsibility to raise a positive child.
Parents who have raised positive Kids must be mobilised to
assist raise future generations of positive Kiwi kids.
I
would like to promote 'Big Buddy', a Man Alive project. Men
prepared to commit at least one hour a week, are closely
vetted for suitability before being paired off with a young
lad from a single parent female environment. This organisation
is presently only available in Auckland, but is growing
rapidly. For more information, phone 09 835 0504, or go
to www.bigbuddy.org.nz
Bring
back a good strong masculine presence into our country and
allow our men to be men!!!
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