Something to Abuse, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise
October 22, 2011 Martha Thomases 3 Comments
We’re Number One!
The United States of America is first in the developed world!
Unfortunately, the thing we’re first in is abusing children. According to this news story, a child in this country dies from abuse every five hours. And, according to research on this website, “Approximately 80% of children that die from abuse are under the age of 4.”
The night this was reported on BBC America, I was, of course, appalled. And I was interested to see how the American news networks would cover this important story.
They didn’t. It seems a race car driver was killed in a crash, and that dominated the networks. And although I haven’t been home enough to survey coverage for the rest of the week, it doesn’t seem to have shown up as a topic of discussion, at least as far as I can tell (and I would welcome evidence to the contrary).
Why is this happening?
It’s not unusual for incidents of domestic violence to increase during tough economic times. And these times are tough. But times are also tough in Europe, and they don’t see as much child-killing as we do. I think it goes much deeper than that.
We are a Puritan country. We hate pleasure. We quote the book of Genesis, in which God tells Eve that the pain of childbirth is part of her punishment for eating the apple. When I listen to a lot of the talk from the anti-abortion movement, I hear a belief that women are punished with children for having sex.
And if you watch even a little bit of reality television (I’m looking at you, Maury Povich) you can see the contempt we Americans have for the people who are willing to have sex with us. Men are constantly screaming at women that they’re “whores.” What does this say about how these men view themselves? And the women are no better (although I can not find a single common word they use to show their disdain).
If you watch this season’s toy commercials, you get the feeling that parents don’t really know how to relate to their kids. Parents sit and watch their kids, who are watching a dancing Elmo, or staring at a computer screen that is playing a game for them.
Children are a market, an opportunity to sell things. The institutions set up to serve them, like public schools, are a way for the government to hand out money to special interests. Just look at what Susan Collins did to a bill designed to increase the nutritional value of school lunches. The interests of farmers in her state were more important than the kids.
I don’t exempt organizations characterized as liberal from criticism. Too many teachers unions, for example, are more concerned with getting days off from teaching to attend special training than they are about their students (although, to be honest, I think more teachers and stricter standards on teaching degrees would do a lot to change this situation).
So, to many of us, children are a punishment, a burden. To corporations, children are a market. It’s not a surprise that they’re the first to get hit when someone is angry or frustrated.
It would be great if we could turn to our so-called spiritual leaders for guidance on this issue. With good reason, however, we don’t trust the churches. Fundamentalists of all stripes believe in a hierarchical family, where the children are essentially owned by their parents, and the wife must be submissive to her husband.
Our political discourse on the subject has been highjacked by crazy people.
Maybe this made sense to wandering nomads primitively herding sheep in the desert, but such attitudes have no place in an enlightened democracy.
In Europe (where, as we noted earlier, there is less child abuse), both parents get months of leave to care for newborn or newly adopted children. They get weeks more vacation than Americans, so they have lots of time to spend with their children and many more opportunities to get to know them as people. There is government healthcare, so parents don’t have to choose between paying the rent and taking a child to the doctor.
We need a movement to Occupy the Family. We need to demand family-friendly support from the government and from our communities. And we need to stress the pure physical joy of being a parent, instead of quoting the Bible.
Media Goddess Martha Thomases still loves to smell her son’s head, even if she has to stand on a chair to do it.
JosephW
October 22, 2011 - 12:24 pm
“Too many teachers unions, for example, are more concerned with getting days off from teaching to attend special training than they are about their students . . . .” Martha, I recognize that’s your opinion (and this is your blog), but I really doubt that the TEACHERS themselves are interested in getting those days off simply to attend “special training” sessions. The kids get a day off from school, the teachers are generally locked inside some building listening to some meaningless blather that largely does nothing for either the teachers or the students. When I was in school, I actually liked most of my teachers and could tell that almost none of them looked forward to those “workshops.” (And several of my friends had parents who were teachers and could tell you firsthand that their moms and dads would’ve liked to have had that day off as well if they had to basically lose a day of teaching.)
MOTU
October 22, 2011 - 1:32 pm
Why is this news not the biggest story in the media? I’m always amazed that stories like this and the ‘stop the vote’ efforts in some states by the GOP are side notes in the American media.
BUT-I know Demi’s husband is stepping out on her.
Martha Thomases
October 22, 2011 - 3:04 pm
Joseph, it was not my intent to malign teachers. I think, as a group, they are among our most underpaid and under-appreciated peoples.
However, perhaps because of this under-payment and lack of appreciation, not all teachers are good. And I believe that there are enough less-than-good teachers to – occasionally – tilt their unions in the wrong way.
A friend of mine works at a teachers’ college in the area, and she tells me about people who won’t attend free workshops, even though completion of the workshops would mean a raise (as well as skills to make them more effective) because they would have to go on Saturday. I know this story is anecdotal, but it reflects the attitudes I was trying to criticize.
If it were up to me, teachers would be exempt from taxes.
Rene
October 22, 2011 - 4:47 pm
I’m with you. The “Focus on the Family” sort of people are so into going out into the world and fighting and nurturing paranoid fantasies of societal decadence, that they seem to miss out on the pure joy of raising a family. The irony.
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It’s really less a problem with Evangelical Christianity itself, and more with a certain kind of personality that is often enabled by it: The control freak.
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I have a few aunts that are Evangelicals, and they’re very loving parents. But here we have two kinds of Evangelicals: the traditionals, that keep to themselves and come from many generations of devout, and have a sense of humor about the whole thing; and the New Breed, influenced by American Televangelists, crusading, millitant, a few of them actually intolerant, usually new to their faith.
mike weber
October 22, 2011 - 5:14 pm
Mencken, as you likely know, defined Puritans as people who suffer from the lingering fear that someone, somewhere, may be having a good time.
Martha Thomses
October 22, 2011 - 5:34 pm
@Rene: I deliberately chose the word “fundamentalist” over “Evangelical.” Jews and Muslims ( and maybe others) can be just as guilty.
But, yes, James Dobson has a reserved seat in Hell, if his other beliefs are correct.
Doug Abramson
October 22, 2011 - 6:54 pm
Martha,
Why would you inflict Dobson on Satan? He’s not THAT evil!
Mike Gold
October 23, 2011 - 7:41 am
One-sided argument here, Martha. Z.P.G. or die.
Tom Brucker
October 24, 2011 - 7:36 am
Most children are helpless (except in Colorado, where they have guns). Could it be that economic and other social stressors lead adults to abuse children first? One interesting connection with teachers is that they are often the first to sense abused children who need help, but privacy rules usually stifle interventive actions.
Whitney
October 24, 2011 - 12:31 pm
Divine Ms. M. –
I’m convinced that in the end, civilizations will be judged on the basis of how their most vulnerable were treated. Especially children
And to hopefuly accurately paraphrase the Bible in the right way, Jesus said the same.
R. Maheras
October 25, 2011 - 10:23 am
As someone who lived in England for three years, I became quite conditioned towards seeing BBC programs bashing the United States. Images of snobby announcers or hosts sneering with derision at the latest buffoonery by those wacky “Colonials” are permanently etched in my brain, so it comes at no surprise to me when a new U.K. hit piece rears its ugly head.
Contrary to what some of you have apparently assumed, this particular issue has not exactly been ignored by U.S. media. In 2009, there was a flurry of reporting by major news outlets in the U.S. when the child advocacy organization Every Child Matters released a report about child abuse deaths here.
The report, which also appears to be the driving force behind the recent BBC program, only very selectively addresses the problem as it equates to the “rich democracies” of Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada, France and the United States.
That’s seven countries out of about 200, folks.
So, while there’s no denying that deaths from child abuse is a problem in the seven countries mentioned, it is a ridiculous and disingenuous political ploy to ignore the problem’s true global scale. What difference does it make if a country is a democracy, rich or poor, etc. – especially when one chooses to ignore the myriad of countries where, per capita, deaths from child abuse most likely make the U.S. statistics pale in comparison? After all, as the advocacy organization’s name clearly states, “every child matters.”
Using selective and deceptive criticism does nothing but undermine and weaken a cause’s argument.
By the way, I personally think the reason the child abuse fatality rate in the U.S. are so high is because of the high rate of legal and illegal substance abuse in this country – something that our popular culture tends to glorify and wink at. Parenting – particularly when a child is very young – is a job that requires diligence 27/7, and legal or illegal substance abuse has no place in such an environment.
R. Maheras
October 25, 2011 - 2:32 pm
27/7 ???
I’ve been working so hard lately I added three hours to the day!
Wishful thinking, eh wot?
Whitney
October 27, 2011 - 1:26 pm
R. Maheras –
That must be the metric system.
Mike Gold
October 27, 2011 - 8:40 pm
I thought 27/7 had something to do with daylight saving time, but now I’m with Whitney: it must have something to do with putting time into liters. Or maybe Canadian football rules or something.