Prepare young people for parenthood
Dear Editor,
I write in response to a letter published on May 2 in the Jamaica Observer entitled ‘Child abuse comes in all forms’.
I feel it’s not enough to try solving the societal problem of unwanted pregnancies with abortion alone.
It is similarly irresponsibly insufficient to just give students the condom-and-banana demonstration along with the address to the nearest health clinic as their sex education.
As liberal democracies we cannot prevent anyone from bearing children, including those who insist upon procreating regardless of their inability to raise children in a psychologically functional/healthy manner. We can, however, educate all young people for the most important job ever, even those highschoolers who plan to remain childless.
If nothing else, such child development curriculum could offer students an idea/clue as to whether they’re emotionally suited for the immense responsibility and strains of parenthood. Given what is at stake, should they not at least be equipped with such valuable science-based knowledge? For example, it could teach how a human foetus is aware of its mother’s emotions.
According to the online article by body-centered psychotherapist Linda Marks, “When a mother both consciously and subconsciously wanted to be pregnant and welcomed her baby, the child thrived. When the mother either consciously or subconsciously wanted the baby, the child was fine. When the mother neither consciously nor subconsciously wanted the baby, the child felt the effects of this hostile emotional climate. I remember a story of a woman who not only didn’t want her baby but also resented his intrusive presence in her body. When the Italian doctor would use an ultrasound to view the baby as the mother talked about her resentments of him and the pregnancy, the baby would curl up in a tiny ball in a corner of the uterus, trying to make himself very small. Even in-utero a baby can feel the power of his/her mother’s heart. When considering having children, making a thoughtful, heartful, integrated decision is important for the overall well-being of a child.”
(http://www.healingheartpower.com/power-heart.html)
Yet the prevailing collective attitude is: Why should I care, my kids are alright? Or, what is in it for me, the taxpayer?
While some people will justify it as a normal, thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving only-if-it’s-in-my-own-backyard attitude can debilitate social progress, even when social progress is most needed.
Frank Sterle Jr
Canada
fgsjr2013@gmail.com
