Can We Not Do Better Than This?

"There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children."

Nelson Mandela

You can tell a great deal about a society by what it does and what it talks about. What it talks about represents what it holds to be important; what it does demonstrates its level of commitment to it. Together, they underscore a society's values.

In Canada and the United States, it appears that we hold a number of things to be very important. Politics is at the top of the list followed closely by the economy, the environment and various entitlements. Nothing galvanizes action like a threat to our entitlements as we have seen recently with the absurd student riots in Quebec over a planned increase in tuition that is the daily equivalent of half the cost of a bad cup of coffee.

Do you know what is not on the list? Protecting our children!

To be sure there are some, working to try to end bullying both in the school and online while others are focusing on trying to prevent teen suicides which is a growing tragedy but it is the overall protection and welfare of children that is either ignored or merely paid lip service.

In Canada, 1 in 10 children live in poverty and go to bed hungry or start their day without breakfast as a result. In the United States, the ratio is 1 in 3. More than 13 million children in the U.S. receive food stamps. These are two of the richest countries in the world but apparently this is the best we can do.

    Child Welfare in United States 

•  Number of children who are victims of abuse 751,049  
•  Number of children in foster care 418,422 
•  Number of children adopted from foster care 57,264 
•  Number of grandparents raising grandchildren 2,541,364

In Canada, a 19 year old Alberta mother is given a suspended sentence for murdering her newborn and throwing the body over the fence into her neighbour’s yard. In Guelph, the murder trial for a man accused of raping and murdering 8 year old Tori Stafford is now before the jury. The man's girlfriend, who testified at his trial is already serving a life sentence for her admission to having killed the little girl with a hammer.

Yesterday, a 40-year old mother killed her 4-month son in Toronto....

....and in the United States another small child died at the hands of his parents in March.  For three years, 6-year Khalil Wynnes was whipped daily with a belt, extension cords and was half starved by his mother and her companion. He joins a too long list of abused and murdered children along with Savannah Hardin who was killed by her step-mother and grandmother for lying about eating candy and Charlie and Braydon Powell who were killed by their father in a murder-suicide.

As tragic as these deaths are, the real tragedy is that there are countless more whose deaths never make it beyond the local newspaper and never capture our attention as a result.

While we have all been busy arguing about politics, protesting increased tuition costs or discussing Mitt Romney’s hair and President Obama’s latest evolution of his position on gay marriage, every day another four children died at the hands of their parents or some other member of their family.

      Children At Risk In The United States

• A child is abused or neglected every 42 seconds. 
• A child dies before his/her first birthday every 18 mins. 
• A child or teen is killed by gunfire every 3 hours.

While there are individuals and groups working to effect change and to combat this disgraceful circumstance, clearly it is not part of the national conversation and that screams volumes about our values as a society.

University students will protest for weeks over a ridiculously low tuition increase but are silent about the murder of children by their own families. Occupy will posture and vandalize to draw attention to whatever issue has caught their attention today but not a word about the abuse and murder of children....our children!

To be honest, I don’t expect much more from these groups with their self-absorbed, adolescent thinking but surely to God we should be able to expect more from the rest of society!

Where is the political leadership on this issue? Where are the courts and the government agencies? They are silent. More political grandstanding was done in the past week over a non-existent war on women than had been devoted in a decade to children at risk.

President Obama waxed eloquently about how a son of his might have looked like Trayvon Martin but has no words for the four children who are murdered or abused every day. Apparently they either wouldn’t look like one of his children or their deaths and circumstance don’t have the required media profile to deserve mention.

For its part, the Republican leadership is too busy worrying about income tax cuts, winning primaries or starting American colonies on the moon to have time to develop and advocate a bipartisan strategy to deal with child poverty, abuse and murder.

The step-mother and
grandmother stand
accused of murdering
Savanah Hardin

The bureaucracy is so tangled up in its own contradictory attitudes it alternately over-regulates to the detriment of some children and ignores to the subsequent death of others. The family court judge who ordered that this 6 year old boy be returned to his drug addicted parents against the pleas of his foster parents and even Children’s Services will face no repercussions for his reckless endangerment that resulted in the death of Khalil Wynnes.

Where are all the important people who constantly lecture us about our values as a society? Where are Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Van Jones or all the fundamentalist Christians who claim a monopoly on a higher, compassionate morality? Where are the media commentators who talk endlessly about trivia in politics and offer up a constant barrage of what is necessary to make our societies better places?

Michael Moore lending his celebrity
to the Occupy Movement

Where are the celebrities who are always so eager to support one cause or another if the press is nearby? Where are all those who rushed to support the vandalism of Occupy or the war against dirty oil? Where are Michael Moore, Susan Sarandan, Darryl Hannah, Joan Baez and all the others who lectured us about wealth distribution and the environment?

Like politicians, they are silent. This issue doesn't offer the same media profile opportunities that some of them require before getting involved while the rest are just too busy with causes that are far more important than our children.

But the real question is, ‘Where are we?’

I see thousands of tweets in a week from followers all over the world. I didn’t see one about the death of this 6 year old boy and aside from the odd tweet asking me to retweet for the benefit of children; I saw nothing about children at risk.

We tweet daily about our own children, our grandchildren and the joy and travails they are facing but we are silent about all those children who are living in a private hell we wouldn't wish on a dog.

Charlie (5) & Braedon (7) Powell
were murdered by their father

I recently wrote a satire about the legalizing of marijuana that received four times more page hits and comment than all of the articles I've written about children at risk combined. This one will be no different. A few will read it, some will share it with friends and it will be forgotten tomorrow along with the issue.

More people postured about Kony than will ever rise up and demand protection for the children living in our own communities.

We argue about abortion without thought on either side and now two Austrian academics have posed the question about whether or not post-natal abortion should be legal. They suggest changing the label from infanticide to after-birth abortion and while they intended it as an academic discussion, what kind of a society even contemplates this?

For their part, the mainstream media, in particular CNN and the Philadelphia Inquirer have tried to keep this story in front of us but we’re not interested. We have important things to tweet, to text and to post on our Facebook pages. The safety, the welfare……..the lives of children aren’t a priority for us.

Four children die from abuse
and neglect every day in the U.S.

While we argue about politics, rave over Justin Beiber or quote the bible online, children all around us are living in poverty, being molested, kidnapped, abused and murdered. This isn’t something happening in some underdeveloped, uncivilized third-world country, it’s here…….now…….in ours!

Politicians won’t act unless we force them to act but we can’t be bothered. We have entitlements to protect, issues and causes to advance and elections to win. We criticize the 1% for their wealth even as many of us chase online opportunities for easy money. We have no time for the welfare of our children. 

It says everything about what we are as a society. It defines our values by exposing what we hold most important.

Tori Stafford (8) raped and murdered

It is a disgrace and we should be ashamed but we won’t be. We don’t have the time for that. We will pay lip service to the issue, make excuses and go back to our regularly scheduled programming.

It strikes me as odd that a small village in an impoverished third world country places a higher value on its children than we do. They protect their children not by indulging them but by ensuring they are safe. We, my friends, are, more civilized than they. We’re too civilized for such outdated concepts.

Surely we can do better than that - surely to God we are better than this!

RELATED

Children's Defense Fund Statistics on Children In the United States
http://www.childrensdefense.org/child-research-data-publications/data/state-data-repository/cits/2011/children-in-the-states-2011-united-states.pdf

Suffer The Little Children and They Do, Even In Death

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/02/suffer-little-children-and-they-do-even.html

Our Children Would Be Safer If They Were Baby Seals Or Dolphins
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/search/label/Children%20At%20Risk

Who Speaks For These Children?

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/02/who-speaks-for-these-children.html

There Is Anger In Canada Today
http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/03/there-is-anger-in-canada-today.html

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