The Most Important Thing
There is a very sad litany in the newspapers today. They are the terrible stories of dead and damaged children. Three of them. An unnamed 4-month-old baby lies in hospital with a fractured skull, it’s family silent on who did this vile thing. The trial of the murderer of 2-year-old Jhia Te Tua, killed in a drive-by shooting, begins today. And the trial of the killers of 3-year-old Nia Glassie continues with evidence that Lisa Kuka did not seek medical help for Nia despite the fact she suspected abuse.
“Asked why she had not taken action, Kuka said: “I turned a blind eye, thought Wiremu would never hurt [Nia], never hurt [her], and yes, I was in love with him.””
Keeping Stock asks the question: “Does anyone have a cure for this cancer which is afflicting our country?” I have no answer for him, but I do have a single observation.
It may be that New Zealand does not value its children enough.
Note that I do not say love its children, because virtually all parents love their children, even Lisa Kuka. I say New Zealand may not value its children. I make this observation because I am an immigrant from South Africa. Children in South Africa are seldom seen as a nuisance, they are not talked-down to and are rarely shouted at. Smacking is rarely used. And this observation applies equally to White South Africans as it does to Black South Africans. One of the differences my wife and I noticed was the sheer disrespect that children were paid, especially when they were not with an adult. It was as if they were not people rather than simply not adults.
Please do not misunderstand here. I do not think that New Zealanders are uncaring towards their children, at all. I do think that it is possible that we may have lost sight of the fact that children are our most important “possessions” (actually responsibilities rather than possessions). Children should rank higher in our lives than our home, our livelihood and even, dare I say it, the All Blacks. And although most of us nod our heads and say that this is true, is that really how we live our lives?
I can only speculate on why children seem to have a reduced status in this country. The most obvious differences between here and South Africa would be the slower SA lifestyle (hands up all you Kiwis with filled leisure-time schedules) and the fact that far fewer women work in SA. These may be factors.
I have also noticed an increasing tendency over the years for parents to be relieved of the responsibility for their children by government intervention, particularly at school. There are very few countries in the world where a doctor would be prevented from telling the parents of a 14-year-old girl that he had just prescribed her an oral contraceptive. I am tempted to implicate our liberally-interpreted abortion laws in the devaluation of children, but, on reflection, I suspect that our liberalisation of the law is secondary to our perception of a child’s worth. Abortion is a symptom of devaluing children, rather than the other way round.
Some might blame the family-unfriendly, socialist excesses of the past nine years, but my observation was first made in 1995. It seems to be a longstanding attitude rather than a recent one. I am puzzled by it, as Kiwis have always struck me as an open-hearted people.
I reiterate that this is simply an observation. It is eminently possible that I am wrong. Feel free to tell me so in the comments below. Try not to be rabid about it. For the sake of the children.
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- Abortion and Child Abuse | MacDoctor Moments — [...] heart of child and wife abuse. I find I can’t really agree with his conclusions. As I have blogged ...
Nov 12 08 7:22 am
Connections.. not necessarily related.
In 1932 NZ fertility was a little over 2 children per woman. By 1960 it was a little over 4 per woman and by 1982 had fallen to just below 2. From 1900-1950 NZ was either 1st or 2nd in what is now the OECD countries in terms of wealth and lifestyle.. that’s where “Godzone” comes from. From the 50s on, NZ surrendered it’s place in the sun and fell precipitously to 22nd in the OECD.
After WW2, and even a bit before, the Maori people undertook the fastest (voluntary)diaspora the world has know as they shifted from country to town.
In between the union delegates once nearly all came from the UK, the peace advocates came from Europe and America, suspected terrorists from Algiers and Egypt were “pacifists”,
the churches went on Hikois of Hope and the Greens are deep red.
Fast forward to the Labour Caucus and Cabinet where the sexually ambiguous are about six times the norm of the population and now some wit has said the the PM with the deepest voice in the House has been replaced by a bloke who in contrast sounds more like a Sheila.
We didn’t evolve to these situations.. we jumped to them on a confused mass of social idealism and many fine words of “knowledge Wave”, Growth and Innovation Framework, Economic Transformation and Sustainable Transformation.. these last four in just the last 8 years.
Not much room for kids in there.
JC
Nov 12 08 8:31 am
Oh for fucks suck JC. It is not tehgayz nor the foreigners fault we beat our kids.
It is that too many parents still see their children as their property rather than a living breathing human being.
Nov 12 08 2:50 pm
We are not the only ones afflicted with this blight. if you look at the Times of London or the Independant or the Telegraph you will see reference to the tragic case of baby A and the attendant finger pointing.
Nov 12 08 3:02 pm
JC: Have to agree with stef that this is unlikely to be anything to do with Labour per se. I see it as a long term attitude that probably started at least 50 years ago.
stef: too many parents still see their children as their property
I wish. An alarming number of people treat their cars better than their children.
Colin: Quite right. I would be very surprised if this was a Kiwi-only problem. However, our child abuse stats are among the worst in the world. And yesterday’s reading was very grim.
Nov 12 08 8:48 pm
Stef and MacDoctor.
I’ve covered 100 years of assorted stats and you’ve picked on just one. What I’m suggesting is a litany of events and facts in our short history that are extraordinary and capable of producing ennui and hubris. I could have added that one of the suggested causes of WW2 was the slaughter of Europeans in WW1 that robbed the UK, Germany France etc of it’s future leaders.. yet NZ suffered a much greater loss in that war, and indeed in WW2. These massive losses happened to a new country still finding it’d feet.
I’m suggesting that world events have had a disproportionate effect here.. indeed, the stock market crash of 1987 was a blip to most of the world yet it killed or depressed our stock market for well over a decade; the sub prime crisis in the US right now is roiling the US and seemingly not so bad here ignores the fact that our annual income to house price is twice as bad as the US. The great social battles over gays in the US and Europe have not resulted in big numbers of gays in their govt but it’s different here.
We also have other peculiarities.. we have claimed the best race relations in the world, yet we have never elected a Maori to be our PM, we are big on female emancipation yet the UK, Israel, Asia and Polynesia elected or appointed female PMs long before we did.
I am suggesting that we are frequently a country that is overwhelmed by outside events that are bad for the nurturing of children because of our very recent history and small size. That we frequently go overboard with a passing fad in Europe and America.. you only have to look at Kyoto to see that.. we were the first to ratify and first to impose the most dramatic ETS in the world.
JC
Nov 13 08 1:38 am
You cannot legislate to eradicate evil.
“New Zealand” does not fail in valuing children, but some quite large sections of our community, all individuals, do.
In this case those individuals didnt just fail to value a child, more than a boyfriend/joint/object of torture.. they systematically destroyed her, unchecked. This was not a bonded child, there was not one person in that ‘whanau’ watching out for this child. There was no one adult irrationally attached to this child with unbreakable bonds of love. She had nothing a child needs to flourish.
It is deeply sad and points to a dysfunction in groupings that would call themselves ‘families’ that I see with occasionally.
But it’s not New Zealand, it’s not a societal ‘attitude’, its not governments, it is individuals.
And one must be very careful not to diminish the fury that should be hurled down to these specific people for their evil acts. Its easy to take some solace by casting blame on agencies, blaming structures as weak as those created by governments, social workers, Cyfs, neighbours for not stopping it. No one could have stopped it, it was the evil that those men do. Barely past childhood themselves, those young people obviously lack basic humanity.
Nothing about our recent history and small size stopped me loving my children more than I love myself. And that is the same for most of us.
That poor little girl
Nov 13 08 9:43 am
Amnion: My observation was an attempt to find cause for our high child abuse statistics. It was certainly not a “society is to blame” argument for the torturers of Nia Glassie. They alone are responsible for their actions. There are no mitigating factors. There are thousands of people in exactly the same situation who love and nurture their children rather than murder them.
I reiterate that I was not talking about our love for our children, but our respect for them and their place in society. Typically, what I was describing is most obvious in the way we treat children we do not know, rather than our own children, or even the children of our friends. Most New Zealanders of my acquaintance love their kids deeply and any trait of general devaluing is completely swallowed up by that love. It is the intrinsic worth of the child when that love is absent that I am talking about.
I purposefully did not mention government structures. This is not really anything to do with government, who, after all, can only provide ambulance-at-the-bottom-of-the-cliff services like CYFS. It is possible, of course, that the DPB has caused some children to be seen as mere economic units, but, I suspect, this is only one of a whole raft of factors.
Nov 13 08 11:38 pm
Yeah but staements like “It may be that New Zealand does not value its children enough’ convey an impression of belief that our society does not value children.
i would argue that the vast majority of New Zealanders do value children The country with things like Childrens Commission, CYFs, repeal section 59 certainly does demonstrate a concern for child welfare. Child welfare agencies dont exist for most of us. Most of us do a proper job.
Parents get a hard time unnecessarily too often, “New Zealand” gets blamed for things individuals do in spite of evidence that “New Zealand” does anything to make them behave the way they do
Time we started pointing out the thugs and stopped excusing the behaviours.
And if the “we” you are talking about in the way “we” treat children we do not know includes me, we treat them with kindness and respect, and mostly genuine fondness.
This is not a ‘we’ issue. Its individuals
Nov 17 08 9:29 pm
I’ve skim read some of the comments on this site and found the site,I should add, by searching for what disgust others might have for Nia Glassie’s so called family.
I can’t speak of statistics or how NZer’s should be judged in general but I know this – I have a 2 year old daughter and I love her with every breadth that I take. I sleep easy at night knowing that she is loved, fed, warm and safe. I’m a mother – that’s my job and I feel whole because of it. I am also a foreigner and it pains me to hear time and time again about ‘what a great country NZ is to bring up kids’. Hmmmm where did that myth come from? Out of the same basket as the ‘clean green’ image I suspect. There’s no need to list the cases of child abuse – we all know them and yes, they happen in other countries too. So at the end of the day NZ is no worse but definitely no better. But actually NZ’s record isn’t too flash and its one to be ashamed of. I noted with interest too when in hospital all the loving pics and sketches of ‘Maori family life’. Is the hospital where that glowing image ends? I see no evidence of it on the outside. If anything I see the contrary. It is an issue for the individual yes, but it seems to me some people in this country have kids two-apenny with no intention of raising them themselves rather offloading them to someone else as if a piece of meat then move on to the next man and out pops a few more kids, then move on again. And still they refer to themselves as ‘family’. The mind boggles at that. Persoanlly I hope Lisa Kuka and her kind rot in hell. They are just plain evil. As for the wider family, like someone else in these comments pointed out, where were they? The fact that this poor little mite had not one person looking out for her…….how would any of you as an adult feel never mind a little three year old. What a terrible terrible thing these people, these neighbours and these so called ‘family’ have witnessed. Shame on you all. One word and you could have saved a life.