This is something I will never understand. Men and women of all races and faiths fall in love, get married and decide to have children. Then for whatever reason, husbands beat up wives, wives beat husbands (in certain cases). But the most despicable act of all is when parents (either both together or single parents) deny young children the basic neccessities of life; beat the crap out of older children and in some cases, because the children have chosen to defy the parents on something, the children are killed, even though those children are now full grown adults. Or the parents are going through a messy divorce and one parent to spite the other, kills the children and then himself/herself.
Oh yes it happens. Think Susan Smith, Andrea Yates in the US. And in the countries of India and Pakistan with the practice of arranged marriages, it happens more than we in the West ever know. And we call ourselves a civilized society. What's so civilized about killing off the next generation of people.
And the judicial system lets parents off by saying they are mentally ill. Give me a break. If they were so mentally ill, why didn't someone stop them from becoming parents in the first place. And that's what society needs to do, figure out a way to stop or at least teach those adults who wish to become parents what that job entails.
I mean come on, we have medical tests which will tell us the sex of the unborn baby; whether that unborn baby has a serious medical condition that requires immediate medical intervention. Why are there no policies in place for spotting people who might be dangerous as parents. We owe it to ourselves and the generations that follow to find this cure for abuse and nip it in the bud.
And in the Muslim community, we need to teach that just because a child wants to choose his/her own partner (yes the killing does apply to male children in the Muslim world as well), doesn't mean that they are a disgrace or a disappointment to the family. Rather it should signal a new beginning. A 21st century beginning. Arranged marriages should be made illegal. We in the Western World are allowed to choose who we fall in love with and marry. Shouldn't everybody have that choice.
All we as a so-called civilized society are doing is perpetuating the acceptance of child abuse, and murder. Because no matter what age we are, we are still the children of the people who conceived us and brought us into this world.
More on this in the days to come
2 comments:
I left a 'comment' on my own blog
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I hear what you're saying, my friend. But the problem is that because this is happening in other countries, there really isn't much we in the so-called "civilized" world can do for them. Because it's not our country, and thus, we don't have the right to just walk in and try to impose our own beliefs and ideals on the people of those other countries.
Also, we have to remember that what you're talking about happens in the "civilized" world, too. I don't know that there's really any way to test people before they have children, but I sure do hear you when you say it would be good if we could.
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