One of the great benefits of age is that one has
seen so much, lived so much, that the multiplicity of lives
and choices eventually makes our own legitimate and
therefore possible: fear has been removed, if not obstacles.
My mother used to say I was a quiet little girl.
I am sure I was, sitting nicely with a book, but I
certainly do not feel quiet now. Having reached the age of
seventy-five, I feel I have prevaricated long enough. It is
a great relief to me that speaking and acting have now
become unavoidable.
I wish action could have come in one big leap, racing
over steps and obstacles, ignoring or at least making small
work of the slow and arduous trail between the half-way
houses of whim, wish, desire, decision, and action. Acting
is what proper grown-ups do, those who are equipped with
self-worth, clarity and confidence, the result of a
well-nurtured childhood. Mine being as it was, I could so
easily have failed completely if it hadn’t been for a
nagging impulse, born of need and at times anger, to put
things right before it became too late, to even out the
past, establish order or at least clarity in what would have
otherwise remained incomprehensible chaos.
Books being the persistent
guides of my spirit, inspired a future beyond my sad French
province; I would leave it to itself and its poor horizons,
its narrow ways with life: I wanted big, meaningful, true,
fulfilling. There could be rewarding goals, I would become a
writer… But growing up without true means, as if without
legs and arms, as soon as I was out of the familiar
enclosure and attempted a few steps outside, I crashed:
where was I? There was no ‘I’, merely weak and vicarious
attempts at being one, but one so diminished
by filial chains, duties of abnegation and ignorance of initiative or
action, so bound to mother’s emotional needs as to have
almost no sense of mine that I had morphed into a kind
of ghost, immaterial. Something hadn’t ‘gelled’: I was for years if not
decades, often outside myself, incomplete, and in terrible
pain. No-one knew.
Being a docile child was deemed a
virtue at the time -it still is- and incitements to be
obedient under pain of making mother suffer and father upset
created in the early years a compulsion that became the
inevitable language of being. Thank goodness for being
allowed to read, and my adolescent hormones that gave me a
separate and lively sense of myself! Eventually leaving home
for university, my cravings for attention and love merging
with panic at being isolated led me to becoming on occasion
the prey of others’ whims. It was evidently worse for my
sister: having no sense of self-worth and safety whatsoever
she would become a ready victim. Sadly she hadn’t known Jack
London (“The Call of
the Wild”!) or been given the opportunity to rage at the
hypocrisies and neuroses of our Catholic religion by being
sent away to a convent school; remaining at home, she became
doubly the victim of our up-bringing.
This state of being, often due to emotional abuse, is
called in psychology: ‘learned
helplessness’, a term which is self-explanatory: it
causes long-term suffering and is the source of multiple
failures if not consciously faced and challenged, usually in
therapy, by a stubborn desire to free oneself, in order to
develop and later hopefully thrive. I can thank Monsieur
Coutant above all others, the philosophy teacher who saw
that I could and needed to use my brain. I was able later to
write poetry and two plays. I wrote a book telling of my
search for love in my sixties, but was given a dishonest
contract by a London publisher so decided to publish it
myself: I would not be compromised.
Now, at a snail’s pace, I am able to conclude this
story: the long-awaited but
earth-shattering public acknowledgement of child
abuse, sexual and otherwise, is a painful and useful prompt;
it has ravaged me at each of its revelations, but now with a
view to action
which is the true healer.
*
This book cannot be enough because it isn’t just my
story: life needs not be so harsh if, quite simply, you have
been valued and protected as a child. In this modern,
‘advanced’ society of ours, millions of children live the
despair of abandonment and abuse, this is our own
indictment.
It
is undeniable that the society I have been living in for
nearly fifty years has changed considerably since I left
France and arrived in this country: seeing young fathers
able to express easy affection to their small children has
often moved me to tears, and young mothers, when they are
not too absorbed by their ipads, seem also to find
parenthood a joyful and rewarding experience. Both invest
themselves to a large extent in their children’s lives and
education. Their parents, my peers, have also improved
somewhat: when they couldn’t touch you before, now they
sometimes kiss you on one cheek, lightly.
Of course you cannot make loving your children
compulsory, but it strikes me that you can help
it along by making people more aware of their duties and
responsibilities in new ways. I don’t mind being
presumptuous by launching an idea:
if popular, it could become a fad, a fashion; if
people come to see its benefits it could become a custom
although I would like some of it turned into law: there are
already laws, customs and rituals that form
part the commitment of a marriage ceremony, religious or civil; vows are
made publicly in front of witnesses, we know and understand
their legal and affective content: the couple have rights
and duties to one another.
By
law, the child’s birth has to be declared at the local Town
Hall, the name entered
of at least its mother, if the father is unknown. This
public duty is executed easily, much too easily: it feels
like an errand at the post office, there is no declaration,
no intimation that a life-long commitment had been entered
into, how profound it is, or that there is any joy in it.
This, to my mind, is what needs changing.
THE
PROMISE
All societies and religions of the world have
ceremonies that seem to be universal to celebrate the major
steps of our lives. Even as secular people nowadays we still
celebrate marriage in many forms and mourn the passing of
those dear or famous. But why isn’t there a ceremony to
greet a new member of the human race?
Now we just fill in a
form in an office somewhere. Oh dear, what a greeting.
So here is what I believe we should be doing:
greeting babies, those born to us as well as those we adopt
or foster, welcoming them publicly in a prepared ceremony at
the Town Hall or our home, in front of family and friends
representing society at large, or in a place of worship,
promising them our love, protection and loyalty. It would be
a beautiful heartfelt occasion; a public statement about our
private joy.
It would be called
THE PROMISE; the equivalent of the marriage vows, but made to the
child by its parents and in their own words (at any age but
preferably soon after birth). It would be a public
acknowledgement of our awareness and commitment to the
duties of protection and nurture that we have to the new
human being we have created and who is at the mercy of our
goodwill and capabilities.
THE
PROMISE should be a joyful affair, a celebration - an
occasion for
a party! And it would spread the knowledge of the true place of the child
among us. Many will wonder: “Why should I need to make an
official promise to care for my child when I know I can be a
perfectly good parent without having to go through this
palaver?” and they may well be right. This was and is a
common reaction when discussing the comparative benefits of
marriage and partnership and it is obvious that a public
promise to be faithful or to remain together ‘till death do
us part’ doesn’t necessarily stop lies, betrayal or simply
failure.
Still, few if any who made these vows can have
regretted making them at the time. On the contrary they
would have been very keen to make them, so proud were they
of their love that they would have happily shouted them from
a mountain top; having witnesses to this proclamation often
made that event more solemn and the commitment stronger. The
significance of such moments of intensity lies in the fact
that they anchor us deeply in ourselves and the unfolding of
our lives. More than a step, they are a milestone of which
we are aware at the time, and can never look back upon later
without feelings of sadness, disappointment and failure if
they haven’t held good: it
was important, and
we know that something of great value at the time hasn’t
materialised, or lasted.
It is in this context that we must look at the place
we make for children in our societies. Some religions may
well celebrate and confirm the role the new child will play
in their midst and we have a duty as citizens to declare the
birth of the child and its parentage on a certificate, but
there is, I believe, a need for an official ritual for the
welcoming of the new baby or infant in our lives, with an
acknowledgement of the nurturing role we shall have to play at least until this child is an adult; of our joy at its arrival
and the recognition of our duty in its various forms:
CARE, PROTECTION, RESPECT, and of
course LOVE.
(sadly we cannot legislate for LOVE, the
necessary bonus.)
I would add that this would have value as a public
gesture, and there is value in example.
*
We cannot pretend to be uninformed of the often dire
conditions in which many children are born and forced to
grow up nowadays, when our claims to be enlightened in our
knowledge and progressive in our ways could make us think
that we are at last treating
our children as we should.
It is enough to peruse the newspapers at random to
get a broad and distressing view of all our failings:
- "ENGLISH CHILDREN ARE
AMONG THE LEAST HAPPY." (The Times, 13/05/15)
- "BRITAIN HAS THE MOST
CHILD DEATHS IN THE E.U." (The Independent, 27/03/13)
- "BABIES BORN POOR IN
BRITAIN WILL BE NO HEALTHIER THAN THOSE IN LIBERIA"
(The Times, 2015.)
- "ONE IN THREE
CHILDREN HAS SUFFERED VIOLENT ATTACK". (The Times, 01/01/15)
- "U.N. TELLS BRITAIN
TO OUTLAW SMACKING CHILDREN AT HOME." (The
Times, 24/07/15)
- "TRAFFICKING OF
CHILDREN RISES FOR THE SECOND YEAR RUNNING" (The Observer,
01/09/13)
- "We imprison
more children and young people in the UK than most other
countries in Europe. This is in breach of the U.N.
Convention on the Rights of the Child" (Sir Al
Aynsley-Green, Children's Commissioner for England until
2015).
-" SEX ABUSE FILE SHUT
UNTIL 2056" (The Sunday Times, 29/03/15)
(Regarding the latter, this is only a small example
of an Establishment being dragged
kicking and screaming, in spite of their protests to the contrary, into
recognizing past misdeeds and crimes and resisting action to
pursue the criminals who often hide in their ranks.)
It is widely agreed that the State is currently
failing in its duty to keep our children’s safe. Some of our
very laws are far from making child protection a priority,
and when they do, they are rarely implemented; we do not
comply with all the terms of The United Nations Convention
on the Rights of the Child; our place in international
comparison leagues is often extremely poor: the reasons why
should eventually be faced and addressed.
At a time in the social history of
this country when we are overwhelmed
with stories of lack of care in almost all institutions, widespread
neglect and physical and sexual abuse, in spite of the role
of well-meaning officials appointed by successive
governments, there still remains a reluctance to recognise
that children’s problems are everybody’s business
and reflect on us
all.
This is why I propose
that a form of
PROMISE could - should - be extended to all state and
private bodies and organisations with a responsibility for
the care of children. It should form part of a formal
contract of employment for anyone in charge of children
including the police and government departments, the breach
of which would constitute an offence which should be seen as
criminal complicity and sanctioned by the courts.
Continuing to hope, I feel that a non-political and
stable high- responsibility post could be established for a
fully qualified public officer with experience and
understanding of, and personal investment in, the welfare of
children: it is not just a job.
We can all dream, but in some cases, thanks to social
media and the
goodwill of many people, results can be attained that can change
attitudes and society. So who is going to do something about
this IF NOT US, NOW? I shall certainly see what I can do
myself, and would ask you to join me in this endeavour.
*********
