It’s time to act to protect children — all children

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/12/2024 (594 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

AND so this is the Christmas season — the time of year when, as a Christian, I should be filled with joy about the meaning of the birth of a child, yet I am overwhelmingly despondent when I consider what we’re doing to our children.

I am reminded of Hannah Arendt’s words, “… all of us, insofar as we live in one world together with our children and young people, must take toward them an attitude radically different from the one we take toward one another.” This would require some serious thinking about what’s going on today.

In recent “Think Tank” features, Christy Dzikowicz, CEO of the TOBA Centre, disclosed the frightening extent of child abuse and children’s witnessing violence in Canada. Rochelle Squires, familiar media personality and former MLA, urged quick action on the online harm to children legislation. Both hinted that their comments just exposed the tip of an iceberg of child abandonment and exploitation, but expressed the hope that safeguards for children might result from their public expressions.

Sid Frankel, a poverty activist and university professor, reminded us that Manitoba is again the child poverty capital of Canada, and almost half of the people accessing food banks are pre-adolescent children. And John Longhurst, Free Press religion reporter, urged us to be careful about the examples and models of speech and behaviour we display in the presence of children because of their lasting and long-term impact. It’s hard to argue that both are significant societal problems, seemingly a result of our continuing to acknowledge our neglect and the consequences of adult behaviour.

Almost every day we have reports of children being brutalized and denied the necessities of life, often resulting in their premature deaths. The common themes are that childhood and children are under attack, and it is high time adults accepted their responsibilities to care for and protect children. It’s not like we haven’t known for a long time that our actions toward our most vulnerable represent a huge moral deficit in our society.

In 1982, Neil Postman, a well-known cultural critic, in the book The Disappearance of Childhood, lamented rising youth crime rates and mental health challenges, linking these to societal attitudes toward children as revealed by the media of the day. He suggested further that the threat to childhood was also a threat to adulthood, fearing that people who did not experience childhood are more likely to become mal-adjusted adults. Today’s social media scene would make him turn over in his grave.

However, not only is childhood disappearing, but also, indiscriminately, children as well. The Middle East is a case in point. We have just learned that Assad, while president of Syria, tortured and killed children because they appeared to jeer him. In Israel, Hamas terrorists cruelly took innocent children and adults as hostages to use as ransom and human shields in war. In response, the Israeli defence force knowingly slaughtered thousands of children and their parents, simultaneously destroying schools and hospitals, and are doing some of the same in Lebanon and the West Bank.

Children are paying the price of adult madness and recklessness.

In Ukraine, because of the imperialistic aspirations of Russian leadership, children are being abducted, killed, losing their caregivers, their homes, their schools and living in fear in subways. In the Horn of Africa, children are living in refugee camps, their lives under constant threat from hunger and violence from feuding factions and, in other parts of Africa, their lives are endangered simply because of the birthrights and associations of their parents.

But we need not go that far afield to detect the precarious condition of childhood, the result of being born into the world they find themselves in, one not of their own choosing. The Western world has its own record of atrocities.

In August last year, 10-year-old Sara Sharif was found dead, her battered body found in a bunk in her home in Woking, Surrey, U.K. having been pulled out of school for home schooling in April. In the U..S.A, children of “illegal” immigrants are regularly separated from their parents to this day; although this is less frequent than under the previous Trump regime, it is still happening. And children in some states are being denied health care based on their gender identities.

In Manitoba, despite the Phoenix Sinclair atrocity and subsequent inquiry, we lost 15-year-old Tina Fontaine and 1-year-old Xavia Skye Lynn Butler. And these are only the widely publicized cases — I suspect that many other child victim crimes never see the light of day.

Our social media has become a blight on children’s lives, filled as they are with misinformation, online bullying, child exploitation — just a few of the examples of how adult foibles and bad habits have crept into children’s lives, robbing them of the innocence and protection they deserve and need to become healthy adults.

Since none of the above need be inevitable, I want to pose serious questions to all adults — community activists, local politicians, world leaders — and just plain neighbours and friends. What needs to happen for all of us in democracies to take our responsibilities for all children seriously — to ensure they are all free from fear, are all fed, are not physically and emotionally brutalized, have the opportunities to be educated — and are simply shielded, and protected, from the callous follies of the adults of the world they were born into.

What would it take for us to set up systems, structures, programs and safeguards that protect all children from harm, allow them to flourish and happily grow older?

There are some possibilities. The Manitoba government’s universal school nutrition program, championed by Minister of Education Nello Altomare, might serve as a useful example of what’s possible, although it needs to be extended into non-school times. Australia may be a shining example of first steps by restricting social media use to those over 16. Canada’s expansion of the $10/day daycare program with trained personnel made available to all in need is another, as would be a universal basic income plan. The availability of money for these possibilities is not the problem; the way we use public money is.

Consider this with me — the cost of a few fighter jets or other instruments of war would feed not only all the children in the world but also their parents. And provide them with warm clothes and beds, good schools and safe playgrounds, comprehensive health care and maybe even protection from arbitrary violence.

In the end, and for a start, the problem is not financial capacity. It is lack of a stronger political will, the willingness of citizens to make personal sacrifices for a greater good; and the absence of an enlarged moral imagination based on empathy, respect and dignity for all.

I’m hoping these “Christmas” musings might somehow awake us adults from our apathetic slumber and spur some of us to action for the sake of our children everywhere. ’Tis the season for reflection, introspection and generosity!

John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba.