Ronald Thwaites | One to survive, two to thrive …

Of the more than 30 Grade 10 girls in a particular high school, only four came from married-parent households. Another six said they lived with their unmarried mothers and fathers. The rest were being brought up by single parents, mostly mothers, or some other relative. Two lived with boyfriends and a few were on their own.

There was a direct correlation between attendance at class and parent-teacher events with stability at home, not affluence, mainly stability. The same link applied to nutrition, discipline, homework completion, and self-esteem. Church attachment made a positive difference too.

Each Jamaican child needs at least one committed parent to survive. It is best if they have two to thrive.

Most of those 16-year-olds observed about 10 years ago are mothers now, many are raising a single child on their own. “Don’t want any more just now”!

Others (the brighter and wiser ones?) are postponing childbearing while they get a career, enjoy party life or bemoan the shortage of “good” partners.

Weakened outcomes often owe more to economic and social realities than to education policy. We are yet to fathom the implications of that maxim.

SOCIAL WORKERS

When I served in government, I sought resources to hire social workers to liaise between home and school. Guidance counsellors and deans of discipline can’t manage the consistency of relationship required for this depth of transformation.

I failed. The rigidity of training, and the inflexibility of school establishments, left little space for a change which everybody, even the Jamaica Teachers’ Association (JTA), agreed was essential but has yet to be achieved.

These are the same young adults who government is now encouraging to have more children. Breeding is the easy part; raising them is a demanding endeavour. Where do we teach Jamaican soon-to-be parents the virtue and art of motherhood and fatherhood? On social media, at the north coast bashments promoted as the high point of national culture, or through a bland and flaccid HFLE syllabus?

Preaching to that group of girls about monogamy, lifelong commitment to a partner ,and the shared sacrifice required to parent children produces glazed eyes, stories remembered from some soap opera, not from their experience or even their aspiration.

“Den yu mek ongle one man breed yu, Miss? Dat no boring”? asked the teenager of the long-time married lady.

UNLIKELY CALL

It is unlikely that the government will be successful in persuading women and men to have more children. Longstanding cultural practices and economic realities favour loose relationships. Sensible women realise how burdensome it is to raise children without a cooperating partner. Providing a small sum of money or tax break to fertile women is not going to cut it. The impossible cost-of-living increases and aggravated inequality cause women (and responsible men) to pause, postpone and eventually defer.

Many will regret it later. The loneliness and desperation of old age without close family connections is a silent crisis about which we hardly speak. At base, Jamaican family life has been so savaged by slavery, economic hardship, low self-esteem and hedonism that it’s time to reaffirm the core values of humanism and respect for the value and dignity of every person.

There follows from that recognition that the supreme act of any man or woman is to bring another person into the world and to care and cherish them above all other pursuits. But, do we believe and promote these foundational principles of social order?

INTENTIONAL CURIOSITY

The same careless ranking of human value connects to the intentional cruelty meted out to the squatters near Falmouth.

Nobody is arguing that squatting is to be endorsed. Everyone should believe that every Jamaican should have the opportunity to have secure tenure over land for residential and productive purposes. That opportunity, intentionally, has never been a reality in our history. In fact, it has been opposed and is still, in practice, unachievable.

Whatever the legal rights to the land, there is a higher order of concern regarding the manner of their eviction. Law does not always lead to justice. Please stop trying to say that the State was not party to the Coopers Pen connivance when police and soldiers were reportedly among the enforcers and are said to have abridged the freedom of all men in the vicinity who might have opposed the destruction.

Public distress was bound to occur, but neither the councillor nor the member of parliament were forewarned. Who will explain why they were deliberately neutered? That simply means that what took place was fully intended and executed and that some state actors were complicit. Check who got money to keep it secret.

All the scurrying now to provide food and bedding is shameful face-saving, given the righteous outrage against the cruelty. I have personal experience that Coopers Pen can and will be replicated in any of the hundreds of more informal settlements across the nation.

In our charade of independence, we have failed to confront the reality that the majority of people cannot find an affordable place to live, cultivate love, and responsibly bear and raise children. It’s bound to happen again.

There is no shortage of money or law to regularise tenure. MP Cousins has pointed out the available steps. I know Minister Montague wants to see it happen. We lack the united political will to do what everyone agrees is necessary. What a self-imposed travesty!

Until we change our mindset towards each other, people in places like Coopers Pen will remain fearful, unsettled, underproductive; children denied the stability of home, community, church and effective school, while the elders and disabled pray for death before the bulldozer reaches them: their investments are dead assets.

CONSCIENCE?

Even when courts have ruled, our consciences cannot be still. Every one of us will face God’s judgement for our inhumanity to each other. When the tents erected at Coopers Pen, like tombstones upon the still-open graves of loves, lives and homes, are removed, to what peaceful and happy use will that now-cursed spot be put?

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.