BANGALORE: Take a look at photographs of, say, 10-year-old children. Don’t most of them look like adults? We now have advertisements where children wear adult clothes and play adult roles with adult voices!
They are shown ogling, teasing, sneering and mouthing serious lines. Even without prompting, many of them are in a hurry to grow up. Parents, family members and television push them faster towards the magic line of adulthood. This transformation is not without trauma.
Most parents provide for their children well. The affluent ones who are busy and away from home offer more to compensate for their absence. But whatever their financial status, most fail in providing security and safety for children. Are we not witness to stuffed autorikshaws ferrying children to school? And toddlers being subjected to sexual abuse?
Sex education
Many schools have incorporated sex education within the curriculum, thus offering awareness to the developing child. The other belief system is that this awareness could also be the cause for premature experimentation and explorative indulgences. We do not have enough empirical data to give us conclusive evidence, yet, children ought to have enough knowledge to recognise abuse and exploitation.
To understand a community that harbours child abuse, one has to study the influencing factors that contribute to the hazards.
Children are socialised within the framework of groups. What they learn during this process depends on what is transmitted to them. The agents of transmission are usually:
Family life
Formal and informal schooling
Group interactions
Media and technology
When harmful and negative attitudes colour any of these resources, children grow up with impaired cognitive abilities and also harm others after attaining adulthood. Since we are discussing a child’s safety, we shall keep only to factors that are precautionary by nature.
Pleasure principle
Erroneous, faulty and exaggerated ideas about human sexuality harm children. The predominant factor associated with sexuality is pleasure. Adding to the existing form of pursuit, strong myths deprive the offenders of empathy or guilt after traumatising weak and helpless victims, mostly girls.
S N Balagangadhara, in his book Reconceptualising India Studies, says, “One of the functions of sex amongst human beings is to facilitate pair bonding, and, to some extent, group formation....” That this function is poorly understood is evident from the increasing number of dysfunctional families. Emphasis on the pleasure factor is conveyed by adults in numerous ways, mostly through innuendoes and twisted references. It is precisely these contextual nuances that are picked up by children. Repeated reinforcements from their surroundings lead them to become both the tormentors and the tormented.
When in school or with other playmates, children tend to exchange information and indulge in conversation that usually is forbidden at home. Preventing their curiosity and blocking their questions only drives them farther away from family and thus seek answers from inadequate sources.
Dubious models
Group interactions convey popular goals like money, success, ambition, status, material possessions, property and other forms of wealth. Children watch adults acquiring these at the cost of being ruthless, treacherous and vindictive. The need for instant gratification is so high that any form of failure causes violent reactions. This frustrated energy is directed at weaker persons at home; could be women or children. In turn, the tortured ones approach outsiders for consolation. This is an open invitation to agony, exploitation and irreversible traumatic experiences.
Migration woes
The new trend of pan-Indian migration, albeit an economical necessity, has pushed youngsters to relocate from familiar environments. Apart from loneliness, alienation and boredom, their existence offers anonymity. In some cases, as crime statistics convey, it is this anonymity that prompts some migrants to commit heinous crimes in the confidence that they will never be traced. When children are entrusted in the care of such people, even for short durations, criminal intentions are hatched. Elaborate arrangements will have to be made to ensure the child’s safety. Time and again we have heard of a domestic help abusing children in his or her care. As in the case of Aarushi Talwar, lack of evidence prevents any harsh comment on the resident cook, yet, the fact remains that such people have access to children at home. Finally, technology is accessible to most children. Be it movies, advertisements, games or television shows, the content is dangerous and capable of influencing the youngsters. Parents or guardians will have to train children to use available technology judiciously.
Online hazards
Getting into online relationships too has led many children to irreparable harm. Preaching alone has never conveyed anything useful to youngsters. Ever. Healthy and democratic parenting practices alone will protect children from harm, danger, injury and bitter experiences. It will never be within the powers of adults to prevent all harm to their children, but one can always try.
(The author teaches psychology at NMKRV First Grade College for Women)
