Kate And Gerry McCann Are Victims Of Iconic Child Status
JUDITH C writes on the Anorak Forums: “I raised this topic earlier on the sensitive Madeleine McCann site. I even dared to suggest that the McCanns themselves were victims of the hysteria and paralysis that has resulted from the bigotry and meddling of this government (in particular) and previous misguided governments, in childcare and education. The reason I claim this is as follows: the obsessiveness with which the State has imposed its narrow politically correct view on these two vitally important areas of society has resulted in two things - empowered children who haven’t the vaguest idea how to handle the power that they have been given and disempowered adults who have been relieved of all primacy over children both in the home and in the school. The result? Well we can see it all around us - feral kids, bottled-up, fed-up adults.
I reject absolutely the knee-jerk resort to ‘laws’ and yet more ‘laws’ to order society. They do absolutely nothing. I believe in education not legislation. But education, real education and all that it implies, has been sacrificed on the altar of some misguided ‘new’ thinking, particularly by Nu Labour, on children’s ‘rights’ as against adults’ ‘domination’. They have systematically eroded the rights of parents to bring up their children the way they see fit yet have failed to substitute any guidance, help or education for those parents (who need it) in order to help them to find another way. If the State feels it has a right to interfere so drastically, as it does, then it must also have a duty. When you adopt rights you must also take on responsibilities.
The reason I say the McCanns are also victims is not because I believe they did the right thing in leaving their children alone in an unlocked apartment night after night. Of course not. I had children, I went on longer holidays abroad than the McCanns did, I never ever left them alone at night. It was actually a pleasure not to, because I enjoyed their company. The McCanns are victims of the current unrealistic and typically British hypocritical elevation of the child to iconic status (while at the same time neglecting its actual needs)and also not really giving a damn about the child, or indeed, any of us for that matter.
A child needs several basic things: love, guidance and example, and discipline. The first, love is sometimes given, sometimes not - depends on the parents. Guidance and example, the same. Discipline is now a dirty word. The McCanns - if one looks at only one area of their actions in Portugal (and the adults needs leading to those actions could apply to any of us) - that of wishing to spend a little time away from their offspring in order to have some ‘adult’ time in the evening/night - were simply expressing a frustration which has been engendered in adult society by the suppression of parents’ rights to bring up their children in a commonsense way. That way would obviously be different in each and every household to which the children belonged, according to the background of the parents.
I reiterate, I am not condoning the McCanns’ actions, or the actions of any of the multitude of parents who do the wrong thing by their children. I actually think ‘doing the wrong thing by your child’ can also be buying her/him a quad bike to ride on a public road (see recent story about dead child as a result of this).I am simply saying that there is no panacaea of child upbringing and care which can be imposed from above especially when the infrastructure to produce decent children and adults has been almost completely dismantled by meddling and ignorant governments.
‘If it aint broke, don’t fix it’ is a homily which governments for as long as I can remember have steadfastly refused to take on board. Frankly, I cannot see much wrong with the way my post-war generation turned out - childcare, education and all. Why meddle with it? But they did - and the result? 4000 children in hospital in the UK last year from the effects of drink. Children leaving school unable to read and write -but knowing their ‘rights’. Children killing other children. Children so indulged that Christmas is every day. Children racing round supermarkets, poking their fingers into food products,grabbing things from shelves…screaming! This screaming was what apparently freaked Kate McCann out - 18 hours a day of screaming from Madeleine (according to her diary). So what is the result (as she can’t discipline her, it’s forbidden). They give the child a drug to calm her down - part of the Ritalin generation. And they want a break - from their children. I think this reaction is very common now, and it seems to me to be WRONG. And I see it as part of the destruction of childhood that has been going on in the UK for years. Destroyed by meddling, by commercialism, by selfishness, by greed, by too much of a good thing but ultimately by the debasement and suppression of the individual for the corporate good. It is all part of the bigger picture which I will leave to Michael Moore to elaborate on.
Posted: 3rd, January 2008 | In: Twitterings Comments (12) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
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January 5th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Parents have been wanting breaks from kids from the beginning no matter what form of government. The problem lies with parents thinking their world is safe and that bad things happen to other people. There is no learning curve. Individuals, villages, cities, and nations still act shocked when it occurs close to home. Harmful gossip isn’t normal but there is no learning curve there, either.
January 4th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
What a yawn!
And it’s a lllloooonnnnggg yawn!
Interferes with my guffawing, too!
Where is Stevo when you need him?
January 4th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Fran
What have you been reading?
Our comments were in general about how children are raised in the UK, with one poster bringing up screaming for no real reason and no one has mentioned drugs.
No one states anything is a fact. It’s all hypothesis.
Psychologists have proved that gossip is a vital way of working out social value systems and anxieties - that’s why most gossip is about things we don’t want (like crime) and things we do want (like relationships) - so you needn’t be so disturbed, it’s normal.
Madeleine isn’t forgotten. It’s her disappearance we’re all trying to come up with explanations for. Of course she’s the real victim - tell me who the fake victim you’ve identified is?
And if we weren’t immersed in it - wouldn’t she be more forgotten? Or what else would we be doing to not forget her? Pray? Plant trees? Put up posters? All pointless activities, I would have thought.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:39 am
my word, how obsessed are you to write at such length? How do you know that what you state as fact ( administration of drugs, amount of time spent screaming) is not just chinese whispers, media hype and even downright lies. As time goes by witness statements etc can be trusted less and less, the media are just gorging themselves on this story and we are all at the sick feast with them. I haven’t looked for some time but I find it deeply disturbing to see that people are still so immersed in it. In the meantime the real victim is forgotten.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:37 am
Marie
I think there is a general paranoia in Britain about the Nanny State interfering and making us powerless - even though whenever their is a social problem the solution is to demand more education (which is organised and imposed by the state and is every bit as intrusive and pervasive as the law). One of our cultural paradoxes.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:06 am
By putting the blame on the governent or modern society, or whatever, Judith C., I am afraid you help people deny their own sense of responsibility, which in the end will only make matters worse. I agree with you that any government tends to exert more and more control over the country. Still, in a democracy, we are the ones who elect them, and we can’t be considered as mere victims. In more dangerous times, some people have been brave enough to fight governments wich were far less democratic than ours. And nowadays, in a country like UK, it doesn’t appear so difficult to raise children properly in an upper-middle class family. (Not being British, I can’t say for sure, though). I know there is a strong social pressure for people to be personally successful on a social level, as we live in a narcissistic era, with narcissistic values. It is up to each and everyone of us not to be mesmerized by such a way of life, attractive though it may seem.
By the way, the holiday complexes abroad seem to me in a way like some sort of no-man’s-land, where people forget they live in a real country, and some of them don’t worry much about the rules of the host-country. There, they find themselves surrounded by other nationals, usually belonging to the same class as themselves, speaking their own language. The people really making money are the managers and owners. The natives are there to wait on the clients. The holiday-makers are there to be entertained and enjoy themselves. Why not? Yet, such groups of people all alike, mainly concerned with their leisure, and pleasure, and, fitness, living between themselves, and a bit away from reality, function on a sort of adolescent narcissistic level. But they wouldn’t function unless some people chose to spend their holidays there. Therefore, I will certainly not consider those among them who forget their duties, as victims.
January 4th, 2008 at 3:55 am
S Tidmarsh
How carefully were you reading the comments?
I don’t think screaming was mentioned.
But I think you answered your own initial question - reports of Madeleine screaming came from a holiday maker who was staying in the nextdoor apartment and her statement has been reported and denied in the newspapers, but was re-stated by Martin Blunt on his Sky News round-up just before New Year.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:03 am
I have carefully read the comments above, and cannot see where the information about the child screaming has come from. Following this case most carefully from the beginning, even the comments which are said to be in the diary, does not explain this opinion.
Also Kate and Gerry Mc Cann had loads of free time from their children, left in the care of the child service which was provided in the daytime.
I do agree that the society we now have to endure does not give the children the right kind of guidence, and the rights of parents has been taken away, also the police and the teachers for that matter.
However, spending time away from children is good for parents, but they should make arrangements for them to be taken care of, there are a lot of dangers when children are left alone, also it is very distressing if they wake up and find themselves alone. one neighbour on holdiay at the same time said that Madeleine had cried for 2 hours the previous night. The thought of that makes me cringe, poor little girl, left unprotected, and subjected to God know what.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:51 am
Actually, to be honest - I think a lot of out of control kids are disenfranchised from the mainstream culture and that’s why they behave so badly.
Being middle-class, I knew from birth that I was expected to pass exams, go to University, get a job and work my way up a career ladder. I know that kids in gangs are locked into a similar value system - except their status comes from having guns, being intimidating and having respect.
It’s not just a question of punishing thugs - if the value system is creating them, then the solution lies in formulating a new value system. But then so many modern jobs depend on having an underclass that needs support that I don’t think anyone in the public sector has the motivation to change it.
January 4th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Yeah, but what has that got to do with leaving your 2 and 3 year olds alone in an unlocked apartment?
I left school in 2005 and it was all right. We weren’t uncontrollable. But then our school was ruthless, it was top of the league table and anyone who threatened it’s position was intimidated out of the place by 4th year (at the latest - earlier if they could engineer it).
January 4th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Wow Karen we meet again!! This is an excellent article, which infers that most of today’s children are uncontrollable. There is absolutely no discipline to be seen anywhere in the education of our children, and one report has stated that ‘do gooders have indulged thugs in the classroom’ which is so true. Teachers nowadays have no control over the children that they try to teach, because if they try to reprimand a child all they get is a mouth full of abuse. If the child does something horrendous they get suspended from school for a week or so. What punishment is that? They get to have an extra weeks holiday from school. That is not punishment, they should be made to sit apart from their friends in a separate room, they should be made to clean toilets and clear litter during break times.
Quote from an article in the Daily Express …….
The rough child who does not want to learn and is poorly disciplined at home is a toxic presence in our schools. He disrupts lessons, promotes an anti-learning subculture in the classroom, brings an atmosphere of casual violence to the playground and soaks up precious resources. Labour’s bleeding hearts have indulged such thugs as never before, affording them the protection of do-gooding appeals panels to shield them from the proper consequences of their actions.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Judith C
It would have been a lot quicker to just say - I don’t think leaving small children alone in an unlocked apartment is a crime.