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: Reviews Comments (12) | TrackBack | Permalink
