The Children Who Wait
Marsha Traugot
The essay The Children Who Wait talks
about the adoption system of children. She talks about the children adoption
system before and after 1960 (present).
Until about 1960 there was a trend to
adopt only the healthy white infants. A child should be white, healthy and in
small age to be adopted. All the disabled and diseased children, blacks,
children beyond infancy (grown up) minority and mixed racial children were
almost ignored. The family did not adopt them. However, in the last two
decades, i.e. 1960-1980, the field of adoption has undergone a radical change.
Such ignored children, who waited to be adopted, are being placed with
different types of family. Such changes are due to the Black Civil Rights
movements, birth control, legalized abortion, women’s movements, social science
research and many more.
Due to the Black Civil Rights
movements, liberal whites adopted black and mixed race infants and toddlers
(children). This mode was criticized but left no effect on this. The women’s
movement legalized abortion and changed the attitudes towards sexual behavior
and marriage. Therefore, the number of healthy infants drastically reduced and
moreover the unmarried mothers decided to keep their babies without caring the
social stigma.
The researchers show that between 1960
and 1978 the number of children in foster care centers doubled to a half million
or more. The children who are kept in such centers are not all sure to be
adopted. If they live in foster care till their maturity, they suffer from
several problems like pseudo-mental retardation, learning disabilities, mental
illness, sexual perversions etc that can root in the children’s personalities
and plague their adult lives and be passed on to their children. To establish
them, those foster centers need financial support but unfortunately funding for
children’s services had always been scarce. So, it became clear that foster
caring was both expensive and cruel.
Traugot in her essay says that today’s
buzz word is ‘matching’. It is a process of seeking to match a child and a
foster family. First the workers evaluate the child’s personality, cultural
background, existing relationships with biological or foster family and
emotional state. Based on these factors the workers draw up a profile and seek
an appropriate family. Traugot presents two examples: An unmarried man or a
single strong male might adopt a badly behaved 15 years old boy and a religious
family with older siblings adopts a handicapped child suffering from down’s
syndrome, hearing disabilities etc.
Now, some agencies work to find the
potential adoptive family or parents by distributing their photos and
description (or video-tape) to all other agencies. Their names are sent in the
regional or state adoption exchange centers and there they try to match with
the prospective parents. If they are not still adopted, the description or
profiles of waiting children are published in newspaper or broadcasted through
media. The media is the final solution for those children who are waiting to be
adopted.
Tammy, a
5 and a half years old black girl who is suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome
is waiting for the warm and supportive family. The writer hopes that Tammy
would find a warm and supportive family because of the changes appeared in the
children adoption system in US after 1960.
A Child Is Born
Germaine Green
Germaine Greer is a feminist writer and
lecturer. 'A Child Is Born’ is an extract from her book ‘Sex and Destiny’. In
the essay Greer presents the comparison between traditional and modern
societies in the matter of pregnancy and child bearing system.
In the traditional societies childbirth
is accepted culturally and collectively so that the mothers do not feel any
psychic burden. The potential misfortunes and anxieties are managed if they
follow the ritual approach to pregnancy which limits them with taboos and
prohibitions. Many of the ritual observances involve the participation of
husband, relatives, and members of the society. The pregnant woman feels
secure. She doesn’t need to think about the pain of delivery. The traditional
societies are superstitious but the western societies are also not untouched by
it. In the western societies a child is born unattended but in non-technocratic
societies (traditional), except for remarkable accidents, childbirth is always
attended. Child and mother mortality rate is greater in the traditional
societies which is a great tragedy and should be prevented. Modern medicinal
care for pregnant women in the hospitals has helped to decrease the mortality
rate.
In some societies, women are not
accepted as members of their new family until they have borne a child. So they
wish for a child who provides them recognition in the family. In some
traditional societies, the women are known as the mother of her first born
child. She loses her identity. In such societies the relationship between the
mother and the child is more important than the relationship between husband
and wife.
In the Rajput society, to give birth to
a child for a woman is a great success in her life. It is an occasion of joy
for the whole family. In Bengal, the reward of the pregnancy is that she is
allowed to go to her maternal home. The birth of a child is celebrated by
feasting and singing by the women of the community. Similarly, in Bangladesh,
children under the age of five or six are looked after by the whole family.
The traditional societies are affected
by the modernization and technological change. All the emotions have been lost.
The allopathic doctors depend only on drugs, equipment and electricity. The laboring
women are ignored and treated only as patient or a case without any compassion.
Though the chance of live birth is greater, the women will no longer continue
to offer their bodies and minds to such brutality, especially if there is no
one at home to welcome the child, to praise the mother for her courage and to
help her raise it.
At last Greer suggests that if we do not feel so much proud
and dignified out of child bearing, the population growth will be controlled.
Thus the essay presents a comparison between the parent-child relationship in
the affluent (rich) western and traditional agricultural Eastern societies.
Question
What differences does Greer show
between a traditional society and a modern society in matters of pregnancy,
child birth and child bearing in her essay “A Child Is Born”?
According to the writer, eastern
society is called a traditional society and western society is called a modern
society. There are many differences between a traditional society and modern
society in matters of pregnancy, child birth and child bearing. In the
traditional society, people believe in superstition. Women are prohibited to do
something in pregnancy. They have to follow the tradition, customs and
religion. They are made sure to think that they are secured and helped by their
husbands, relatives and others. They have to follow the rules and restrictions.
If a pregnant woman does so, she does not have psychic burden. But in a western
society, the pregnant women can do anything that she likes.
In traditional societies, woman is not
taken as a member of family until she gets a baby birth but in western
societies it is criticized bitterly. In traditional societies, the death rate
of child and mother is higher but in modern societies it has decreased.
In traditional societies, a woman
satisfies her members of family by giving a baby birth. Family members are
eager to see the child. They are happy to celebrate the birth of baby. The
mother is visited by her relatives and friends. She gets well treatment and is
looked after well. There are many ritual functions after the baby is born in
traditional societies but, however, in western and modern societies these all
traditions are not found. Therefore, there are some fundamental differences
between traditional and modern society concerning child bearing system.
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