Opinion: The Cultural Ghettos of Parenting in Diaspora

I could have been a lawyer

If I had not taken that decision to switch from the liberal arts and social sciences to pure science and mathematics in the second term of the penultimate year of my secondary school education, I might well have become a lawyer with the career path towards becoming a judge.

Nothing excites me more than to read the conclusions of judges when delivering judgements on socially sensitive issues. The clarity of thought that is presented in the simplicity of expression leaves no one in doubt as to the persuasion that inspired their words.

I have worked with lawyers before and any legal drama in television especially Perry Mason has always caught my fascination.

Cultural parenting in Diaspora

Sadly, the cases I will refer to in this blog pertain to parenting issues of immigrant communities in the United Kingdom that need scrutiny and addressing. There have been too many instances of cruelty towards children meted out in brutalisation passing for discipline, honour killings to restore parental honour in their communities, Female Genital Mutilation, witchcraft stigmatisation, bizarre and macabre rituals, to mention just a few.

Parents who have come within the crosshairs of the law have usually claimed racial prejudice and a miscarriage of justice. They protest that they are innocent and though there is nothing on God’s good earth that can justify their actions, the rights their children may not have in their home countries in what we delusionally call 'our culture' are all too well protected in the West.

Children have rights

The first lesson any immigrant parent must learn by observation or through coercion is a child in the West has rights and the State where those rights are found to have been violated will prosecute the parents to the full extent of the law.

Whilst one can understand the fears of parents who have in their own upbringing have been given the big stick and very little carrot. I dare say, the emphasis is more on size of carrot and when it is offered in the West – it can be more than just effective, the relationship that stems from love rather than the duty of parental provision – most Western kids are not unruly, ill-disciplined, uncontrollable and disastrously beyond redemption.

You’re now in Rome

The narrative is the same in many immigrant communities, the parents come from a country with different cultures and practices to live in the West, they have their children born and bred in the West, the children might be aware of their parents' heritage but they are essentially Westerners in mind, outlook, expression and culture.

No amount of community activity apart from the core environment of the home country is going to turn those children into cultural carbon-copies of their parents. As they say, when in Rome, do as Romans do.

Integrate or lose out

Again, one can understand the comfort a sense of community provides people, but like I have written many times before, these communities have a tendency to ghettoise to the extent that they become time-capsules of practices from home countries that probably have been jettisoned decades ago.

Parents who fail to integrate properly in host countries are at risk of first running afoul of the law leaving them unprepared for seriously dire consequences – brutalisation and murder leading to long terms of imprisonment – all of which could have been completely avoidable.

The honest truth is those who fail to integrate end up not being able to cope with the cultural clashes they face and they take out their frustrations on their usually vulnerable children who are caught between the freer world beyond their doors and the hell at their homes – it need not be so.

What horror!

In the case of the Nigerian couple [1] jailed for brutalising their six children, it is a damning indictment of parenthood to have a 9-year old write. “My mum is the worst mum ever because she can’t cope with five of us, her broken hand and being pregnant. She always leaves me out so I always starve and I am forced to work. If I don’t get enough house work done, I am beaten without mercy with the wooden end of a broom. I have scars all over me to prove it. I can’t stay here. I would like a new mum.” Your heart just bleeds. I can honestly say, this is not Nigerian culture, it is just wickedness.

However, the one pertaining to Pakistani parents who murdered [2] their daughter for thwarting their desire to put her into a forced married in what is commonly known as an “honour killing” just shows what many children could face in the West.

Just beyond reason

The Sentencing Remarks [3 PDF] of Mr. Justice Roderick Evans in the case of R v Iftikar Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed should be classic text for the reading of any parent in an immigrant community – what reads as so particular here is as general as you can have an assessment of issues of parenting in Diaspora.

The first question he asks sets the tone for what follows. “What was it that brought you two – her parents, the people who had given her life – to the point of killing her?”

Her father who apparently had lived in the United Kingdom from the age of 10 probably suffered what many multi-cultural kids suffer in being told that they are not this or that enough. Having first married a Danish lady, had issue and even lived in Denmark, there is no doubt that he had adopted Western customs and values until he returned to Pakistan to marry a village girl who appeared to roll back his years of Westernisation to the customs of rural Pakistan.

Pakistan in Warrington

The judge being almost too perceptive for words continues – “You chose to bring up your family in Warrington but, although you lived in Warrington, your social and cultural attitudes were those of rural Pakistan and it was those which you imposed upon your children.”

“Shafilea was a determined, able and ambitious girl who wanted to live a life which was normal in the country and in the town in which you had chosen to live and bring up your children. However, you could not tolerate the life that Shafilea wanted to live.”

The judge clearly identifies with Shafilea here as what you would expect of a child; any child regardless of parental heritage born and bred in the UK. The life she wanted to life was normal for the town and country she lived in and that is where the conflicts with a distant, unknown, strange and alien rural Pakistan of her parents knew began.

“You wanted your family to live in Pakistan in Warrington. Although she went to local schools, you objected to her socialising with girls from what has been referred to as “the white community”. You objected to her wearing western clothes and you objected to her having contact with boys.”

The short paragraph above with what I have highlighted “Pakistan in Warrington” or “Nigeria in Peckham” is a kinder reference to the immigrant ghettos that foist strange and stringent adherence to alien community standards on the parents. The subtext here is that the United Kingdom is a white-majority country, you cannot bring your children up cocooned from that reality and culture.

Children need a reference point

“She was being squeezed between two cultures, the culture and way of life that she saw around her and wanted to embrace and the culture and way of life you wanted to impose upon her.” The children sadly have no reference point for what the parents believe in.

“Your problem was that, in what you referred to as your “community”, Shafilea’s conduct was bringing shame upon you and your concern about being shamed in your community was greater than your love of you (sic) child.”

Therein is the real sad chapter of this heart-rending tale, the willingness of the parents to sacrifice their child on the altar of a belief system or way of life that meant more to them than the love for their child.

To have killed their daughter in the presence of her siblings and successfully used that terror to make them adhere and conform to what was literally an oath of silence for over 7 years is as evil as any parent can get.

In conclusion

For them, I really have no sympathy, there is much else the judge said that could be read in the judgement but the points I want to make are clear.

Parenthood comes with great responsibilities and along with that should be a good understanding of the environment in which your children are growing up. For them to be well-adjusted in their upbringing, it is important that the children recognise in their parents what they also see about them.

Most crucially, the children have rights, rights that will be defended to the utmost by the State; that is part of what civilisation is about, giving everyone born into this world a sense of dignity, pride and respect from the cradle to the grave.

Sources

[1] Nigerian couple who beat their 6 children and gave the baby a morphine overdose jailed. | mailOnline

[2] Shafilea Ahmed's parents jailed for her murder | The Guardian

[3] The Sentencing Remarks of Mr. Justice Roderick Evans in the case of R v Iftikar Ahmed and Farzana Ahmed | Chester Crown Court | Judiciary of England and Wales - PDF

Thought Picnic: House helps in the family setting

An inspiring blog

My blogging compatriot TwinsTaiye who pens the Pause to Ponder blog has apparently returned to blogging and that is a welcome situation considering the many who have deserted blogging for the sound bite laziness of Twitter though cannot concentrate their views to 140 characters with space for a reTweet or the extraversion of Facebook.

I could not ignore his latest blog that was titled When Domestic Helps are Dubious [1] which highlighted a number of points about the employment of domestic helps and the safety of children who are put in their care when the parents are absent from the home.

In some ways, I also had a seemingly enchanted childhood, we were generally well-off and always had help around the house, at one point we had a houseboy, a housegirl, a gardener, a security guard and vehicle drivers all to ease the burden of the extraneous on my parents.

My parents did much to treat these people humanely, they showed concern, offered support and I know at least two cases where the servants having left their employ were seen through school and helped with references for employment elsewhere.

Hiring a house help

That however was the rosy side of having house helps, there was a more sinister and unspoken side to this issue that until recently I have hardly dealt with because it is both difficult and culturally anathema to discuss.

In TwinsTaiye’s blog he begins with the need to obtain good references of anyone being invited to work within a family unit – in fact, I believe most of the recruits to our family labour front were once employees of people known to my parents or related to such employees that they came usually highly recommended and well vouched for.

He suggests that calls be made regularly to the home and most especially to a landline, we never had a landline, I doubt there is any market in residential landlines in Nigeria anymore, nor do I think people are acquiring much of that elsewhere.

More so, landlines can be redirected to mobile phones, though, if a landline exists it is useful advice. Good neighbourliness must not be sniffed at; they indeed may notice funny activity that the parents being away may not realise is happening; cultivating this is paramount in any case.

Witness and involvement

He suggests a relative be present and stretches the idea that siblings or parents are unlikely to harm the children; I really could not entirely agree with this notion, there are too many cases of uncles, aunties, cousins and other close relations taking advantage of the trust reposed in them to abuse the wards in their care.

The issue of parental responsibility is critical, whilst is it important to provide shelter, food, clothing, education and health to the child and many lives are driven by these needs, they do not in and of themselves constitute a full expression of parental love and care.

Too many parents have been absent too long from the company of their “God’s gifts” that they do not develop and cultivate essential relationships of trust, rather that of fear and terror masquerading as respect is what parents demand.

There are many times being able to chat to one’s parents about serious issues never presented themselves because of the dread and fear that had been schooled into the child from a very early age.

Parental terror is very unhealthy and time does not do much to heal the pain of lacking essential communication between parent and child in the developmental years when it really mattered most. The obsession with academic success of the child sometimes masks the ability for parents to recognise problem areas in the child and find effective ways to helping the child grow into a well-rounded being.

Juvenile genitalia education

“Teach your child (especially your daughter) the parts of her body that are off limits to anybody except you or a doctor.”

Never has such advise been so important to parenting than this, though the last time my parent probably made any comment about my genitals would have been at circumcision, I doubt if they considered when my balls dropped and I cannot count the number of unauthorised persons who had touched, fondled and exacted pleasure at my expense and to my terror from when I was 7.

You were completely unnerved that it was impossible to suggest anything like this was happening, in one instance, I helped someone else report the abuse they had suffered but never mentioned that which I had. I had been co-opted into pederasty a willing catamite oblivious of the wrongness of what was happening to me because it was offered as good, wholesome, secret and fun.

Boys and girls get abused by adults of both sexes, the presumption that boys are abused less or are only abused by males needs to be disabused – there is no triumph of machismo in a boy being knowledgeable about the feminine pudendum.

Your kids knowing you properly

In our patriarchal society, our parents are never known by name whilst is it more than pertinent that the child know the full names of their parents for all sorts of reasons, what they do, where they work and how they can contacted.

However, this kind of information can only be properly exchanged if parents make good quality time for their kids and devote themselves to developing friendly and open communication between themselves and their children.

From what I saw in my home, my parents were never unkind to all their servants, we were taught to treat them with utter respect and deference, they were part of our household and many looked on my parents as their mentors even when they took more spoils than their salaries in secret.

House helps and people invited into our household have had a very defining and indelible effect on my life and outlook to a lot of things and whilst one appears to have matured and learnt many lessons, there is no telling that many other children may never get to out-grow the effects of such negative influences.

Praying for your kids and being vigilant; well, if you need to be told that you need to wonder why you are at all a parent – I very well appreciate that the world out there presents challenges and problems, children can be a handful but the primary concern for your wards cannot take second place to any other responsibility you might have – it just can’t.

I fully acknowledge the inspiration gained from Twinstaiye’s blog in writing this blog.

Source

[1] Pause to Ponder: When Domestic helps are Dubious

Josef Fritzl: A man apart, an arch-demon indeed

The alternative evolution of man

When men plumb the depths of depravity that it is impossible to fathom the realities of what gets narrated as truth, have we come to crossroads on the evolution of humanity?

We are disgusted and reviled by stories of children being sexually abused by adults; it becomes unspeakably repulsive when that adult is the parent of the child.

There is no field of psychoanalysis that can confidently explain why a father should find his daughter so sexually attractive that he would indulge in incest.

A man apart – an arch-demon in truth

The news waves are regaling us with stories of Josef Fritzl who lured, captured, drugged and handcuffed his daughter at 18 and imprisoned her in a dungeon below his home where he engaged in enforced incestuous domination of the girl for 24 years and produced 7 children by her.

The strongest word the criminal justice system can find for such acts are adjectives of the word crime, but this is more than a crime, it is an abomination, an aberration, a taboo conceived and carried out by a man who could well be an arch-demon deep in the vortex of what leads to the core of hell.

No parental control should get this far

It would be speculation to suggest that Josef Fritzl had not previously sexually abused other young girls till it got to a time that he thought his daughter had come of age for abuse at 11 years of age.

The power of choice, freedom and life that he exercised over his daughter and his children by his daughter should be a subject for serious analysis, nobody should because they have parental rights exercise such untrammelled control over their children to their utter detriment as we have witnessed with this case.

One can only wonder what appealed to that iota of humanity that he had left that he allowed his very sick child to go to hospital for treatment and now the saga has opened as an almost unbelievable tale.

This is the same man who on finding out that one of the twins his daughter gave birth to had died unceremonious dumped the body in an incinerator.

We find ourselves shocked at what our humanity would abhor but has been enacted by one of our species.

God save the children

The children whose split identity would call on the widest available amelioration resources are caught in a maelstrom they cannot begin to understand – being siblings of their mother and grandchildren of their father – this could very well lead to the onset of severe mental illness.

One can only hope that the goodness of humanity, the compassion of the community and the succour of many would help those children escape the damaged existence this unconscionably evil man brought them into.

Theories abound about the man’s secrecy, deception and machinations that even those under his roof did not know of his family below, in the cellar.

Questions abound

Austrians have to ask themselves some serious soul-searching questions because this is a rupture in their society one that has replaced the norm with some ethereal nightmare that does not seem to be near its end.

Have the Austrians becomes so satisfied, so contented and so respectable that their duty of social enquiry has been stunted by the need to maintain civility and polite coexistence?

Is there a traditional complacency of comfort that allows for them to accept political liaisons in their government that gives legitimacy to extreme right-wing parties?

Is this, almost too many already – one similar case happened 2 years ago with Natascha Kampusch – abuse of girls and women inadvertently woven into some fabric of their developmental process that some unstable men are playing it out, in reality?