Dear Editor,

We are in the season when we celebrate Child Month, and many will pay lip service to providing for the best interest of our children, forgetting that children live what they learn and learn what they live.

At the end of this period the true plight of children in our country will remain what it has been for decades — a majority destined for an uncertain future, characterised by neglect, abuse, or forced into a fight for survival.

The dilemma of children in our country represents a shameful scar on our conscience, but adults and those in authority escape responsibility, oftentimes referring to our children as bad, troubled, and wayward. We tend to dismiss how we groom our children to accept a perilous existence by the examples we set in the home and civil society in general; instead, we make them solely responsible for their destiny.

There appears to be no guarantee of a wholesome childhood for Jamaica’s children, as abuse of all forms is certain, from, inter alia, early exposure to violence to sexual grooming, child labour, teenage pregnancy, induction into criminal activities, and violent disciplining. And sadly, the home, Church, and school, which ought to be the primary places of childcare and development, are oftentimes the supreme culprits in abusing children in various forms.

We cannot continue down this path if our country is to be rescued from the quicksand in which it is struggling. The time has come for us to institute decisive, common sense legislation for the protection of the rights of children. The first order of business must be the tabling of legislation to address the single-parent epidemic. Both parents must be held responsible for the welfare of their children. We must retreat from this pathway of uncertainty for the nation’s youth, which starts at birth, progressing along a continuum of generational poverty and culminating in a life of hustling from one day to the next, oftentimes characterised by criminal involvement.

We can only secure a better future for our children and the society in general if our legislature becomes determined to focus on the imperative of the moment and address the rights of children. Among other policy initiatives, we must establish unequivocal guidelines for the administration of the education system and divest school administrators of the ancient racist and religious informed policies relating to discipline and other policy standards. Additionally, children must be made patently aware of their rights and guarantees and be educated on how breaches should be reported.

The time has come to create the foundation for a new Jamaica. We have demonstrated that we have the capacity to engineer macroeconomic transformation after decades of stagnation and political ideological distraction. We must now address the foundation of the future by investing in the social and educational development of our children.

Mark A Hylton

markahylton@hotmail.com