Ronald Thwaites | ‘Nobody no want me, Miss’

Let’s call him Albert. Sired by a father who never acknowledged him. Abandoned and forgotten by a mother who couldn’t control the little youth when he was hungry and who said the child was “mashing up her life”. This was the now 18-year-old’s raw and truthful self-assessment as he was being discharged from state care by the superintendent in one of the children’s homes which used to be run by the Catholic Church. We don’t know what has been his fate but there is no reason for optimism. There are thousands, male and female, like him, in Jamaica.

CAUSE OF DISTEMPER

My contention is that chronic family instability in this blessed land is both cause and effect of the economic malaise and social distress which afflict us like a bad duppy. Every human person, especially during childhood, needs at least one person who is crazy about him or her: devoted, committed and enabled to the flourishing of that individual. That’s the biggest gift that family provides. It is the blessing enjoyed and given to many of us. It is the crippling deficit for the rest. Relationships are essential for happiness and prosperity.

WHAT AN EXAMPLE!

Last week, I conducted a memorial service for Patrick Roberts’ late mother. Her story got me thinking about the supreme career of motherhood, the issue of declining fertility and the liberation of women. Hear Clyde McKenzie and Moses Davis tell of a married lady who mothered 10 children and, more than that, provided a haven, discipline, food and love for another dozen youths – not hers by nature, but sacred to her and them, by nurture. What greater career, what greater contribution to national well-being could there be? None of those she grew need echo Albert’s cry – “Nobody no want Me, Miss”! Little material wealth, no preening on any stage, no fame or swank. Just tough love given without measure and tender love, multiplied, received in return.

INSULTING GOD

For God’s sake, don’t have children you can’t care or don’t want to sacrifice for. That’s an insult to God and disrespect to your own self-worth. And the ultimate selfishness or desperation is to conceive and then to kill the child in the womb or after birth by neglect. Isn’t that a prevalent national sin, the predicament of the Alberts among us?

It’s amazing how we don’t want to realise that one of the worst abiding inequalities in the Jamaican social order is the imbalance of parental responsibility between mothers and fathers. Recently, a woman pleaded guilty to the charge of murdering another woman’s child for a man with whom the murderer had an affair. How is that man to be held accountable? He never did the crime but his behaviour certainly contributed to it. Or what about the mother who is televised pleading poverty and begging money to afford cancer care for a beautiful girl-child. Where is the father?

Just asking: Does dancehall culture promote devoted parenting and shared responsibility between mothers and fathers? And if not, why not?

In slavery sex was for breeding and domination. But look how we perpetuate these same patterns, enshrine an economic system which leaves many without the wherewithal to create healthier families and then justify the dystopia with post-modern “woke values” of irresponsible personal agency- all the while treating the “trend” as if “a no nuttin”.

TRUE STORIES

I’m just telling the stories from my experience and observation. Like the old man without close relatives to care for him in sickness and now death. All but one, too busy to care. Left to Mother Teresa’s sisters from foreign to do what we should be doing for each other. To grow old in Jamaica without family and basic resources is as devastating to humane values as to leave children in Albert’s situation. Combined disrespect for young and old, it is a cocktail for social destruction. Even if you have money, without family, loneliness can be as painful as cancer.

I remember the couple I represented long ago. Industrious but childless people whose big ambition was to build their “castle” on Red Hills, as one of our leaders has promoted. Well, they did just that, all seven bedrooms and everything else that nice people are supposed to have. But happiness never followed the effort. The attainment begat an attitude of obsessive protection, isolation and fear. Diminishment and death soon followed.

SELF-INFLICTION

Migration, urbanisation and the bauxite sector have wrecked the extended family form which nourished the best of rural Jamaica. Popular culture is mostly banal and churches need to discern again what is the way, truth and light of the black Jamaican Jesus.

REBUILDING

The overall task is to strengthen community institutions and spirit. That’s what group and branch politics used to do before “buy-elections” became the norm. We still have the rumps of the schools, churches, lodges and sporting clubs which can extend the caring sinews and nerves of the nuclear family.

Although the national security hierarchy obviously don’t think so, I believe that the police youth club movement and revived uniformed groups are better antidotes to crime than the masked desperadoes who provoke resentment rather than cooperation, offer nothing but repression.

When a person is not taught or has not experienced the benefit and the sacrifice of living for others, it is hard for them to forge loyal and committed personal and social relationships. Self-centredness creeps in as the dominant ethic. No wonder fertility declines. Good motherhood like Mrs Roberts lived and Albert was denied, is incompatible with selfishness.

National policies should promote stable relationships as the foundation for child-bearing and child-rearing. Michael Manley began by outlawing bastardy. We must take it further now. Parents who live together should be incentivised in housing, taxation and working conditions. Education needs plenty revised content.

This is politics time. Who among those contending for power will hear Albert’s cry and lead by example in banishing its prevalence?

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. He is former member of parliament for Kingston Central and was the minister of education. He is the principal of St Michael’s College at The UWI. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com