Children of casual sex

Many of these children are the result of a misplaced belief that a multiplicity of casual sexual encounters equates popularity.

Admittedly, there are women who, in desperation, struggle to find men, who demonstrate interest in them, to take care of children they already have for other men. And this despite the risk of becoming HIV/AIDS statistics. Several of them enter into or are in what is referred to as common-law relationships in which the men, once the reality of other men’s children sinks in, insist that they are prepared to take care of only the children they father with these women.

Although I have referred to a concern existing in Trinidad and Tobago, nonetheless it should be clearly understood that it is common to many countries and has led to a continuing and immense social, economic and political grief. The unplanned explosion of children has all too often seen, along with the obvious, more mouths to feed without any increase in the amount of food to be shared, leading if not adding to poverty and malnutrition.

In Trinidad and Tobago and other areas of the Caribbean children were viewed by lower middle and lower income parents as a hedge against any possible misfortune in their old age, when these children were expected to take care of their parents. Unfortunately, such hopes were not always realised.

There was one area though in which this thinking was justified, or perhaps the word should be realised, though not in quite the same manner. Up to the 1960s, when sugar cane cutters were paid according to tasks performed, the assistance they received from their children, who were very often of primary school age, determined how much money they were able to earn. Perhaps I should explain: a task was a stipulated amount, usually by weight of cane cut. This meant that the more hands assisting the cane cutter the greater his daily or weekly wages earned.

This was brutal exploitation, when you considered the incredibly low rate of pay per task. However, children assisting peasant farmer parents, for example, on small family plots in other areas of agriculture, say the planting and reaping of yams or cassavas did not necessarily translate into increased earnings. As Paul Bairoch would state in his book Le Tiers Monde dans I’Impasse, published by Gallinard, Paris, in 1992: "Twice the number of hands on the same plot of land does not generally produce twice the amount of rice but always require twice the amount of food."

Ironically, a key factor in population growth in this and other countries, apart from the sad incidence of mindless sex and the unreasoning refusal to use condoms or engage in other forms of family planning, has been the medical discoveries of the 1940s and the 1950s which have meant that more people whether from low, middle and upper income families alike were likely to live longer. Tuberculosis, influenza, syphilis, measles, pneumonia, diphtheria, whooping cough and typhoid which had previously claimed the lives of scores of children in Trinidad and Tobago annually, and millions more worldwide have since the 1940s and 1950s been effectively tackled as a result of the discovery and use of penicillin, aureomycin, izoniazid and terromycin. All of these in addition to the vaccines against polio by Jonas E Salk and Albert Sabin. Individuals, who would have died as very young children, live for longer, even to old age because of the medicinal discoveries of the mid 20th century. This apart. Many of the street children seen around Port-of-Spain and environs are all too often the sad result of casual liaisons or of that of many men unwilling to feed and clothe youngsters whether fathered by them or by other men, even though they are in an at home relationship. Some of the men actually insist that the children be put out of the home, whether it be a two or three-bedroom house or a one-room shack. But inasmuch as many men have adopted and continue to adopt the attitude, not entirely unreasoning, that they will not accept financial responsibility for children not their own, then clearly women should take defensive action through family planning, should they find it difficult to exercise restraint.

One of the saddest things is to witness on television a woman with five or more children for three, four or more different fathers declare that the Government (meaning of course the taxpayers) was not doing anything to help her. Clearly, it would have been far better for her to have sought family planning advice early, while at the same time upgrading her efficiency through taking advantage of the several courses Government offers to assist citizens to acquire needed skills. It is not a short term, but rather a long-term battle for the improvement of minds.

To achieve this, however, the Ministry of Education will need to step up its Early Childhood Care and Education programmes, establishing accepted norms even as it encourages the concept of responsible, indeed positive parenting. In turn, it must recognise that a great deal of the training of pre-school teachers today is uncomfortably inadequate. But we have to save, to redirect the children and we must start early. In addition there must be the upgrading of standards and levels of interest at primary and secondary schools. In this way we will be able to better position Trinidad and Tobago to meet the challenges of globalisation. We must recognise the task ahead as a battle for minds, to shift the crippling focus on too many young girls and young men away from sex for sex’s sake. We must shift this to the classroom and a practical approach to their (the youngsters’) future and with it a meaningful contribution to the growth and development of themselves and, by extension, Trinidad and Tobago.