Posts
"...
people have difficulty understanding how a mother could reject her own baby.
Yet, strange as it may seem, post-partum depression may actually have a
rational function, evolved in humanity’s more dangerous past when a new baby,
by its demand for additional resources, may have threatened the survival of
older children and the mother herself. In this context, post-partum depression
allows a mother to commit an act which, were she in her right mind, she could
never possibly contemplate..."
Trinidad Express - Commentary: August 2 2013
This
article sums up my reflections of the editorial in the Trinidad Express
newspapers – dated August 2, 2013. While it is not intended as a precursor to research, the potential for academic discourse should not be
discounted, particularly given the coincidence of a recently concluded Criminal
Justice Seminar on “Serial Killers”. The choice of topic for the seminar was
curious, with several persons questioning the relevance of the subject to Trinidad
and Tobago; after all, we don’t have
serial killers here! By the close of semester and 31 presentations later,
some must have left the room contemplating a review of such an assertion. Now, the
topic of abandoned babies and serial killers are inadvertently juxtaposed as a consideration
to the psychology of crime and criminality, or at least, gangs. Might it be
that what we are experiencing with gang violence and blatant callous killings
is symptomatic of and rooted in the abandonment of the young? There is a certain
kind of apathy in criminality, manifested by brazen confrontations with law
enforcement and reckless disregard to law and order.
The
question is not far removed from the attempt to explain deviance via the theory
of ‘nature vs nature’ or to explain the psycho/socio-pathology of serial killers
with theories of ‘attachment’ and ‘object-relation’. While the consensus on
serial killers is that it takes a ‘certain kind of individual’ to kill,
repeatedly and to even begin to commit such heinous acts, the nature and
aetiology of homicides in Trinidad and Tobago seem to demand similar approaches.
There have been suggestions that there
is a strong causal link to the ‘barrel generation’ to delinquency and crime;
the generation of offspring who were left in the care of their guardians and
siblings by parents who went in search of ‘greener pastures’. The symbols of
attachment and attention to these children were expressed through the contents
of seasonal barrels filled with ‘foreign stuff’ from ‘away’. This generation –
born in the mid eighties, early nineties has since mutated into a class of deportees,
stemmed either from the migrant parents or themselves having migrated at an
early age. Either way, abandonment has featured one way or another, breeding a genealogical
line of castaways.
There
is also a group of abandoned ‘babies’ at the various institutions to consider;
the populations at St. Jude’s School for girls and the St. Michael’s School for
boys comprise a mixed and complex group of juveniles. A significant number of
girls and boys at these ‘schools’ have been admitted for reasons other than
delinquency, in fact, even those deemed to be delinquent are often the products
of abandonment in the first place. Enter the cycle of survival, sub-culture and
social isolation.
Abandonment
of the young is a serious indictment, not criminally – in the main but in
respect of the social and moral fabric of our society. The idea of placing our
children in the dumps, literally and figuratively, is a desperate call for care
and attention to the young and to parenting. The rampage of the gun, the
scourge of gang violence and the heady pace of reckless abandon may be indicative
of deep-seated revenge for perceived deprivation and oppression. This is not to
justify the behaviour, it is a preliminary elucidation of ideas on children who
have been deserted by their mothers, where does it begin and end?
