Children are our most precious commodity. How we treat the next generation will determine how society fares. Treat our kids poorly, and society will suffer.
Several articles in the Australian last week show what a miserable state of affairs we have arrived at when it comes to raising children. They also demonstrate how damnable the strictures of political correctness have become.
A number of major articles appeared in the Australian on the 12th, 13th and 14th of September, highlighting the shambles that foster care has come to, and how bureaucracies are running amok with political correctness. The examples are as numerous as they are disgusting.
Consider the story of a Queensland couple who gave up fostering children after a number of run-ins with social workers. The couple was actually told that they were trying to force “middle-class values” on foster kids by telling them they should not take drugs or skip school. I kid you not. These faceless – and obviously brainless – bureaucrats blasted the couple for seeking to foist their version of parenting onto these foster children.
On another occasion, the same couple was chastised by social workers when they said they believed a foster child would be at risk if she was returned to the home of her drug-addicted mother. In fact, the social worker replied that the child wouldn’t really be a risk, ‘not if there were no needles left lying around, if it was the consumption of marijuana or speed’.
Another couple was derided by social workers for seeking to direct their foster children in the direction of university education. And another couple actually lost their foster child because they took her to a doctor concerned about sexual abuse from the indigenous parents.
Also, a Queensland mother of three adult children quit the foster care system, after being reprimanded by bureaucrats for withholding pocket money from a 13-year-old girl in her care.
Another article in the Australian reported on a national survey of foster parents. It found that 73 per cent regard the attitude of bureaucrats and social workers as the “worst thing” about fostering. Not surprising, given these sorts of episodes.
The problems here are several. One, we have the tragedy of various “experts” and bureaucrats who think they can do a better job of parenting then parents. Many of these social workers are childless themselves, yet they are happy not only to instruct parents on how they should do their job, but how to do it in a way that satisfies the demands of political correctness.
Any concerned parent – or foster parent – will seek the best for their children, And that certainly includes giving them a good education, seeking to keep them off drugs, and so on. To suggest that these are merely “middle class values” shows how out of touch these bureaucrats are, and how deeply they have drunk from the wells of PC.
Also, not only are we belittling and criticising those who are obviously trying to be good parents, but we are allowing those who are less than ideal to be foster parents. Thus in some Australian states homosexual couples are allowed to foster. No matter how loving or caring an individual homosexual may be to children, that is not what children primarily need. They need a mother and a father, or, in this case, male and female foster parents. Depriving a child of heterosexual parents is not in the child’s best interests.
As I stated in an article several days ago, our universities are hot houses for political correctness and radical ideology. This is certainly true of the arts and humanities departments. Thus students today being trained in social work, child care and related courses are certain to get the latest feminist, homosexual and anti-family clap-trap. And these students will go on to look after our children. No wonder why these bureaucracies are so dysfunctional, and we continue to experience so many problems with our young people.
It is a major worry when the fate of our young people is increasingly left to the dictates of political correctness and the radical theories of bureaucrats. Hopefully the exposes recently run in the Australian will help to stop the rot. If not, the future looks bleak indeed.
