Parents Urged to take Better Responsibility for their Children

Speaker of the House of Representatives, Delroy Chuck, is appealing to parents to take better responsibility for their children.
“We really must send out the correct message urging our mothers and the men in the communities that it is not right to just feel you should have children without anticipating how you will take care of them,” he stated, noting that if there is no change in this thought process, then the work of the Office of the Children’s Advocate, all other child-related agencies and the state, will not only be “burdensome, but simply impossible”.
Mr. Chuck was speaking at a roundtable discussion that included children’s advocates and ombudspersons from Jamaica, Canada, United States, Norway and officials from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), held yesterday (Oct. 23) at the Jamaica Conference Centre. According to the House Speaker, the lack of parental care, guidance and support has had a negative impact on the development of the nation’s children. “By the time they [children] reach the teenage years.children start to have children. There are children caring for children and the young boys are out at the corners engaging in, not only idleness, but becoming soldiers for the gangs that operate in inner city communities,” he lamented.
“This contributes not to the wellbeing of the nation but to the disintegration of our society and [by extension] the country,” he added.
A key challenge, he said, “was how to get persons to desist from having children that they cannot afford to have, although they have the best intention in the world to raise them”.
“They have children and then they expect not only the politician but the churches and the state to take care of them,” he pointed out.
Meanwhile, the Speaker mentioned that there was a need to debunk a few sexual myths including that intercourse with young girls is a cure for venereal diseases. “It is a dangerous .outrageous habit, but it happens here in Jamaica and it is something that public education, perhaps legislation or sanctions can be imposed to prohibit and excise this dangerous habit,” he said.