abuse Crisis in the family?
EILEEN STANFORD JASMINE:3 ARER CRED threat by union on its register, with 600 cases of serious injury and 59 children dead. The statistical trends from the 70's indicate an alarming increase in moderate child abuse, while serious and fatal cases seem to be on the decrease, in spite of the press hysteria. The debate rages in professional circles about just what all this data means, but what is clear is that many children in Britain are at serious risk from violence, and with increases in detection and the social crisis, the numbers will increase. The data show a significant correlation between increasing unemployment and increasing child abuse. This raises the thorny question of are we seeing 'lumpenisation' small percentage of the working class as a result of the economic and social crisis? Full employment, for men and women, obviously drastically improve conditions for parents and children and start to relieve the grinding despair that millions now feel.
However, the wealthy also abuse their children, but usually avoid detection and the courts, as American studies have shown. And of course, the rich can buy their way out of the pressures that can result in child abuse - good housing, active social life and most importantly a nanny for 24 hour child-care
What is strikingly clear from statistics and from the work of feminists is that the biological family is not a particularly safe place for women or children to live. 'Scream quietly or the neighbours may hear' the battering, rape, incest — the horrors committed against woren and children in the name of marital or parental rights. The left can't just turn to Marxist economics, we must look to the oppressive nature of the nuclear family to understand the socialist policy and practice needed to start to prevent child abuse.
In today's society children are privatised, they are the private property of their parents. There is an appalling lack of collective responsibility for children in Britain, with the majority of socialists being no better than the establishment - just look at the
lack of childcare at political events. And of course the private daily responsibility for children falls on women, the strain can be unbearable. Feminists have long demanded free, quality 24 hour child care as one of the prerequisites for women's liberation and socialism.
Not surprisingly, child abuse experts find that baby sitting circles, playgroups, and 'crisis' nurseries are central to the rehabilitation and prevention of abuse in high risk families. But few experts draw the conclusions of the need for more and better child
Monetarism is out to destroy what little childcare there is and we end up defending services which even in their heyday were racist and inadequate in many ways. Some left councils attempted to extend
Tand equally importantly tried to services geared to the needs of children and the vast majority of parents, who do not fit into the white, heterosexist two parent model. But even the most progressive authorities have a policy of keeping families together. Again another difficult area for feminists: we know theoretically that the family is not defensible, but without women's economic independence, without reproductive rights, without socialisation of domestic production reproduction, without an end to discrimination, what do we do? And we need to understand how racism and imperialism affects black families resulting in black women raising many additional and sometimes different demands to those of white feminists.
The recommendations from the Jasmine Beckford enquiry also challenge 'family is best', but of course it does not propose the finances and equalities to enable an alternative to the family; it however suggests some working class families are not fit and substitute (read white, nuclear) families will do a better job. This report will have a big
bringing with sionalisation, more management social services and reinforces the concept of the unfit working class family, which will be used, I suspect, particularly against black families and extended into the arena of deportation and immigration policy
Another theme taken up in the report and again important for us to develop as socialists is the rights of children. Children are seen as parents' private property and therefore parents can do what they like to
There is also still the assumption that children must somehow be dominated, including by use of physical punishment, to
discipline and teach them how to behave. Hand in hand with this 'breaking the spirit' is the assumption that children haven't minds of their own, hence disbelief
reveal incest, ridicule when children take up racism in schools.
child abuse poses questions for socialists and feminists which arguments, crucially important though they are. We need to develop our understanding of the family, including the effects of racism and imperialism on the family in order to struggle for the policy and practice needed to
International, No. 2, January/February 198i;
The relationship between Teresa and Sergei up her life in Liverpool and voyage into the unknown to be with Peter? With a love this Elaine could just as well be fleeing off to Ger. her younger sister, as the pressure mounts on something that has to be build up through co. her to stay in Liverpool. But leave Liverpool operation and shared struggle over a period of she must. It has nothing to offer her, as the film time. The film's message is that love conquers The morning after, bus trip round Liverpool strong point and its weakness. Life for young an emotion that is so important to human queues and soul destroying jobs broken only by cellent film and well worth the time and money the shallow 'excitement' of Liverpool's night. you'll spend on going to see it. After all, even life. There has to be more to life than this. This the most committed amongst us has to escape is where the film disappoints and perhaps from the pressures of the struggle once in a betrays the soap opera background of the while. If only true love did happen like it does in It is not so much that the escape offered to ed by wishing on a star! Illusion and escape. If Elaine is a prettified vision of the Soviet Union. only Star Wars was just a film! But that's BL way ticket to the Soviet Union. Will Elaine give The film is an indictment of Liverpool under another fantasy altogether!!
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