THE EDITOR, Sir:
WE CLOSE Child's Month this year with sufficient evidence all around us that our children and young people are in a state of social and spiritual crisis. They are facing serious pressures that are contributing to an increase in their dysfunctional behaviour. Data from the adolescence Health Project from the Ministry of Health confirms that children are being pressured into sex from as early as 10. It does not begin in the schoolyard but in the homes of poor parenting, uncontrolled exposure to sex on TV, sexual abuse by adult relatives and the explicit lyrics of Dancehall music.
Everywhere our children turn they are being tempted and lured by our cultural fixation on premature eros drugs and violence. One should therefore not be surprised with the highly sexual behaviour of our children. At the rate things are going many will graduate from our high schools primarily as sex-addicts equip-ped to spread sexually transmitted diseases.
We need to come to our senses as a society and find creative ways to help our children make informed choices about their lives. The problems that we are facing did not happen overnight. Our culture has not taken seriously the challenge of nurturing healthy relationships among our people. Present in many of our communities are powerful forces of drugs and guns at work, unravelling in particular, African-Jamaican families. Many parents today who are faced with sexually active children and young people were themselves products of teenage parents. The Jamaican culture has institutionalised the absentee father and unwed mother as the norm of nurturing our children.
Our young women in particular are becoming sexually and financially dependent on men who lack stability in their lives. Many of them have chosen to live their lives in the fast lane, not expecting to live beyond 40 years. They engage in drugs, guns and gang-violence and spend a significant part of their time being further socialised into criminal behaviour in our prisons. This kind of socialisation is having devastating consequences on our teens because they are imitating young adults who were never taught parenting-skills and are therefore socially dysfunctional in their parental responsibilities.
All organisations that work with children and young people need to come together and agree on a national multifaceted strategy to help our young people find it easier to elude the magnetic lures of the sexual forces, drugs, guns, alcohol and smoking around them. Within the church our primary strategy is to help the young people to abstain from early sex.
However, the problem is bigger than the church's ministry. Try as we may to encourage teens to embrace abstinence, some will still have sex because the pressures around them are very strong. It is for this reason that in addition to the priority of encouraging these teens to abstain from sex before marriage, they should also be taught about birth-control. The real threat of sexually transmitted diseases, and not to mention the pandemic threat of HIV/AIDS, necessitates that nothing be left to chance and arrogance.
What we need now is a no-nonsense pragmatism about the problem. Churches and youth organisations will be holding summer camps this year. I call on Government and the private sector to sponsor many children and teens from communities in crisis to attend these youth camps. This will be money well spent. The churches are blessed with competent and well-motivated volunteers. They should be invited to expand their youth summer programmes in the years to come to meet the needs not only for their children and youth but also for those in the wider community.
I am convinced that churches belonging to the Jamaica Council of Churches, the Jamaica Association of Evan-gelicals and the Seventh Day Adventists have credible youth summer programmes with effective curriculum and good management systems. The young people that attend these summer camps are prepared to be strong in the Lord, equipped to cultivate healthy relationships, build their confidence, and self-esteem. In these summer programmes you will find young people being helped how to live healthily, trained how to overcome violence. You will find competent Christian professionals giving them advice on sex and on AIDS-awareness and, as expected, to commit their lives to Jesus Christ.
What our children and young people need now more than ever is to rebuild their self-esteem and hope that has been badly damaged by the life-destroying behaviour present in their abusive families and drug and crime-infested communities. Only when they begin to feel good again about themselves, develop a sense of self-worth, and learn to love themselves because of Christ's love for them - that they will be able to share that love to other people in healthy ways.
In the churches' youth programmes these teens will be exposed to alternative models of friendship that can release them from gang membership. A deepening of their religious commitment will make the teens more willing to stay in school and become more goal-oriented. They will be morally strengthened to say no to early sex and make commitment to sexual purity, to say no to drugs and violence and embrace healthy lifestyles.
I am, etc.,
RODERICK R. HEWITT (Rev. Dr. )
Hope United Church
221 Old Hope Road
Kingston 6
