Child Abandonment: Causes and Responses
While many people consider babies as their blessing from the God, but there are others still consider them as burden and a shame. The abandoned baby’s cases are become more serious in our country. Besides that, the situation has reached a worrying state where babies are abandoned in the most unbelievable manner by their mothers in rivers, rubbish dumps, doorstep, bas stop and even mosques. Some newborns make it and some die while others are killed before being dumped.
Whether we admit it or not, nowadays many women lose their virginity a very young age. This is because human relationship are began to deteriorate. Teenager’s lack of family care or attention from their families may cause them out look for spiritual comfort. It will cause them far away from their families and started affect by their “soul mate”.
The rise in teenage pregnancies is becoming a disturbing trend. From January to April this year, 111 such cases were reported to the Welfare Department, compared with 131 cases last year and 107 cases in 2008.According to MCA Public Services and Complaints Department head Datuk Michael Chong, the statistics provided by the Welfare Department may only be the tip of the iceberg. Such incidents are a sign of deterioration in moral values and, if not addressed urgently, will lead to the destruction of society’s moral fabric. Everyone must be held responsible for this – the parents, youth and teenagers, the authorities and society. The National Registration Department registered some 257,000 births between 2000 and July 2008 without the names of parents, which translated into 2,500 babies born out of wedlock monthly or 84 cases daily.
We cannot allow teenagers and others to kill innocent babies born out of wedlock. But we also cannot allow babies to be born out of wedlock without people taking responsibility for their actions. Young people get pregnant because of having the unprotected sex. Besides that, they did not fully realize what the true meaning of sex and pregnancy is. A girl may get pregnant not just because of you touch her hand or you kiss her face but it is because a in depth kind of relationship. Due to lack of knowledge about this relevant topic may cause many young people did not aware about the seriousness of this problem. If they are knowledgeable and educated, they can at least avoid the most unpleasant consequences.
Besides that, apart from that many career women living in cities oblige their boyfriends request when they are asked to watch pornographic VCD and then engage in sexual activities out of wedlock. When the girl gets pregnant, the boyfriend will do a vanishing act to absolve himself of all responsibilities. The unfortunate girl is left alone with the baby. The fear of their secrets being discovered by their families makes them resort to the unthinkable and so that may cause them just abandoned the newborn.
When the mother abandon the newborn is consider as murder. Government should seriously look upon this issue rather than just concentrate on other issues such as corruption, cronyism, nepotism or wasteful expenditure. We need to nip this problem in the bud in order to prevent the problem getting worse and until it out of control.
Plenty of effort we can done in many aspect to stop this problem spread. Besides of parent, government and society also should be responsible upon this issue. On the other hands, religious and belief also play an important role on this problem. If the young people are a devout believer, at least they may think twice before they want to engage in sexual activities.
Government should enforce the law to stop the mother from abandoning the baby. Example government can fine the mother who had abandoned their baby. For more serious, the government can also put the mother into prison or ask them to do public service as a punishment. To make this more effective, the head of police should allocate more police to patrol at night. Other than this, government can fixed some camera at the place or lane that is no people pass by and also the place where people normally abandon their baby. By doing this, it will help the government in taking action on the mother who abandoned their baby because when the mother abandon their baby, the camera may capture the whole process or one of the police may saw it during patrol, then the mother will be get arrested.
Other than this, the government should also set a higher age limit for a person to have sex with someone. For example, as we know in Malaysia the age limit for a person to have sex is 16 years old and now the government should increase the age limit to 21 years old. On the other hand government should also increase the penalty for the people who have sex with a person when they are still under age and also increase the penalty for the people who have sex with a person who is under age, so that they will think twice when they want to do so. By doing this, it can help in solving the issues of abandon baby because as we know normally the mother who abandon her baby is the mother which is not mature enough and under age. So, if our government increases the age limit of having sex and also the penalty, it will cause people not dare to have a sexual relationship with someone who is under age and what will happen is the number of people having baby when they are not mature enough will decrease and it will definitely reduce the problem of abandon baby.
Besides that, government should have a baby hatch system. This baby hatch system had implemented in several country such as Pakistan, Germany, and Japan. Baby Hatch is actually a place where the parent can left their child there anonymously. In order to implement this system, government should provide several small spaces for a person to put the baby in the provided locations. The small space must have a door, a soft bed, and a sensor on the bed so that it will alert the staffs to let them know there is a baby inside the small space. Basically the whole idea of baby hatch is trying to rescue the abandoned baby. If the government does not have this kind of system the parent will just abandon their baby at the road side or anywhere else and the baby will be very pity. So, if our government has this kind of system, the parents can donate their baby to the government, so that the government can help to take care of the babies and help the baby to find a suitable family. This is better than abandon the baby beside the road. Having a baby hatch system may help to reduce the number of abandoned babies dramatically and the rate of infant mortality will decrease because the government is taking good care of the baby and the baby will not die because of hungry, sick or any other reason.
Nowadays, the curiosity of teenagers or even though young adult about the sex is gradually increased due to the drama or the movie they watched. The number of teenage pregnancies also on the rise. So, the sex education is necessary to implement in school, colleges, universities to enhancing their knowledge, attitude and behaviour about sex and the consequences of having sex before marriage. A student who doing well in school is very promising, however, it does not mean that he or she will be a responsible adult in future. Therefore, sex education is important now to get children and teenagers to learn the proper social skill especially sex in order to let them know the responsibility when they choose to have sexual relationship but not to teach them how to do.
Sex education is the process of acquiring information about sex, sexual identity and sexual relationship. Beside that, sex education also can help teenagers to protect themselves against abuse or unintended pregnancies, prevent unsafe abortion or abandoned babies and the transmission of the infection. The purpose of sex education is to reduce the risk of negative outcomes from sexual behaviour such as unwanted or unplanned pregnancies.
Besides that, sex education is also to provide accurate information about the risk of having sexual relationship before marriage, information about birth control and the contraception. Sex education also finds out what the teenagers already know and correcting any incorrect information that they may have. Through the sex education, it can increase the knowledge of teenagers about sexuality. Teenagers who had received the sex education will have lower risk of intended pregnancy and less likely to having sex relationship at early age.
In addition, sex education programme can also promote the safer sex practise. Safer sex practise is the practise that the people take precaution when having sex relationship to protect themselves against the transmission of HIV and AIDS. Safer sex can reduce the risk of getting the HIV or AIDS when having the sex relationship. Safer sex practise can get through by using condom when having sex relationship with partner. By using condom can reduce the risk to get the HIV and AIDS, unintended pregnancy. This can reduce the number of abortion and abandoned babies issues.
Beginning the sex education at an early age is very important. By giving some basic information about sex to children such as how was a people grow and change over time, how a baby came from. For those teenagers, teacher can give more complex information on sex such as the transmission of HIV and AIDS, the consequences of having sexual relationship before marriage. However, sex education at early age does not mean that encourages teenagers to have sex but is to let teenagers to store up information provided for a time when they need it in the future.
Sex education not only can get through school but also can take place through various people. Different people have the different responsibility to provide sex education to teenagers and children. As a parents, they can face-to-face discuss with their children on specific issues or question on sex. Besides that, parents should educate their children about self-respect, moral values and self-protection. Some parents (In Asia) are reluctant to talk about sex issues to their children due to shy or do not know how to begin the topic about sex. Parents should not avoid this subject if not their children may relying on incorrect information they get and it will put them on risk of unwanted sex, unintended pregnancies. Therefore, the discussion between parents and their children is important because the discussion, the parents may know more what their children’s thinking is. The good communication between parents and their children about sexual matter can lead to their children have more awareness to the seriousness of having sex before marriage.
Besides that, teachers also have the responsibility to provide sex education to teenagers. The teachers who are going to provide sex education must be well trained so the teachers will not feel shy to provide the sex education. Beside that, a well trained teacher can provide more accurate information about sex matter to teenagers. Teacher should also educate students the danger of premarital sex and the consequences of premarital sex. Cases of child abandonment usually results from unwanted pregnancies. In most cases, it involves teenage girls who became pregnant outside wedlock and are compelled to commit the act in desperation and fear of the consequences.
So what are the main reasons for abortion? Many women and teens worry about their future plans. Some women and teens do not feel they can afford a child. Deciding what to do about an unplanned pregnancy can be difficult. Furthermore, even having a family member at hand does not provide an environment that encourages a pregnant teen to openly seek help. Shame, fear of blame from parents or health staff and the presence of traditional religious and conservative norms make it difficult. There for, a family member must accompany teens seeking counselling. This is because they need someone who can support them, because their condition is very unstable.
As the parent of a pregnant teen, you may be feeling many of the same emotions as your daughter such as shock, anger, fear or uncertainty. Maybe your teen was scared to tell you about her pregnancy, or maybe she came to you right away. In either case, your child will need to learn on you for support as she makes decisions that will affect the rest of her life. Parents may play a very important role in a pregnant teen’s decision. Pregnant teens often need the support and help of their closest family and friends as well.
Besides, the pregnant teens can go for an option counselor. An option counselor can help both women and girls with this decision. They will not make the decision or try to convince you to choose a particular course of action. Rather, they help all women decide for themselves. They will find a best way to help you to solve the problems and helps you to learn better social skills. As a role of schools, it is possible to implement programs to assist pregnant teenagers during and after their pregnancies ant this is specifically for only pregnant teens and young mothers. It can provide child care, parenting courses and a high school curriculum to make it as easy as possible for the students to attend school.
On the other hand, with support from state and private sources, the government can implement some prevention campaign like adolescent Pregnancy Program and health care program to those pregnant teens. The program is to give teenage parents and their children access to health care. The program links with community-based services for teenaged parents and provides much-needed immunizations, parenting education and physical checkups for parents and their children. Furthermore, Media can be the way to pregnant teens to seek for the information. There are many websites, forums and online communities are available on the Internet. These sites are places where pregnant teens can go to learn more about their condition and to talk to others in a similar situation. Some are designed to offer support and to provide information to pregnant teens.
