What can we do to protect our children from child predators. Perhaps something as simple as taking a look in the mirror.
Revulsion, fear, hatred - strong emotions - and sex crimes stir all of them, especially when the victims are children. Emotions aside, we may be the authors of our own misfortune.
Let's first look at our families:
- Single-parent families are increasingly prevalent; adult relationships are more short-term and superficial.
- Both parents in two-parent families often hold down full-time jobs. During the short period when they are home, they are often too tired or stressed to involve themselves with their children.
- Children as young as two are put into daycare, followed up by baby sitters or indifferent surrogates.
- Then come regular school and after-school programs.
- Less fortunate children become latch-key kids, responsible for their own entertainment, maturation, and meals.
Although many parents seem willing to outsource responsibility for upbringing, more or less traditional expectations of their children stay the same. In fact, their expectations even increase. What are these expectations?
- Resist the pervasive sexuality in the media
- Do as I say, not as I do. Don't drink my beer or smoke my B.C. Bud.
- Stay a kid but grow up fast and take responsibility.
- Resist peer pressure: Stay out of porn websites and avoid the bad crowd at school.
- Respect family values, even though we've never shown you what they are.
Consequently, many children grow up in a push-pull world awash in contradictions and hypocrisy. The same has been going on for at least two generations, perhaps longer. Consider that we've bred our child molesters and set up the pre-conditions that enable them to carry out their activities.
In spite of our warnings, children are more accessible, not just to strangers but to family acquaintances and relatives. Moreover, they have learned that authority figures and significant others are primarily to be found outside the home. Faced with indifference at home, they may seek acceptance elsewhere, even on Internet chat groups.
Children are pressured to grow up faster, and indeed they are. In many respects, they have outpaced their parents. Recall when divorce was almost unheard of? Today, long-lasting marriages have the same status.
So what has all this to do with child molestation? Maybe nothing, but it signals that permissiveness and promiscuity are socially accepted behaviors to both children and their molesters, whether strangers, family, or close acquaintances.
In the extreme, should a father returning from a sex junket in Thailand be shocked or indignant to discover his child was molested while he was away buying the services of a 12-year old? Probably his wife, the mother, isn't exactly Miss Manners herself, and she's just as shocked and indignant.
To be sure, as a society, we'd better start looking for solutions to what seems to be an epidemic. We don't even know it's an epidemic; we may just be over-reacting to a strident Nancy Grace and other media sensationalists. Probably, for a beginning, our first step may be simply to look in a mirror.
