Last night, after dinner, my parents and I sat watching TV, and at some point, the local TV station showed an orphanage. I find the way we treat orphans highly linked to our claims to any sense of humanity and humaneness, but like so many other things, I rarely think about the reasons babies end up in orphanages. Of course we normally hear about AIDS orphans in east and southern Africa; last night, I heard about the breed that people generally know exist, but that they nevertheless almost never actually talk about, think about or discuss.
Babies on the dunghill…
I asked my mother about how children end up in orphanages. She said that it was largely because many of the kids were abandoned. I further asked about how common it is for children to be abandoned. She told me that it was really more common than people realise. She told me that a kid was found a couple of days ago at a dunghill close to a panel-beater’s shop. The baby was eventually taken to the local federal hospital where my mother works.
…and at the motor park
I further wondered how it was possible for a person to be pregnant and give birth without anyone knowing. My mother then told me the story of a particular lady. The lady was staying in the home of a couple, sleeping in the same room with the couples children. The mother woke up during one night to hear the cry of her child in the room the lady shared with the children. She got to the room, found that the lady was not there, took care of the crying child and decided to check where the lady was. She checked the bathroom and found traces of blood on the ground. She traced the blood from the bathroom out of the house to a motor park close to the house. She found the lady holding a child, still unbathed, about to leave it at the park. My mother told me the story to illustrate that it was possible to be pregnant without it actually being exactly obvious.
What are the causes?
Why do people have kids that they can’t keep? According to my mother, it often happens when the mothers have tried to abort their pregnancies and have not been successful. Why are they not successful? I think it is because they do not consult experts when they try to abort their pregnancies. Why is that? Because abortion is illegal in Nigeria. Well, that is not exactly true. Abortion is not illegal in Nigeria, but one needs to get the signature of two medical doctors who are willing to say that the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman. But that is not a solution for most of the women who abandon their children. That group is largely made up of women whose main reasons for not wanting to raise a child are economic.
What to do right now?
I really find it hard to think of any solution to stop women from abandoning their babies, but I can think of a way to make sure the babies abandoned do not die. Sometime ago I watched a news item about a hospital in Germany where is it possible to leave unwanted babies in such a way as to make sure that one is unobserved, but that someone is quickly alerted that a baby has been left at the stand. The mother can leave unobserved; the baby can stay alive.
If we cannot change the economy ‘right now’ what can we do? I think the kind of system that the German hospital has would definitely be a good place to start. I also think that pro-choice clinics should be available in Nigeria. Of course, that needs legislation. I don’t know how that can be swung right now but I strongly think they should be available. And there should be a massive campaign in the media to inform people in such desperate situations about where they can get help. At this point, I wonder what on earth those well-funded NGOs that work on family health, women issues and allied fields do. I think there certainly are issues other than HIV.
Sound advice. We just have to be careful not to provide easy exits for parents finding it difficult to take care of this kids. Great advice.
Sound advice. We just have to be careful not to provide easy exits for parents finding it difficult to take care of this kids. Great advice.
We discussed this topic in my family very recently. We started with the following questions: Why do some mothers (and fathers too) kill their children? Why don’t they bring the child(ren) to a Babyklappe or an orphanage? Later, we also talked about potential adoptive parents’ preference for babies and toddlers. Can stricter control protect children from harm caused by their own parents?
My suggestion was that the murder of one’s own child(ren) often happens in an act of emotional instability, either directly after childbirth or later in a crises (too much strain related to childcare, separation from the partner, financial ruin etc.). This means the parent would be too emotional to think clearly and therefore does not even think of such institutions where you can abandon a child (and where it would at least stay alive). Since you’ve stayed in Germany this year, you should be able to remember all the many times we’ve been told about the discovery of another killed baby. So, this happens here as well, despite the Babyklappe.
For some parents, the reason may be that they consider being brought up in an orphanage worse than death. Orphanages did not have a good image in the past (see Oliver Twist) and have not recovered from that yet and partly they still need to improve a lot (see present reports about orphanages for handy capped children in East European countries).
We also spoke about adaption and how difficult it is for the potential parents since there are more people wanting to adopt than there are children waiting for adaption. A “solution” may be to adopt a child from abroad but as you surely know this also bears risks, such as children being taken away illegally. Another solution may be to adopt an older child. However, older children are less likely to find new parents. My cousin who worked in an orphanage for a year commented on this “I would not advice to adopt an older child, they are a lot of trouble”. Well, and then everybody wants cute, little babies.
Germany is now going the way of controlling parents more strictly, e.g. by making regular visits to the paediatrist obligatory. However, that won’t effect cases in which the mother was able to hide her pregnancy, gives birth to the child in secret and then kills him/her. My current flat mate, a medical student in her final year, told of a case in which even the mother didn’t know she was pregnant until the baby was born. So, I can well imagine a woman, especially a more heavy woman, to be able to hide her pregnancy and thereby bypass the controls.
We discussed this topic in my family very recently. We started with the following questions: Why do some mothers (and fathers too) kill their children? Why don’t they bring the child(ren) to a Babyklappe or an orphanage? Later, we also talked about potential adoptive parents’ preference for babies and toddlers. Can stricter control protect children from harm caused by their own parents?
My suggestion was that the murder of one’s own child(ren) often happens in an act of emotional instability, either directly after childbirth or later in a crises (too much strain related to childcare, separation from the partner, financial ruin etc.). This means the parent would be too emotional to think clearly and therefore does not even think of such institutions where you can abandon a child (and where it would at least stay alive). Since you’ve stayed in Germany this year, you should be able to remember all the many times we’ve been told about the discovery of another killed baby. So, this happens here as well, despite the Babyklappe.
For some parents, the reason may be that they consider being brought up in an orphanage worse than death. Orphanages did not have a good image in the past (see Oliver Twist) and have not recovered from that yet and partly they still need to improve a lot (see present reports about orphanages for handy capped children in East European countries).
We also spoke about adaption and how difficult it is for the potential parents since there are more people wanting to adopt than there are children waiting for adaption. A “solution” may be to adopt a child from abroad but as you surely know this also bears risks, such as children being taken away illegally. Another solution may be to adopt an older child. However, older children are less likely to find new parents. My cousin who worked in an orphanage for a year commented on this “I would not advice to adopt an older child, they are a lot of trouble”. Well, and then everybody wants cute, little babies.
Germany is now going the way of controlling parents more strictly, e.g. by making regular visits to the paediatrist obligatory. However, that won’t effect cases in which the mother was able to hide her pregnancy, gives birth to the child in secret and then kills him/her. My current flat mate, a medical student in her final year, told of a case in which even the mother didn’t know she was pregnant until the baby was born. So, I can well imagine a woman, especially a more heavy woman, to be able to hide her pregnancy and thereby bypass the controls.