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Abandoned children and infants
by Justin D. Long
The abandonment of children is an extreme form of child neglect stemming from many causes. Some include family breakdown, irresponsible fatherhood, premature motherhood, illegitimate birth, or the death of both parents.
The problem is not new. In the 19th century, 'ragamuffins' were a familiar part of London's urban scene, and Parisian parents abandoned their children at the rate of 20% of the live births in the city. Children of the Sun, by Morris West, tells of the survival of street children in Naples in the 1950s. What is new, rather, is the growing scale of the problem.
In our world today, more than 60 million children and infants have been abandoned by their families and live on their own or in orphanages. Reliable specific information on the causes, magnitude and instances of child abandonment is scarce, so our number is a conservative estimate based on what we know; the real situation may in fact be much larger. Below are a few case studies.
AFTER BRAZIL EMBARKED ON a massive industrialization program in the 1950s, a network of industrial cities was built and incentives given to encourage large industrialized population. By 1980 some 30 million people had migrated ot the cities, looking for work, food, and welfare support. This, coupled with the explosion of the population (from 41 million in 1940 to 150 million by the 1990s), with three-quarters living in urban areas, caused a massive growth in slum areas. When the military government left power in 1985 they left behind a vast legacy of debt, a recession, and rampant inflation. Enormous pressure built on poverty-stricken families.
By the 1990s, half of all Brazilian children and adolescents lived in families making less than £17 per family member. More than 20 million children live on the poverty line. Many children have gradually abandoned or broken away from their families as the primary focus of their lives. Children testify of having fled extreme living conditions, abusive treatment from a drunken parent or seemingly malicious step-parent. Many speak of the street as being safer and cleaner than the slums, offering greater opportunities and challenging adventures. Some of the working children sleep on the streets during the weekdays to save on transport costs, returning home at the weekends.
A UN Human Rights report states that street children are often viewed as little more than vermin, and thousands have been murdered in the 1990s by police officers who see it as no more than a form of 'social cleansing.'
The government acknowledges child abandonment is one of its principle social problems. Several mission agencies have ministries to street children. The Presbyterian Church (USA) is one example: a missionary couple work with a team of Brazilian Christians to minister to abandoned children, playing games the them, teaching them to read, write and draw. The missionaries have reported that many of the children steal, sell and use drugs, or take up prostitution as a way of life.
BY SOME ESTIMATES COLOMBIA HAS MORE THAN 30,000 abandoned children. Poverty is one of the main reasons they end up living on the streets. Parents living in conditions of squalor are driven to sending their children out to work the streets. Some abandon them. The children sell sweets, wash cars, polish shoes and do odd jobs. The higher paid jobs can sometimes be found if the children are prepared to help drug couriers or become a prostitute. Many children who start by working on the streets end up living there. Among many organizations, the Salesians have a program of aid to abandoned youth and children in the streets of Bogota, Colombia, which has existed for more than 30 years.
WHILE CHINA HAS 21% OF THE WORLD'S POPULATION, it has only 10% of land suitable for cultivation. More than 160 million people are added to the population every year. In response, the Chinese government has vigorously promoted family planning; in 1979 they announced the controversial 'one child policy,' with rewards and penalties to induce couples to limit their family to one child. For thousands of years, Chinese culture has dictated every family must have a son or risk dishonoring their ancestors; the birth of a boy is celebrated while the birth of a girl is not acknowledged. More than 6 million women in China are called 'Lai-De' or 'Zheo-Di' (both of which mean, 'next time bring a boy'). There are no official statistics for abandoned babies, and abandoning children is a crime that carries stiff penalties. But some parents are willing to take the risk because, if they can only have one child, they don't want it to be a girl. Abandoned children are left to die beside roads, rivers and railway stations; others are picked up by gangs and used for begging. There are some 40,000 orphanages with between 1 and 3 million Chinese orphans; two in five babies entering the system die.
Dr. Zhung, an exiled paediatrician, helped Amnesty International confirm many of these details. She authored a book, 'Death by Default,' and helped produce a series of documentaries, the 'Dying Rooms', aired in London and filmed by an undercover team which visited 9 orphanages in 5 provinces in China. They found healthy baby girls tied to chairs, legs splayed over makeshift potties; babies swaddled 5 to a cot and left unattended with bottles of rice gruel perched in their mouths; evidence that sick female babies were kept in separate rooms and left to die. 'Every baby in the orphanage was a girl,' wrote the film's director. 'The only boys were mentally or physically disabled.' In some of the orphanages, death rates are as high as 20%.
ABANDONED CHILDREN RECEIVE LITTLE HELP IN EGYPT, because people generally assume they are born out of wedlock and thus not suitable recipients of charity. Many were simply left to die in local hospitals. An official home for these children, called the 'Sunshine Project,' has been established in Luxor. 'People consider illegitimate children to be bad spirits,' says the home's founder. The children who are in the home all study the Q'uran and go to the mosque.
LIKE OTHER LATIN AMERICA n COUNTRIES, GUATEMALA HAS a large population of street children. They are often targets for police officers and roving death squads, and there have even been instances of massacres reported.
MORE THAN 22,000 ORPHANED AND ABANDONED CHILDREN are in state custody in Hungary. A string of infanticides and stories critical of adoptions by foreigners made the news in 1996. After 54 children were killed by parents who could not afford them, the Agost Schoepf-Merei maternity hospital in Budapest put an incubator at its entrance so mothers could anonymously leave unwanted babies. The majority of abandoned children are Gypsies and few Hungarian parents want them; these are the ones most up for foreign adoption.
INDIA'S ECONOMIC DIFFICULTIES HAVE LED TO SOME 18 million street children. Orphanages are filled with the abandoned. Numerous Christian ministries, both foreign cross-cultural and indigenous, labor to minister to these children.
IN 1966, DETERMINED TO BUILD A LARGER WORK FORCE, ROMANIAN DICTATOR Nicolae Ceausescu decreed every married woman bear at least 4 children-and later increased the number to 5. Most families couldn't afford the children. Today an estimated 1 million children have been abandoned in post-Communist nations across Eastern Europe, and 10% of them are Romanians. According to an government census, nearly 2,500 Romanian children are living in the streets and sewers, and 100,000 are wards of state orphanages or private shelters. Virtually none are orphans; nearly all have at least one parent, and 80% have two.
IN ASIA, MANY ABANDONED CHILDREN ARE SOLD FOR THE PURPOSES OF SEXUAL SLAVERY, taken into Thailand, Nepal and India from southern China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma and Laos.
IN THE UNITED STATES, MORE THAN 7,000 AMERICAN CHILDREN ARE abandoned each year. Two daughters-Kiyah and Lacey, both under 3-were left by their mother in a stroller packed with baby formula, clothes and toys in a Central Park playground; the mother was subsequently arrested and charged with abandonment and endangerment. Another case is that of two girls, aged 4 and 9, left unattended in their Chicago home for ten days during the Christmas season while their wealthy parents flew to Acapulco for a winter vacation. But bad as these cases are, America certainly holds no prize position when it comes to abandonment; many countries have far worse conditions.
DURING THE VIETNAM WAR, AN ESTIMATED 10,000 children were born of American-Vietnamese relationships, most of whom were left behind.
HOSPITALS IN ZIMBABWE RECENTLY SAW 20 babies per day abandoned at their doorstep.
These short case studies illustrate what is a profound challenge to the ministry activities of the Christian church in our world today. Much is already being done to help abandoned children. Ministries such as World Vision, Compassion, the Christian Children's Fund and similar organizations are prime examples of Christian charity in action. Nonetheless the fact remains that children are being abandoned every day, and many of the children are forced to live on the street for lack of anyone to help them. This remains a major ministry need that the Christian church has yet to sufficiently answer.