Raise awareness of this cross-generational pattern of broken families

Dear Editors,

On a recent engagement with the Child Care and Protection Agency, Dr. Yeaswantie Beekhoo, an exceptionally effective philosopher and psychologist who combines elements of eastern and western psychology in an offering that is holistic in practice, explained to me that, as a philosopher, she works with patterns. And one pattern that emerges in her line of work is that children of broken homes themselves ultimately go on as adults to form relationships which repeat the examples set by their parents, that is, we can expect to see a cross-generational pattern of broken hearts and broken families. The world has seen pop singer Rihanna, of Guyanese heritage, analyse on one of Oprah’s shows, her own relationship with Chris Brown and the unconscious connection that abusive relationship had to her relationship with her father. In our country, where we have so many impoverished single parent families and children exposed in early childhood to violence, hate and diatribe in parental relationships, the trend of patterns signify a generational curse that is placed upon children of broken homes. The question arises as to how to break this cycle to save future generations from the failures of their parents?

It certainly implies that breaking the cycle of poverty cannot be done only with education that involves teaching children Mathematics, English Language,

Science and Social Studies. Even strengthening Health and Family Life Education (HFLE) on the primary and secondary school curricula is not enough to break the curse on a significant proportion of our nation’s children. And we see it in the videos on social media of the state of our nation’s poorest children. We need general knowledge of psychology.

What truly needs to improve is national awareness of this pattern and its implications and risks as well as the quality of the intervention currently being offered by the Child Care and Protection Agency. That Agency, like all our Government organisations, can do more to streamline and improve its effectiveness and efficiency and the quality of its day to day decision making. But it cannot do so without the right policy guidance which comes from the political directorate of our country. Government after Government continues to

Turn to age 15