Poor Parenting and Criminality

Twenty-eight year old Charline Mightly is one of the participants from the Whitefield Town/Trench Town area who attended the three days of training and later became valedictorian for the freshly inspired graduating class. Funny enough she isn’t a parent but admits that her “reason for going (to the training) is curiosity and lunch was being provided so it wouldn’t be a total waste.” 

With the interactive training now completed, Charline is quite passionate about what she has learnt. ‘It was an eye opening experience; an opportunity for you to put into perspective the situation with the mothers and children in the community.” With grief in her voice, she recounted hearing how mothers in her community interact with their children: “eh bwoy mi nuh call yu? And whop! And then you would also have the bad words and the styling” between parent and child, she explained with deep dismay. 

She asserted that “how you treat children…influence their behaviour when they are older. We all know that illiteracy impacts on violence but how we parent influences future generations in crime,” she reasoned. Continuing she asserted that “parenting and lifestyle skills will help to reduce crime in the community. When I saw the connection I recognized that it’s a huge responsibility.” And that responsibility involves appropriate disciplinary techniques. Charline who was physically abused as a child believes that “beating is necessary but how you beat, when, where and why is important.” 

Caring for at least three of her nieces and nephews on a regular basis, Charline admits that “my first instinct is to hit, but from the training it helps me to hold back a bit, start to think of the child and their reaction to our reaction” she said convincingly. In spite of her own struggles, she stresses that beating cannot be the first response.

An avid romance and paranormal novels reader, Charline doesn’t harbour fairytales about bringing a child into the world. While she admits that the “pregnancy bug” has bitten she doesn’t intend on casually having a baby. “I went through hell as a child so I’m not going to have a child unless I can provide at least the basics, so I don’t have to take it out on the child.”  Even while she tries to secure her dream job in the tourism sector, she believes that the parenting life skills training has made her “more prepared to have a child.”

Tanya Robinson- Brown, thirty-two, from the Jones Town also strongly believes in taking responsibility for her three daughters; two of them twins. Given the negative influences in her community, Tanya who is deeply concerned about how here daughters are raised doesn’t allow them to go outside and play. “Mi cloak dem up too much,” she admits but reasons that it’s better than having to deal with street influences. 

From the parenting lifestyle programme she says she has learnt “how to talk to your kids, how to find out the problems they are having; I am talking to my (older) daughter now” who is seven years old. 

On the matter of the link between parenting and criminality, Tanya offers one important caution: in spite of what parents do, “the individual will become who they are.” Citing examples in her own community, she says “I agree and disagree. A parent can be a good parent and a child stills falls into peer pressure” and engage in reckless or criminal behaviour. Indeed other socio-economic factors must be considered including poverty, the drug culture, political tribalism, lack of economic opportunities and the absence of parenting support from the wider community.

Participant from the Lyndhurst/Greenwich area and WROC Community Mobilizer Christine Senior also has mixed feelings about the link between bad parenting and criminality and identifies some other intervening factors. “I would say yes to an extent and no because I grew up with a mother and father and they were loving to me yet when I had my first child because of the relationship with the father, a lot of things manifested there in the beginning which caused me to start abusing my child in some way, but then again because of the training that I received from my parents and my upbringing, I learn to put my personal problems aside and that help me to turn around and help my child” she shared openly.

Christine added that the parenting workshop was a “healing and learning experience” for her since the format allowed participants to openly share their unique experiences and receive advice and support. 

Facilitator and Counsellor at WROC Faith St. Catherine explained that this was important to the overall success of the programme. During the training sessions she says “there were times that we had to stop because people had issues…and it comes out of abusive parenting patterns.”  She indicated that “90% of her clients who visit her (at WROC on Beechwood Avenue) was abused and it goes back to parenting, so we have always been trying to get funding for parenting because it is crucial to the social problems that exist.” Indeed Ms. St. Catherine isn’t divided on the direct link between poor parenting practices and criminality.

The counsellor lamented that in the educational system, “the emphasis is on academics and enough attention is not paid to emotional development. We don’t teach people to ask themselves why they do things,” she noted. However she believes that through the training of “one small corner of the society” is being helped which she believes is reason to hope.

For her part, Project Coordinator Alva Graham is heartened by the success of the project which employed a participatory learning approach that helped participants to analyse and improve how they parent their children. Parenting manuals will also be provided to participants soon. Looking forward, she informs that “we are going to have a follow-up session in the next month where we are going back to the three communities and part of the activities for that one day workshop in each community is to engage these teachers and parents of how they can develop a model that they can use in their communities working in conjunction with the basic schools.” 

In addition, she says “big yard sessions on the street corner using WROC Players (a drama group of community women attached to the Women’s Resource and Outreach Centre) will be held to continue to discussion on better parenting in the inner-city. The project is expected to be replicated in other inner-city communities. 

There were 60 persons in the workshops, held in groups of 20-25 in three inner-city communities.