Thursday, May 28, 2009

Good news for abused kids (and all families)

Today finally brings some happy news to the children of Japan. Only 20 years after signing the International Convention on the Rights of the Child, Japan has decided to consider suspending the parental rights of abusive parents.
I am not foolish enough to believe that this means the government will do this within the next year or 3, but just discussing the issue is a long-awaited step in the right direction.
The issue at hand is the feudalistic family register. The head of the family in Japan has all the power. Even if he lives away from the wife and children he abused, since they are in his family register, he gets payments from the local government for children's benefits (usually around 10 000 yen a child per month), as well as the recent 12 000 yen per person vote-buying scheme.
The family register has no place in modern society- I am not even really sure it had a place in history either. Now, I love records, and historical records like this would normally make my heart flutter with excitement. The problem is that the historical records are not normally kept in Japan. Japan's municipalities are notoriously crap with keeping records, and once everyone in a certain family register has died, there is not much chance of archiving. So if these aren't going to be kept as historical records, what's the reason for having them at all?
I think it's to have a legal way to discriminate against those who are different. One look at the family register, which is required for school registration, passport applications among other applications, and someone can tell if your family is the right kind or not. If you (or your parents) were not born in wedlock, it says the child is a "boy" or "girl," rather than "oldest boy," "oldest girl," "second boy" and so on. Which doesn't matter in the rest of the world, but Japan prides bullying those younger than you, so birth order (even for twins) is extremely important.
I'm getting somewhat off-topic (what's new?), but I think that the idea of suspending parental rights is a good one for the the reformation of the legal standing of people within a family.
Eventually, I hope that neglect is considered child abuse, and that children languishing in institutions with no ties but legal ones to their families are able to have their guardian's rights suspended so they can be available for adoption.
Adoption is a sensitive topic for me. We've been trying to adopt through the government (rather than through a religious agency) for 5 years, and had one adoption fall through. The reason that we can't adopt is because there are so few children available. Even though orphanages have hundreds of residents, there are very few whose parents or guardians actually give up their rights so that the child could be adopted by a loving family. Adoption outside the family is looked down upon in Japan, and living in an institution is considered better than living with another family that is not blood related. It's also about saving face. If another family can raise the child you gave up on, that makes it your fault rather than the child's, and no Japanese wants anyone to know when something is their fault. This makes me blind with rage. I really hope the government steps up to the plate and suspends the parental rights of people who have abandoned their kids as well as those who are being physically abused.

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