Seriously one-sided
Socialist Outlook magazine1980sPhil HearseScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
THE ARTICLE by Dani Ahrens and Judith Paton (SO no 3) on child abuse was a serious attempt to go behind the headlines and explain the causes of child abuse. But in my view some of its arguments were seriously one-sided, giving the impression that the authors consider doctors and social workers as much a part of the problem as parents who abuse children.
In the limited space available I will just make three basic objections. First, the authors argue that the solution to child abuse is to 'empower children'. They interpret this as meaning that the abused child must have the right to make all the basic decisions — whether to prosecute, whether to go into care, and so on.
This is surely utopian. Many children abused are far too young to have any rational comprehension of what a 'prosecution' is, or what it will entail for them — let's remember that many abuse victims are under ten, and many much younger. The inevitable conclusion is that society as a whole has to provide agencies, like social workers, capable of intervening, defending children — and in some cases, together with other agencies, making decisions on their behalf.
Of course, it is quite right for the authors to argue for the maximisation of the autonomy and right to make choices of children, and against the myth of the omnipotence of all-knowing 'experts'. But that autonomy cannot for very young children be absolute, simply because very young children do not possess the capacity for total autonomy; they remain dependent, to a greater or lesser extent, on adults.
So let us by all means argue about the goals and objectives of doctors and social workers, but let us not pretend they can be dispensed with in the name of 'empowering children'.
My second objection is the account which the authors give of the causes of child abuse. They argue that child abuse is about the assertion of power by a father figure, and not about sexual desire; nor is it caused by poverty, bad housing, etc. Again, I think their argument is one-sided. Of course it is right to reject SWP-type arguments which put rape and sexual abuse of children simply down to poverty and 'capitalism'.
But can we say that poverty and the demoralisation which very poor families suffer has nothing to do with child abuse? Equally, the 'abuse of power by a father figure' argument is not at all counterposed to saying that child sexual abuse has got a lot to do with sexual desire, and some of the ways that this is manipulated in a society like ours, in which there is a subcurrent of obsession with 'Lolita'-type figures in popular culture going back many years.
Finally, there are some parts of the article which struck me as sounding really utopian. It talks about 'the inherent danger for children living in families' becoming apparent to more people. Then it says 'empowering children would destroy the power structure of the nuclear family in capitalist society'. So it would, but the chances of it happening before the destruction of capitalism are zero point zero per cent. The truth of the matter is that the nuclear family is going to be the predominant form of the organisation of personal life in advanced capitalism for a very long time. Children are going to continue to live in families, and they cannot be in any fundamental way 'empowered' within them without a total change in existing social relations which would mean the destruction of the nuclear family. So, socialists have to support mechanisms for society to intervene and defend children who are the actual or potential victims of abuse. This means specialised agencies, there's no way round it.
Phil Hearse