A Minute for Parents

Summary

The Problems We Do Not Have

Article

By JoAnn Hibbert Hamilton

As we hear about the earthquake in Haiti, I wonder if we are helping our children reflect on the problems we do not have. I cannot even imagine the pain wondering if you have a child or spouse under the rubble somewhere, contained, injured and unable to get out. How could you handle it if a child or relative needed medical care and you had no way to provide it? Hunger may be rampant and the lack of sanitation and privacy may be an ongoing problem. Lawlessness and sickness follow.

We have so much.

And if we look just at other countries and their lifestyles, we have much to be grateful for. I was appalled as I read an article by Masha Hamilton in the Sunday
Deseret News, January 10, 2010, entitled “Afghan woman trapped by culture.”

In her early years in Afghanistan Masha had a father who encouraged her to achieve academically. She couldn’t go to school, but her father bought her school supplies and told her to be patient. She waited five years but after that she could go to school. When someone wanted to have an arranged marriage with her when she was sixteen her father refused, but when she was finishing high school, her father died.

Masha’s three Taliban-influenced brothers became responsible for her. She said, “For several years, in exchange for her turning over much of her salary, they allowed her to continue her education and be employed outside the house. But now they’ve decided—over her strong objections—to marry her off to a first cousin, a man of about 40.” “According to the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, up to 80 percent of all women in the country face forced marriages.” Her brothers will receive a $20,000 dowry.

This, of course, will end her studies, her work outside the home, her connections to non-Afghans. She will be required to wear burkas and be responsible for cooking, cleaning and caring for the animals. Most of the women have eight or nine children and they can’t go outside the house.

Running away is not an option, because girls who run away, according to Masha, are raped by men and spend years in jail. She is not allowed to “buy” herself. Anything she does that is wrong is supposedly the fault of her mother, and they will kill her mother if she disobeys.

Masha said there were many suicides in Afghan by women who are trapped in unions they opposed. “Masha” is not her real name. There would be punishment if it were found out that she wrote the article in the Deseret News.

We have so very much.

You might your children about India and help them understand the caste system that is there. Help them understand the extensiveness of the poverty and the lepers they would see who are on the street as beggars. Sanitation and education are also problems. Think about living in Iran with its unrest or in South America as unstable as it is.

Nowhere in the world is life so good as here in the United States. Mexico remains lawless, Venezuela and Cuba remain under dictators. Even Canada and England do not have the standard of living and medical care that we enjoy.

Although I love the Brazilian people with a passion because we lived among them for three years, I remember how unsafe parts of cities were, the fight for sanitation, the skyrocketing inflation, and the bribery that seemed to be a part of daily living.

We have so very much. In a political environment that tears down what we have and builds up the corruption, I hope we are teaching our children to value where we live and love our nation and what it really stands for.