Nobody's Child

We live in a world of rapidly declining morals where society in general accepts single motherhood and not marrying, encourages sexual looseness for both genders, and little personal responsibility. With dating the norm and women and men being perpetually engaged to marry, but never actually marrying, we see a rapid turnover of relationships that go belly-up. After all, with no personal responsibility or integrity, it is easy to just cast your current partner aside as you pursue another relationship.

This really is not good. It is not good for the young men and women playing musical beds with each other and it is not good on the innocent results of these relationships: the children. There is now a generation of children who truly have no idea who their father is. They have no one to take on the role of a father but they have been ‘blessed’ with many uncles coming and going in their lives. There is never anything permanent in their lives and no sense of belonging.

From an early age these children often have their fathers leave the relationship with their mother, or else mother leaves father and the family is left in poverty. The new partner often does not want the children of a previous relationship around. In an effort to devote themselves to a new partner, it is not uncommon to see their child being given a hard time and pushed from pillar to post. They then effectively become Nobody’s Child.

With Nobody’s Child being moved from one relationship to another and passed from one set of family to another, there is a real possibility of a feeling of distrust in people and an inability to bond with anyone. With many new step-siblings and new step-parents, there is fostered a need to either excel at being a good child in order to win the affections of their parents, or there comes a deep depression and a sense of worthlessness and despair. Nobody’s Child simply gives up.

Once he or she has given up, the door to becoming a street kid is opened. Seeking love, Nobody’s Child often resorts to joining in with gangs of older children and is controlled by peer pressure. We then have the undesirable result of Nobody’s Child getting into trouble with drugs, alcohol, and the law. Often they become sexually precocious, and form lover’s trysts in a desperate attempt to belong and find a sense of self-worth.

The same society that encouraged the life-style that gave birth to Nobody’s Children offers no real hope to them and the cycle of Nobody’s Children is perpetuated as they hold their first-born child.

We can help Nobody’s Children by giving them affection and understanding. We can offer to take them to Sunday School and perhaps witness to their parents. Only Jesus can give these hurting and needy children the self-worth they need and we can give them affirmation of it in our daily dealings with them.

It would do us well too, to realise that the parents of Nobody’s Children are in desperate need of Jesus too and in all likelihood aren’t to blame for their reckless life-style and lacking parenting skills, for most of them know no better: for they too were Nobody’s Child.

© Glenys Robyn Hicks of Morning Cuppas With Glenys

“The lips of the righteous feed many: but fools die for want of wisdom”. Proverbs 10:21