Break the Cycle

There was a house up the way from us that had a fair amount of people living in it. At any one point we counted about 12 people in the house, at least 6 of them being children. They didnt cause anyone problems, it was just unusual to have so many different people living in what we knew was a three bedroom house. It was a small townhouse, so you do the math and figure out how much room that would give someone with 12 people in the house.

Taking walks in the evening we'd sometimes pass and see the inhabitants of the house coming and going. There was one family living there with four children. The father was an African American and the mother was a petite white lady. They had four young boys ranging from ages 8 to the smallest who was about a year old. They were all really cute.

Manal and I talked about the situation. None of the adults who lived there seemed to be working. No one left at regular times, nor did they wear clothes that one would associate with work.

They lived there for about a year when I notice a law enforcement officer pull up to their front door when I was coming home one day. He knocked on the door and when no one answered he placed a rolled up set of papers in the knocker. I knew what they were. They were a set of eviction papers.

It is two weeks later now and they are all gone. Gone, the four little boys and their mother and father. Gone, the one young lady with a three year old and a new born.

Adults make these types of lives for themselves. Sometimes it is choice, they like to wonder and roam. They get by with instability, with constant change and with deprivation. Children get stuck with these sorts of lives.

I dont know the details of the families I am talking about, I dont really need to. I have seen so many families that just shift from one place to the next for a variety of reasons. The parents might not want to work, one or both of them might have substance abuse issues. The reasons and the stories behind families like this are legion.

I sit and think and wonder about what kid of lives these children will have. Children need stability, they need to know where they are going to live from day to day or if they are going to have a meal that night. Why do some parents think they have a right to impose that kind of life on children? Why do some parents continue to have children when it is clear they cannot support the ones that they have?

Parents do not have a right to impose that kind of life on a child. It is cruel. These same children then grow up to lead lives that are disfunctional and end up acting the same way themselves. Someone has to break the cycle.