There have been many reports of child abuse recently. Among these incidents, there was one in which the two children of a 17-year-old mother had been abused. Both the public and media criticized the girl for being “irresponsible,” but the question is: Did the other people that should have taken responsibility in such a situation shoulder their responsibility to stop the situation from worsening?
First, did the school fulfill its responsibilities?
When the girl became pregnant the first time, she was still in junior-high school, which begs the question: Did the school do what it is legally required to do? According to Article 14-1 of the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法): “The school shall proactively protect the right to education of pregnant students and provide needed assistance.” “Needed assistance” includes learning how to care and take responsibility for a child.
Educators that have helped adolescent mothers say that when a student becomes pregnant, they might not be able to learn subjects like Chinese literature or English, as the more urgent issues at hand are the demands and needs of anyone who is about to become a new parent, and schools should therefore take the initiative to provide parenting information and instruction. Did the 17-year-old’s school provide relevant resources and include her family in a service and educational network?
Second, did the social system fulfill its responsibilities?
The reports said that this young mother was unhappy that her boyfriend was out enjoying himself, so she did the same.
Taiwan’s child daycare situation puts parents under enormous pressure. Judging from this family’s situation, it should have been possible to place the children in a public daycare center so that comprehensive care could be given to the children’s developmental and nutritional needs and allow the mother to continue her studies.
Had the situation become untenable, the children could have been put in a foster home. However, it is obvious that no one told the young parents that there were other choices or that they could ask for help.
Third, did the social affairs bureau and the case worker for the family fulfill their responsibilities?
Judging from the two children’s home situation, it is clear that it was a high-risk environment. The children were clearly behind the developmental curve, raising the question of whether anyone noticed this during vaccination health checks. Did social welfare or child protection authorities report the situation or get directly involved?
Fourth, did sexual education live up to its responsibilities?
No one should be surprised that Taiwan’s sexual education situation has produced results like this case. The film Shall We Swim (青春水漾) — made to promote sex education — was discredited and quickly removed from curricula, and teachers worry that parents will complain if they teach sexual education in school.
Studies long ago proved that sexual education focused on abstinence results in an increase in the number of unplanned pregnancies, high birth rates, high abortion rates and HIV/AIDS. Despite this, schools still invite religious organizations to teach abstinence and fail to mention safe sex practices and the intricacies of intimate relations. That is why incidents like the one involving the 17-year-old mother of two continue to occur.
Should there be a consensus that unplanned pregnancies and adolescent parents are consuming an inordinate amount of social resources, sexual education should be handled properly and introduced at a young age — the earlier the better.
There is no reason to think that sexual education for elementary-school students is shocking, offensive or “going too far,” or that it promotes sexual liberation and teaches children to do “something bad.” The 17-year-old had her first child when she was 15 and in junior-high school; based on a 40-week pregnancy, she had sex when she was 14 years old.
Sexual education can be taught at any age, but requires different methods for different ages. Parents and teachers who avoid sexual education are being irresponsible and they have no right to criticize the young mother.
Children in heterosexual families are not necessarily happy, and heterosexual families that do not raise their children properly might end up without children. Had the two children in this family instead been adopted by two gay partners, perhaps they would have led happier lives and would not have been exposed to a life-threatening situation.
These are urgent issues that those who claim to be protecting “traditional family values” should give some serious thought to. They should focus their efforts on helping dysfunctional heterosexual families in order to ensure they have a good life.
Chuang Shu-ching is deputy chair of the Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association.
Translated by Perry Svensson
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS