October 18, 2024 - Week 38

Saturday was a work day for me - another last-minute request for help. This time it was an Advocacy workshop for parents of students with disability. I had the privilege to meet the parents of some of the students in my music lessons.

I had expected the workshop to be similar to the past workshops: a combination of clinical lecturing on the Disability Act followed by experience sharing. However, I was not expecting to cry with all the other ladies in the room. There was not a dry eye by the end of the workshop.

At first, the mothers listened attentively to a member of the Jamaica Council for People with Disability dissect the Disability Act. Then they participated eagerly in the activities presented by an Educational Consultant. It was not until the Educational Consultant recounted her own conflicting experience of raising her autistic son whom she tried 'assisting' using drugs that the mothers slowly started to share their experiences.

The catalyst for the tears and subsequent group huddle came from the mothers' experiences with their partners. At least two fathers abandoned their children because they were disabled and divorced/left their wives as a result. What is heartbreaking is that in one instance the child still yearns for her father's time and love and often asks her mother why her dad is not available. Her innocent love for her father is met with discriminatory conditional love. I know this student well and often admire her positive, joyful, and persevering attitude even if sometimes the other students tease her for her slowness.

One student with Cerebral Palsy was abandoned to his mum. Another student also with Cerebral Palsy has anger issues and her mother is at wit's end as to how to parent her, especially with her new partner.

I am often confronted by how many single mothers (note not fathers) there are in Jamaica. Marriage does not seem to be a 'thing' and it is quite acceptable to have multiple children with different men and for them to not be in the child's life. To have a mother and father in one's life seems to be the exception. Perhaps this broken family upbringing and expectation of women to have children young (at least in some communities) is correlated with the hypersexualized nature of the Jamaican society - next time you listen to a Dancehall song pay attention to the lyrics.