Blended Families, Blended Trouble: The Plight of the Left-Over Child.

Spousal Death, Divorce and re-marriage are, unfortunately, an all-too-common occurrence in Zambia. In many of these cases there are children involved. At the point of re-marriage it is normal for the divorced or widowed people to want to remarry. Men often find it easier to re-marry and in quite a number of cases young divorced women or widows will do so too. It is also normal in a divorce for one or other of the divorced persons to maintain physical custody of the children. In this case, the normal occurrence is for the woman to keep the children. 

A Blended Family is one into which each parent brings children from a former relationship. Hence, on each side one part of the biological parentage is present and the other is not. There are times when this is a great success and the children live quite happily together. Good interpersonal skills, early preparation, tolerance and cultural strength helps to achieve this situation. However, there are many cases in which the blended family collapses into a complete disaster. The dominant parner abuses the children of the other partner. Sometimes this abuse takes on horrendous proportions with children suffering actual bodily harm. It is not uncommon that children will at times be forced to flee from such homes leaving both biological parent and new family altogether.

Abuse takes many forms and the perpertrators always justify their psychotic conduct through the process of blame. Children are accused of insubordination, laziness, selectiveness in care of younger children, failure to conserve food, theft of money, refusal to attend school, failure to cook for younger siblings, preference of one parent over the other, collusion with the divorced parent, sexual misconduct, playing too much, studying too much, refusal to study and even sexual activity with the non-biological parent( usually the male non-biological parent). Children are very often powerless to resist this abuse and the biological parent would very often rather sacrifice the child than lose a partner again. Civil society child protection agencies and Government Juvenile inspectors are often uninformed about these abuses.Family secrecy and honour, economic powerlessness of the biological spouse and romantic love feelings hinder the rescue of the abused children.  To all intents and purposes the children live in a virtual police state and have their rights severely curtailed. Sadly, only extreme harm solicits a response from family and neighbours. At times even the absent biological parent will prefer to turn a blind eye to the abuse out of a fear of losing a new spouse should the child come to stay. This results in children being sent to third-party locations such as homes of  grandparents and other relations.  Indeed, the bill of rights has its long arm twisted back by the selfishness of adults in love.

An additional motivation for child abuse is the issue of property rights. Women often inherit goods and homes from deceased husbands in direct competition with the man's biological children. It follows therefore that biological chhildren from another woman become a potential threat for out-right inheritance of property. Unfortunately this archaic partriarchal form of law still exists in the world and is actually re-inforced under the guise of women's empowerment. Even a woman who has a good job and property of her own feels that a man is still her benefactor. Children are secondary considerations, unless they are her own-notwithstanding another man sired them. In this case the woman hope to benefit on three fronts: her own accruements, the former husband's and the new husband's accrual. Marriage has become a career in itself with shameful acquisitive behaviour being encouraged by both law and culture. Amazingly, all other dependencies on men are rightly challenged, but the cultural expectations of male economic superiority are in fact entrenched in the most modern of laws. Children are the least considered citizen's of the Republic of Zambia and this is ab indictment against the nation. 

Due to the troubles of these blended homes, the streets of Zambia have seen an influx of children fleeing from terrible abuses at home. The suffering they find on the streets is nothing compared to the constant verbal and physical abuse at home. Zambia has no excuse for the presence of children on its streets, it has nothing to do with a failed economy. It has everything to do with uncaring parents, Government leaders and step-parents or guardians. A child is never born from the stones on the streets and every true Zambian parent has a relation of one sort or another. The claims of a collapsing extended family system are questioned by the masses of people attending funeral vigils and wedding parties on a daily basis in Zambia. The extended family has not collapsed, it has simply become self-serving and selective. It has become cowardly and abusive of children. Individuals in these families are more concerned with temporal pleasures than biological responsibilty. A faulty analysis of the family refuses to accept that were it not fo the extended family there would be even more children on the streets. We argue that it is in fact the nuclear family that has failed and not the extended family. Thank God for caring uncles, cousins, grandparents and neighbours. Thank God for Zambian traditional culture without which our chidren would  surely be in even greater danger. If Zambia's traditional family structure were truly to break down, then this population of people would be heading for self inflicted extinction. Blended families, blended trouble-extended families extended hope.

A.Fundafunda
Lead Consultant
Child Rescue Mission
Dec.2008