Chester Borrows: Easing road between the bumps

NOT ALL families are created equal - yet we seem to think of them generically.

We talk about a "Kiwi way of life" and assume that all families go to the beach, have Christmas dinner together, love rugby, have a mum and dad who only want the best for them. We do this with everyone - all dads are supposed to be good with a barbecue and all mothers can knit. It is all rubbish.

I walked into a cafe in Wellington this week and was greeted at 7.30am by a wee 7-year-old girl standing on a box while her mum made espresso coffees for the commuters on their way to work, desperately trying to wake up between their trains and their desks.

"Hello, how can I help?" I ordered my large flat white and handed her a $10 note and she asked for $4.50 and counted back my change. Who could doubt that she will be a success?

On Friday, I met "Sean" at an alternative education facility in the South Island. If you can think of a four-letter name which sounds similar to a word describing a snub-nosed, flat-bottomed boat, and is probably the worst name anybody can use in our language, this is the name Sean's mother called him from the day he was born.

When he was about 5 years old, Sean's uncle came to visit and introduced himself. Sean's reply was: "Hello, my name is ****." The uncle said: "No, your name is Sean." That was the first time Sean knew what his name was.

Who could doubt Sean was going to struggle from day one?

The reason I raise this is that I received a letter from a constituent this week complaining about the verdict and sentences handed down to the youths charged with the death of dairy owner Arun Kumar in West Auckland.

The letter was scathing of a justice system that allowed offenders to be treated so lightly, but didn't acknowledge that they were 13 and 14 years of age.

What we had learned as part of the trial was the background in which these young ones had been raised. The writing was on the wall, so my first thought is to question why the parents weren't standing in the dock alongside their children. Obviously, to have the parents in there too, we'd need to build bigger docks inside our courtrooms.

Our systems, agencies, sympathies and expectations remain the same generically for all children. Our "national standards" (small "n") are, at best, a rough guide. But at least we need standards or else we would have no measure of acceptable and unacceptable social behaviour.

The biggest imperative on the Government is to enable parents to be good parents according to the societal expectations of what good parents do and how they behave. But there is also an imperative to educate society of what is normal and what is not.

There is no generic "Kiwi lifestyle", but there are generic aspirations. There are generic Kiwi expectations, but nothing enforcing or educating what those expectations are - no matter how realistic - except what society is prepared to enforce itself as a community.

Not every child has the same chances as everyone else. For many life is a bumpy ride on a tortuous track and the end is not in sight, so our job as a community is to level out the track and ease the road between bumps.