ESSAY 4 : Baby Dumping

Our country, Malaysia has become a very popular and favourite spot for dumping, not the usual garbage dumping but it is the baby dumping. Baby dumping means the act of throwing away the babies at any place without taken care the babies. Surely, all of us have heard about fruit season and others, but do you ever heard of baby dumping season? New Year celebration and Valentine’s Day are known as mating season nowadays which leads to unwanted pregnancies among youth and obviously, leads to baby dumping cases which can be easily read in the mass media. Child dumping is the practice of dumping offspring outside of legal adoption.The dumped child is called a foundling or throwaway. According to a reliable statistics, one baby is dumped every week. The question that comes to mind is ‘Why is this scenario is happening in a modern and technology era that we lived in’? Do we, the society, play a good role in handling this issue or perhaps we just take this issue as light as feathers since we got nothing to do with it? And do we have even have a little of sympathy when we see how these innocent babies’ lives being ripped out by this shameful act?

            First and foremost, I shall brief you on the factors that causes baby dumping. One factor that leads to baby dumping is teenage pregnancy. The first reason is teenagers are lacking of sex education. Parents and schools do not inject sex education onto teenagers' mind since they were small. Parents always think that their children will understand everything about sex when they grow up. This is the natural ability that everybody has and they no need to talk to their children about sex. Most of the parents feel ashamed and uncomfortable everytime their children ask them questions about sex.They refuse to give a positive explanation and a clear view to their children and always claim that they are too small to know about sex. Due to the lack of basic knowledge, surely they do not know how and where a baby comes. At the level of puberty,teenagers are full of curiousity and they want to try everything that they have not tried before.They will feel curious about their boy friends and girl friends. Urged by their strong curiousity,they have a special relationship with their partners.After the process, they might have a baby.When they face problems such as pregnancy, they will try to solve the problems illegally and the best solution to them is baby dumping.

         
           Secondly, peer influence. Parents who are always busy work are result their child have more time to gather with their friends rather than them. Therefore, this situation will become worst when their child are friend with gangster or friends who have many bad habits. So that, when their friends persuade them do somethings, they just follow what their friends say. Because for them, this is the way to show that they are best friends. This is because at a young age, teens are very easily influenced by their peers. This problem becomes worse when they associate with negative peers. Negative friends who will invite young people to do things outside the boundaries of religion and norms of society, such as going to places of entertainment such as disco, taking drugs and doing free association. Teens who fall in the arena, the arena will be negative sexual promiscuity, and eventually reached a dead end to find that her pregnancy. In desperation, they had to discard their babies.

Besides that, parents did not pay a lot attention to their son’s, especially about moral education, but in my opinion not only moral education is the main role that causes baby dumping phenomenon because the other role such as internet, television also one of the cause behind baby dumping. There are still some of us who do not understand the real meaning of sex. Consequently, certain abuses take place. In the web for example, we have the cyber sex which is getting a lot of attention especially from the teenagers. We cannot of course prevent them from chatting in the web or engaging into cyber dates since the internet has proven its worth in terms of socialization and communication. That’s easy to interupe teenage to the sex without marriage and then, when they make sex and pregnant without married, the problems that could make one get confused and decide to do things that cannot be done by a normal human being,so that’s why some women decide to dump their children.

Here suggestion on how to cope this problem. The key is parents  must provide religious education so that children know good and bad matter. Besided that, parents should know whom their children friend so that their children friendless with social and must know all their children's activity. Through this it can control their children's movement not to trapped with bad element at outside. Parents also should provide sex education to their children. Sex education is not only about the mechanics of sex but also learning how to respect our bodies and one another. It need not encourage promiscuity, but properly taught can encourage abstinence till marriage and not falling for the “if you love me, you will have sex with me” line. It is needed to encourage responsible sexual behavior and avoid unwanted pregnancies that causes baby dumping. Furthermore, parent is near to them. So, parent is role model in shaping their personality. Beside that, parent need give upbringing to child about moral since small. Early care so important. If child was taught from small with good value, they would not be involved with wrongdoing such as baby dumping.

In conclusion, there are many factors that lead to cases of baby dumping occurred. This problem should be addressed and resolved to carry out these steps effectively before the situation worsens and threatens the future of the country. In this case, all parties must cooperate and work together to solve this problem because like the Malay proverb says, "because the sewer water round, round man for consensus".