The Orientation of the Orphans/Parentless towards the Governmental Orphanages and Social Stigma: A Field Study in   Al-Diwaniya City

Shaheed Mohammad, Anees

	The Orientation of the Orphans/Parentless towards the Governmental Orphanages and Social Stigma: A Field Study in Al-Diwaniya City
CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC STUDIENS MAGAZINE
Article 12, Volume 5, Issue 11, 2014, Pages 367-413 PDF (0 K)
Author
Anees Shaheed Mohammad
Abstract
The domain of childhood is considered as one of the significant domains that requires a full understanding since it is regarded as a fundamental and important period in man's life in which the general features of personality are shaped. Thus, building up necessary programmes to take care of and to look after it is regarded as a necessary demand. Especially, promoting the level of services and social sponsorship of children has been achieving success in this respect depending on the scientific researches in the field of patronizing childhood has become a basic characteristic of this era. Any society aims at promoting the universal social and economic development of life seeking the welfare of its individuals must give childhood its due care and interest. Taking care of children, those who have been deprived for any reason, of parental care is considered as the most important aspect of human ones since they cannot , individually, and in the absence of their parents or those who take care of them under family care to satisfy their needs. Thus, they become deprived and at the same time liable to deviate and this leads them to their loss turning them to be a source of danger inside their society. Since our society is one of those societies which faced up with strong political shakes that have lead to the death of many of their dear individuals and left many orphans and parentless without breadwinner/family supporter who maintains affluent life. According to the statistics of Ministry of planning and Developmental Cooperation, the number of parentless children in Iraq is about 4.5 millions among them 500.000 homeless in the streets whereas the governmental orphanages/ institutions include only 459 parentless children. Under these disastrous conditions, the life of children in Iraq remains in the stream of wind without any future security. The subject matter of this research (The Orientation of the Orphans/Parentless towards the Governmental Orphanages and Social Stigma) brings up a very serious problem that necessitates and deserves deep study and analysis. The problem of this research is embodied, in the circumstances that the children live in whose family system has broken as a result of: death, social, economic and health isms or as a result of several factors that hinder the function of the family which cause the deprivation or abuse and homelessness of the child. Thus, necessity ,inevitably, gives prominence to the role of society, state(government); as alternative systems and means to implement protective, remedial and constructive programmes. This research aims at seeking to know the reasons that prevent the unable supporters to afford and take care of them in a proper way which help making a good generation away from psychological complexes and deviation and its relationship with social stigma that the supporters of the parentless children are subjected to especially those found in the governmental orphanages which are built for them. It also aims at studying the possibility to educate the members of society and their reactions towards these parentless and their families and not to caste them and to embrace them in big society turning them to be good and productive members in their society. The significance of the study lies in the fact that parentlessness, is a social problem exists at any time and place; and it is aggravated through crises of the societies, especially armed and bloody disputes that cause death of thousands of peoples and the traces that leaves behind. The means of solving them through social work are numerous and varied among the societies of the world according to their creeds, values and ideologies. The process of changing and social development necessitate conducting social and scientific studies that go along with this change throughout the means of work and its convenient programmes with the era in which the society members live in. Thus, the significance of the study comes from being mere a scientific and systematized attempt to achieve such an aim, and diagnosing the problems that impedes the harmony with the process of development and tackling these problems. The present research has a number of hypotheses, the following are the most prominent ones: 1- Deprived of sending the parentless to the governmental orphanages is due to social stigma they are faced up with from the society. 2- Deprived of sending the parentless to the governmental orphanages is due to the fact that the supporters make use of them through working in the market. 3- The parentless supporters' unawareness of the advantages that the parentless/orphan has when he/she join the governmental orphanages and the atmosphere of these orphanages that help making the parentless a good person in the society. 4- Most of the individuals of the society do not send their daughters to the governmental orphanages since they defame them and their social status in the society. The present study enfolds an introduction, the problem, the aims, the significance, and the definition of the related terminologies: social stigma, the parentless/orphan, and the governmental/institutional orphanages and also the clarification of the theory social stigma and tracing, historically, the foundation and the development of governmental orphanages and taking care of the parentless/orphans in Iraq. Whereas in the practical part of the study , a sample of the families that have parentless members has been chosen. Those parentless members suffer from bad living conditions and their supporters are unable to send them to schools. The scientific means are used in this research since it is a descriptive study. The social survey and the questionnaire have been used in collecting the data of the study. The sample has been chosen at random from the poor places which undergo poverty and are unable to support the parentless/orphans whose under their sponsorship. It includes 50 families of the studied community. The present study has come up with a number of conclusions and recommendations related to the studied phenomenon; of them: 1- Social Stigma that the parentless family is subjected to is one reason of those ones behind depriving them from sending the parentless/orphan to the governmental orphanages. 2- The unawareness of the supporters of the advantages that the parentless/orphan has from the governmental orphanages has pushed some of those supporters to deprive their parentless/orphans from sending to the governmental orphanages. The present study recommends the following: 1- Holding special symposiums for the families in the poor places and clarifying the government/state orientations towards taking care of the parentless/orphans and the advantages that can be obtained from sending their parentless/orphans to the governmental orphanages. 2- Presenting lectures via auditory and visual mass media concerning the governmental orphanages and their invaluable role and not to exploit the parentless by their supporters in such indecent works that lead them to deviate. 3- Conducting intensive studies about social stigma and deviation and their effect on the upcoming generations. 4- Upraising religious awareness of the parentless/orphan's custody and limiting the effects of social stigma.

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