Rights vs Responsibilities ?

In every walk of life people continually talk about their rights, we have a right to this and a right to that.

In BGSG work the phrase, that for those who know me, that I have a real difficulty with is “Grandparents Rights,” I have written about it many times, but as I had a phone call this week from an organisation who wanted to promote our work on Grandparents Rights, it is a good time to revisit it.

Firstly what on earth does that actually mean?

Some grandparents  feel that they have a right to see their grandchildren, but it is not as simple as that. There are so many different factors that have led to this situation, some factors known others not.

I would urge everyone to put themselves in the shoes of the children, they are in an impossible,confusing and difficult time. Somewhere along the line their world has been blown apart, the family members they love are missing in their lives. Possibly, they are being told things about that loved person that they don’t understand, the person that is being portrayed in a completely different way to the person they remember, but they are children, children who should never have to choose or be expected to be part of an adult conflict.

They still love them all.

In my view you can’t have rights without responsibility, responsibility as a parent, responsibility as a spouse, responsibility as a grandparent and all family members, need to take on responsibility. The responsibility to put the children first.

Plus for me, and remember my blogs are my own personal thoughts, not everyone will agree, but we as a society are facing family breakdown at catastrophic proportions, if we take the case of children being kept apart from a parent as a result of a separation or divorce, how can we be talking about the rights of grandparents when we have hundreds and thousands of non resident parents who are being prevented from seeing their own children, just because the resident parent has made that bad choice and there is rarely if ever a legal consequence even though a court order is breached.

It doesn’t matter which ever way you look at this, the people who have no voice are the children and yet it is them who are suffering the most, and are the people whose rights are not being upheld.

Our responsibility is to put the children first.

Jane

 

 

 

About Jane

Jane setup Bristol Grandparent Support Group in 2007 after a string of incidents led to the loss of contact with her Grand Daughter.

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