“The loving parent overcomes everything in order to make her child stay by her side and smile.”

When a child is born with health-related issues or disabilities, nearly every parent is faced with the same challenges. But usually those challenges are overcome individually. Not everyone is able to overcome the difficulties, and some quickly lose their faith and abandon their child. It often happens that the father leaves the family very soon after his child is born with a disability. What are the reasons for this trend? Is it also due to the societal attitude towards children with disabilities? We started discussions about this issue with women who fought for the happiness of their children, against the maltreatment of society and its pitiful views. Moreover, those mothers support other women to overcome similar challenges.

Narine Manukyan, president of the “Armenian mothers” NGO, is sure that the primary need of parents of disabled children is psychological assistance and counseling. Narine’s child has cerebral palsy and the primary challenge faced by Narine and other families like hers is the public attitude towards disability.

– Abandoning infants born with disabilities is unfortunately an acute problem in our society, and it appears that this tendency is increasing. The roots of the problem go beyond socio-economic hardship to individual and societal ignorance surrounding the issue. The situation could be very different if parents were not left alone immediately after childbirth, and, for example, there were counselors available in all hospitals. Instead, as it is today, the situation is very unfortunate because in the first moments of a child’s life the doctors may remark that the child’s disability is a tragedy, and make an offer to the parents. “You know, you can just leave the child and go.”

– Narine Manukyan has much to say about the situation. “I have been loudly voicing the need for special hospital-based psychologists who can give parents advice in those first minutes of their child’s life. A psychologist can give parents a real and objective explanation of the situation they are facing. If, after counseling, the parents still decide to abandon the child, it would be a much more balanced and informed decision on their part.

– Fortunately, there are hundreds of parents who do not consider abandoning their child because of a health problem or physical disability.

– In addition to the issues discussed, we must agree that compared to parents in other countries, parents in Armenia deal with a number of unaddressed problems that complicate childcare. There are no daycare centers; there are very few quality rehabilitation centers and service providers; and rehab and service centers are often physically inaccessible for those with disabilities. The disability pension is absurdly tiny, and there are no inclusive kindergartens where children could receive appropriate services, allowing their parents to work during the day. The problems are numerous, but even this grim combination of issues does not justify abandoning one’s child.  I am sure that loving parents could undergo any difficulty to keep their child close by and make him or her smile.

– N. Manukyan’s “Armenian mothers” NGO database records 152 children with cerebral palsy. In Yerevan there are 20 beneficiary mothers who raise their children alone, because their husbands left the families behind when they learned about their child’s disability. According to N. Manukyan, the situation is even more complex in rural areas, where the number of fathers who abandon their children and wives is even larger than in Yerevan.

– The problem is due to ignorance. Men often leave their families based on advice from their own parents, who say stereotypical things like, “It’s better to leave and have another healthy child,” or, “This child will never be truly yours.” Meanwhile they do not want to understand that it is not their wife’s fault, or understand what type of problem their child has. Especially in consideration of the family values that we are so nationally proud of, it is not justified for man or woman to leave their child behind and run away from their problems towards an easier life.

– It sounds paradoxical, but there are some cases when it is advisable for the father to leave his family instead of trying to preserve the family by all means. N. Manukyan knows families in which the father blames and curses the mother for having had a child with disabilities or health problems, and has no qualms saying such horrible things in front of the child. This causes psychological trauma for the child, and in such cases it can be better for the father to leave his family.

The “House of Dreams” children’s development center was established as an NGO, to offer psychological counseling to mothers. Mrs. Manukyan says that they have set up psychological counseling for mothers, and that many mothers take advantage of the services. She recalls many successful cases when psychologists could help mothers regain balance and harmony in their lives. In one particularly successful case, a single mother who was receiving services at the center and raising her disabled child on her own for many years, got married and now has a happy family.

Mrs. Manukyan dreams of having a bigger center, which would offer full-day care for children. In turn, this would allow their parents more independence and time to seek employment, which would be especially important because the majority of mothers have a high level of education.

More than half the respondents to UNICEF’s 2013 survey “Attitudes towards children with disabilities in Armenia” find it completely unacceptable that families should place a child with a physical (66 percent) or intellectual (54 percent) disability in an orphanage because of that disability. Another 17 to 18 percent say that it would be somewhat unacceptable to place children with either kind of disability in an orphanage.

Full text in Armenian