Problem is there are people in New Zealand who, despite having insufficient ability/resources to raise children, they go ahead and procreate anyway.

Often, they don’t stop at one or two either, sometimes they just keep on making babies and then, as if that’s not enough, then they get a big dog, too.

They can barely look after themselves, yet they somehow see fit to propagate a continually expanding, increasingly demanding, family.

I don’t have children. I’m sure I could have had, if I had chosen it, but I didn’t. I could appreciate that, for the past twenty-or-so years, I was not in a viable position to raise children. Therefore, I do not have any children, or a big dog.

The follow-on problem with unfit parents raising their big families, is that the new generation brought into this unfit situation are more likely to make the same mistakes as their parents, later in their lives, thus repeating the cycle.

That right there, that is a hypothetical example of how an area (of New Zealand) becomes impoverished.

Then once that district has become impoverished, with all its unfit parents, its neglected children, and its big dogs, because of this repeating cycle, this (hypothetical) area is destined to remain, or become increasingly, impoverished.

These neglected children, raised by their unfit parents, they will likely seek firmer authority, they will likely find it amid some form of gang culture, they will likely be turned to illicit drug-taking and other crimes, and their lives will be effectively over.

Why would anyone bring children into a family that is unfit to take care of them?

You’re basically killing them before they even get started.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Betty Kilwell

Photography by Arn Fitter