WHO'S YOUR BABY DADDY? THE PLANTATION CYCLE OF FATHERLESS CHILDREN CONTINUES IN ST MAARTEN

Caribbean men need to stop using the plantation as a reference and start taking care of their kids. Caribbean women have to stop getting pregnant by every man who they think "is the one". Never has there been a culture so PROUD to abandon their own children, and not look back. You're supposed to love your kids more than you hate your ex. Still children are used as weapons whenever there's a divorce or separation. Men/boys walk around bragging that they have children with this one and that one, but when they see their little daughters walking home from school, they duck and they hide, because they've been spending their money at the bars, and they have nothing to give their own children, so they are embarrassed enough to hide in the bushes, but not embarrassed enough to get a job and support their kids. We are already in the cycle where the grandparents are raising the children, while mommy and daddy still partying and breeding. According to statistics that were published last year in the papers closed to 90% of the children in the Antilles either have no father listed on their birth certificate or are not a part of their kids life. It takes two to reproduce for a reason. Although a mother can raise a child on her own, its not the ideal situation for the mother or the child. And women have their share of the responsibility. How many girls have you seen skipping and liming all over town, never with a child. You didn't even KNOW she had children, because she moving so single, while her mother is home taking care of her child, she is lyming, and repeating the abandonment cycle. How many Caribbean mothers do you run into, with 5 or 6 children. They are all her kids, but none look like her, or their siblings. 5-6 baby daddies, but you still up and down struggling, hussling, broke with 5-6 reminders of the men who did you wrong. Mothers often turn their resentment on the child, the child eventually will turn on the mother, and the cycle continues. St Maarten men and women are not encouraged to be real mothers and fathers. They are encouraged and rewarded 4 being baby mommas and daddy's not for being actual parents. There are the few who realize the system and the cycle, but most don't see the trap. Mommy has to be Mommy AND Daddy, and Daddy likes to show up every 5 years with presents, if he ever shows up at all. The kids see daddy as Santa and resent Mommy because she has to both love and discipline them. And the cycle continues. The unwed teenage mothers that I left in St Maarten in 1994, who weren't home taking care a their children, are now at home taking care a their grandchildren, as their daughters continue to run the street, trapping or trying to trap a man. As long as we pretend that its okay, and the 'norm' the cycle will continue, and we have to stop asking why St Maarten is going to hell in a handbasket, when we pretty much know the answer.