Farewell Circles and the Management of Risk

I had a bit of a sleepless night the other night thinking about the images I had seen of the Farewell Circle at Camp Wenonah. These were emotional and touching images of campers and staff who had clearly developed strong friendships over the Summer, saying goodbye to each other. Images of perfectly healthy, natural and human responses.



And yet I couldn't help but feel that the Farewell Circle would be an unlikely part of programs in Australia, or at the very least it would not involve the staff, because one of the ways we have responded to abuse of young people in Australia (and in many other places I am sure) has been to make it socially unacceptable for adults, particularly males, to hug children. The intention of this is, of course, to protect our children and this is a sensible and reasonable thing for a society to do. But I wonder if the solution causes other problems for young people.



I believe there are similar dynamics at play in other areas of society and not just in Australia of course. In an attempt to protect our children against injury we increasingly focus on the elimination of risk. Maybe, despite the evidence about the dangers of a sedentary lifestyle, this leads us to prefer our children watch television or play computer games in the lounge room where we can keep them 'safe' rather than be out riding bikes or climbing trees in what we perceive to be the dangerous outdoors.



But at what cost to their healthy development into adulthood, to their levels of resilience and to their long term physical and mental health?



Next time you see an advertisement for household disinfectant look closely at what they are really saying - and they are mostly not being too subtle about it either - germs are bad, if you really love your family then you will use our product in copiuos quantities to kill all the germs in your house.



But apart from this being a fruitless exercise, what impact is this having on our immune systems? On the environment? Is it coincidental that the more sterile our lives become the more we see allergies emerge?



I don't think there are simplistic answers to any of these questions. I am not advocating that we all just start hugging each other again, or that we let our kids run wild, or that we stop cleaning our houses. I believe it was simplistic solutions that got us into this mess. I think it went something like this:

1. Our children are at risk.

2. Hands up all those people who don't want to protect our kids.

3. Good, so everyone (except bad people who don't care about our kids) wants us to take all measures to protect kids.



I don't have the answers but I am troubled by many of the 'solutions' we have now and I think we need to keep examining these things in an effort to come up with better ways. I am convinced that these are not simple problems with simple answers. If they were then they would have been solved a long time ago and clearly they have not been. Logically this must mean they are in fact, like most issues, complex and nuanced - shades of grey rather than black and white.

But I am confident that if we continue to talk together and to look for better solutions then we will eventually find them.