My question for the month of March is, Did the parents of the child have a choice whether or not they fight? Most people would assume that there was no choice in the matter and if you did have a child there would be no way you would give your child away. But you would be surprised by the circumstances some families have been in and what the outcome has been.
If you were in a dangerous situation where you could either give your child up to war or sacrifice all of your family’s lives what would you choose? Families that do not give up their child when prompted to are tortured severely or sometimes even killed (“Coercion and Intimidation of Child Soldiers to Participate in Violence”). In some cases, the rebels do not just take the children, they take the whole family. Some families prefer this because everyone they care about will be together and they know that everyone is ok: “Some minors are in family units fighting alongside one another” (Mutter). Some of you might be thinking, why choose children why not take the parents because they are stronger? They took the children because they were unaware of the dangers, did not need pay and did not need as much food.
In most situations, the parents do not get to choose whether or not their child or children is put into war. Most children that are taken away from their families to fight in battle are either abducted or beaten to join (Maslen). Some children choose for themselves to be child soldiers. You may be wondering why a child would want to put themselves in that type of situation where they are beaten and starved, but in some cases it was a better situation than what they were living in before. In this type of position, the children choose to be child soldiers because they are “alone, orphaned, frightened, bored and frustrated, [and] they will often finally choose to fight” (“Children as Soldiers”). Other reason children to choose to fight is because they grow up around violence, poverty, starvation and family issues (“Child Soldiers”). Even though, some parents are given a choice, they really do not have one because it is either their child or their whole family.
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