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Greece's financial crisis has made some families so desperate they are giving up the most precious thing of all - their children.
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One morning a few weeks before Christmas a kindergarten teacher in Athens found a note about one of her four-year-old pupils.5.39.217.76! y: k* `" ?" @ N6 e: k+ F; S
"I will not be coming to pick up Anna today because I cannot afford to look after her," it read. "Please take good care of her. Sorry. Her mother."公仔箱論壇# n& N, ~) w2 g) H3 O: U L. ~
In the last two months Father Antonios, a young Orthodox priest who runs a youth centre for the city's poor, has found four children on his doorstep - including a baby just days old. Another charity was approached by a couple whose twin babies were in hospital being treated for malnutrition, because the mother herself was malnourished and unable to breastfeed. Cases like this are shocking a country where family ties are strong, and failure to look after children is socially unacceptable - they feel to Greeks like stories from the Third World, rather than their own capital city.
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; w( x& N& v8 ~# }/ x0 vStefanos Alevizos - Greek psychologist
5 T3 {+ K5 A, T+ E2 ? Parents who are not able to provide for their child will feel despair, loneliness and anger. They will carry an enormous weight of cultural stigma and shame." v8 g, N2 y, q; R
Children absorb the emotions of their parents, so the child will internalise all the feelings of their parent - particularly guilt. Often they feel they are to blame.5.39.217.76; O2 U7 B4 f) I/ ^1 o
Children taken into care may avoid forming a bond with their carers because they are afraid it would be a betrayal of their parent, and might mean their mother or father will not return for them.2 M5 G2 m5 j- l
When they get older, they are likely to have problems with trust and that will manifest itself in difficulties with relationships. |