Family issues

Family issues in New Zealand are emphasised through the texts Conrad Cooper’s last stand by Leonie Agnew, boy by Taika Waititi, Wild pork and Watercress by Barry crump, and Cow-pats by Frank Sargeson. How young New Zealand boys handle their family issues and the lack of role models in the boys’ live which have reflected the ideas of family issues in New Zealand and children’ perspective on family issues through the texts.

In the short story Cow-pats, this show a perspective and thinking of young boy living in ordinary poor family during the depression years. As the young boy said ‘younger children had to do a fair bit of work on the farm, but of course we didn’t know any other sort of life.’, this means he didn’t get a chance to do anything else as the other kids do but he had to work at his farm to help his family. Poor family issue allow the children to get less experience in life as they had to work since they were young while the other can go to school, go to university and get a better job.  

In the book Conrad Cooper’s last stand is about a New Zealand boy protest about the maori forest god, Tane. After the teacher told the class about Tane, Maori god, Conrad would like Tane to do him a favour but before he asked for an assistance, he needs to find out if Tane is existed. Jasper, Cooper’s friend, he came up with the idea of protesting but it wasn’t as easy as Cooper has to keep it as a secret and can’t let Gaz, his father in Law, knows about going to those Maori on the hill to find if Tane really existed so he can ask to solve his family problem. when  Cooper has a problem, he couldn’t talk to his family because he doesn’t want to annoy Gaz, so he decided to do the protest without telling his parents. Things get worse when Gaz know something about his protesting at maori hill, he has nobody to consult about this, even his family. We could see that children who has a family issues mostly decided to not tell their family about their problems and afraid to talk to their parents, instead they decided to ask their friends and teachers for solutions. They might make a wrong decision as they are likely to ask their friends more than their teachers and their friends couldn’t give them a right resolution which can lead them to the wrong way as in Conrad case.

Similarly, in Boy movie, Boy, or his real name is Alamein same as his father, who has a dream of being rich and going to the city like his father, he grew up with his grandmother, Nan (Alamein’s mother) with his little brother, Rocky. Once he met his father, he was different from Boy’s expectation. He came back to Waihau bay to find his lost money, at first, he seems to come back to live with her again, in fact, he returned to find his lost money. In this movie shows that children imitate habits from their parents as boy wants to be like his father and tried to imitate gestures of his father. In addition, Alamein isn’t a good role model for boy so he has a false belief such as the scene where boy picked up used cigarette Alamein left in the car because he tried to be like his father.

In wild pork and watercress, Ricky Baker, young overweight New Zealand boy who had to  live with his Aunt Bella and uncle Hec. After Aunt Bella died, Social welfare threatens to put Ricky into care but Ricky and his uncle fled into Ureweras, adventure began. Before that Ricky was in trouble for many times because he didn’t live with parents and this are likely to be the reason why he was always causing trouble, for attention. He was misbehaving before he moved to Aunt Bella and uncle Heck, this is because he didn’t get and never feel love from his parents, similarly with Cooper, he didn’t have someone to talk about his problems, so he would come up with wrong solutions which lead him to the worst situation. This shows that children whose parents divorced or had a family issue are tending to misbehave than the other children who lives in normal family.

In the texts Conrad Cooper’s last stand, boy, Wild pork and Watercress, and Cow-pats we learn that family issues can affect the thoughts, opinions and expressions of children as they all learn and imitate habits from their parents as children are often influenced by their role models. Most of the family issues are caused by economics conditions, social value and environment, people don’t have education and not ready to build a family and social media didn’t present family issue and its solutions enough  to break the ignorance. Government should educate people more and fix working law to reduce the stresses people from working. Parents are also need to spend more time together and share their problems and help each other finding solutions.