Tomorrow’s People Matters: Evidence for Action in Oman

Abstract

William Wordsworth’s maxim: child is father to the man candidly captures the view that all what entails as an adult owes its origin to the formative years. Recent epidemiological surveys indicate that adverse childhood experiences tend to have direct impact on cognitive, emotional and behavioral (CEB) development. This, in turn, defines the process of physical development and quality of life. Such understanding has heralded the scientific study of CEB development, which has brought a body of knowledge that is employed to prevent, treat and arrest CEB development. In modern parlances, such undertakings have been an integral part of the multidisciplinary field that goes under the umbrella of child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). Oman has witnessed increased standards of living and the integral of such a qualitative leap of social changes is the emergence of ‘baby boom’ and the challenges this entails in safeguarding the welfare of tomorrow’s people. 1 The increased number of youngsters with CEB disorders appears to coincide with the social changes and urbanization that the country has witnessed in the past decades. Previous agent of socialization in Oman used to lie in the realm of the extended family, but now the extended family is being supplanted with a nuclear family that often requires juggling between career and family life. According to Al-Barwani and Albeelyb, 2 there is a public concern for ‘weakening of family ties’ in the country as children are left on their own due to increased activity of women outside the house and thereby setting the background for ‘proximal abandonment’. The good cause of woman empowerment has opened the door for Omani women to join the workforce but children are left to be nurtured by non-family members with all the social consequences this may entail.