Masten – interrelated protective systems

Well protective systems can, you know are interrelated and go across many levels of human life, so a child is protected by a family and a family, families in the community are protected by many other systems in the community that provide crisis help or fire and rescue and help in a disaster you know many times you can see how people come in a try to help at a community level when there’s been a threat to many families all at the same time. So there are many levels of protective systems and children interact with many different systems in their everyday life, so it’s important for them to have protections in the family, but there are also protections at school, protections in their friendships with other children, in their connections to neighbours and community resources, and there even protections at the level of society that help children and families through policies that a nation may have to help, through culture, cultural traditions and religions that have ways of providing support both to individuals and to families and communities in times of trouble. And you realize how interconnected all these systems are when you have a major disaster that disrupts them all at the same time, then you realize it takes a long time to recover when all systems are harmed at the same time, or break down at the same time.  

I think that cultures as well as religions have developed many specifics ways of helping individuals and families through rituals and traditions that provide support in times of transition or in times of trouble. In human life, people have happy transitions like marriage and birth and they also have very serious, difficult transitions such as loss of a spouse, loss of a child, and that kind of thing and cultures can provide a lot of support in a very concrete way with ceremonies and bringing over food and keeping you company, but also cultures and religions provide the solace of meditation and prayer and relationships with spiritual figures, these are all forms of protective practices that have been sustained over generations, because they work to help people, and they’re a very important part of the protective systems for families and individuals in communities.