Aug 26, 2023
Except that, as a parent, you can't help thinking about how you'd feel if they were your kids, or imagining your own kids in that situation. I myself was surprised at how much deeper these things cut from the perspective of a parent (or even step-parent). I imagine the same could apply to someone who has worked closely with kids in any context. But ultimately, to a person without experience of or contact with children, the idea of starving or murdered children is horrible, but objectively horrible, distantly horrible, not personally painful. It wasn't until I wrote about the incident on Medium that I felt the full horror of the Aberfan disaster, and realised that I was feeling it more keenly because I was a parent myself by then.
