When looking at how individuals can help one another in a variety of different instances, it is possible to see the reasons from which individuals attempt to give aid because of an innate desire to help another person. For many people this desire is based in the same need to nurture and give help to children and those individuals who cannot take care of themselves effectively and efficiently. However, it is also far easier than many people realize to cross a line into becoming a detrimental force on the life of the individual who is receiving the aid because they are no longer required to come up with solutions on their own. This thin line divides the idea of empowerment and enabling and through an analysis of the two perspectives and how it can impact the individual it is possible to see how to be helpful without being detrimental to the needs of the person.
The idea of empowerment is one where individuals attempt to allow for their aid to give a sense of ability to others. “The desire to help others, especially those who mean the most to us, is one of the noblest of human instincts” (Khalegi, 2012). Empowerment is not simply be the action of one individual toward another, however, because the same process can be used on a much larger scale. Children are often the ones in which people feel the greatest need to empower and protect because they are the most in need in terms of inability to protect themselves. When looking at the needs of children in groups such as in a school setting, it is possible to give a sense of empowerment to a large number of individual children for the greater good. This is a form of community empowerment with the idea that the community is a group of people with similar characteristics regardless of age, race, gender, etc. “Community empowerment refers to the process of enabling communities to increase control over their lives. “Communities” are groups of people that may or may not be spatially connected, but who share common interests, concerns or identities” (World Health Organization, 2015). In this light, empowerment is a positive force across the board however when certain actions are taken that go too far in terms of the amount of a given to individuals or communities it is possible to see the way in which empowerment can then become a form of enabling those who are in need.
As previously explained, enabling and empowering are divided by a fine line that is far simpler to cross than many people realize. While some might argue that empowering is a form of bolstering the fortitude of an individual, enabling often has similar effect but has a detrimental result in the long run. “In one sense, “enabling” has the same meaning as “empowering.” It means lending a hand to help people accomplish things they could not do by themselves. More recently, however, it has developed the specialized meaning of offering help that perpetuates rather than solves a problem” (Khalegi, 2012). Although many people think of enabling as an action in regard to negative interests such as drug and alcohol use, it goes much further when looking at the end up the details of this kind of action. Empowerment is intended to reinforce the abilities of an individual or group while enabling it simply allows them to get the desired results from a specific set of action without actually having the personal strength to take the actions that will best serve their unique needs. One issue is that when an individual enables be the negative behavior than others, they themselves are also being detrimental to their own lives as they are putting their own position in jeopardy in terms of being a self-sufficient adult. “Those who habitually enable dysfunctional behavior are often referred to as co-dependent. It’s a telling word, because an enabler’s self-esteem is often dependent on his or her ability and willingness to “help” in inappropriate ways” (Khalegi, 2012). These individuals are having an impact on the lives of another person or group by enabling them to commit actions that otherwise might be harmful to their life. This, as a result, means that the enabler has just as much a problem dealing with the real world situations and scenarios that need to be overcome as the one that is being enabled through their actions.
One piece of information that is important remember is that individuals helping friends and family are not the only one who are guilty of enabling others or in the right by trying to empower them. When looking at the subject of children once again and the rights they have to growth and education, the goal of teachers and administrators is to provide away for students to develop with the best possible mental facilities available to them. However, at times teachers and administrators overlook their setbacks in terms of empowerment and actually end up in labeling negative behaviors through their own misunderstanding of how to deal with the idea of empowerment. “Faculty frequently enable students rather than empower them in both clinical and classroom settings” and in one article “collegiality, communication, accountability, and autonomy are components of a model used to compare empowering versus enabling in the academic setting” (Espeland & Shanta, 2001). Even though the components that were utilized in this study seem to be perfectly harmless, they can lead to an issue of enabling students because the social mores that are created lead to additionally detrimental situations. Group empowerment is a good concept understand when analyzing the role of faculty and teachers in the general world of academia but at the same time it is also important for these faculty members as well as students and parents to understand that they cannot be overly helpful lest they cross the line to being enablers themselves.
In the end, empowering children and those in need is a virtuous action that can allow for individuals to grow and change in a way that will bolster the positive aspects of the reinforcement process. However, even though some individuals might want to focus on the ways in which empowering can alleviate suffering and give a sense of self efficacy to the individual, it is also important to remember that if these actions are not done in a way that only leads to positive results then they also then are enabling negative behaviors to persist. Enabling does not simply refer to the negative actions that people take with regard to self destructive courses of action such as alcohol and drug use and abuse, but instead it can also lead to those actions which simply are detrimental to their ability to live as adults in general. In the end, enabling empowering or both two sides of a single sword and this fine line must be walked with care in order to get the best possible results to everyone involved in the process.
References
Espeland, K., Shanta, L. (2001). Empowering versus enabling in academia. Journal of Nursing Education. 40(8).
Khaleghi, K. (2012). Are You Empowering or Enabling?. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-anatomy-addiction/201207/are-you-empowering-or-enabling.
World Health Organization. (2015). Community Empowerment. http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/7gchp/track1/en/.
Leipsic 