One of my hot-button topics

[velvetpage]

"Parents sometimes feel so overwhelmed at the stygma and discrimination faced by their disabled children, they just can't cope."

That's a direct quote from my local newspaper, which ran a story today about an elderly couple in China who have adopted a total of 42 abandoned children in the last 20 years. It is offered as a reason why people would abandon their children. In the same section is a story about a newborn baby boy, abandoned in a gully a five-minute walk from an upscale suburban neighbourhood in a town a half-hour's drive from here. He'd been dead about a week when a woman and her dog found his body.

Now, I have some sympathy for the parents in this situation, especially if the baby is a newborn and the mother is suffering post-partum depression. I know how overwhelming it can be, even when the baby is healthy and wanted.

But I've seen statements like this in all kinds of situations, given as reasons - excuses? - for just about any form of abandonment or abuse. I've even seen this as a reason why Canadian parents gave up a disabled child for adoption.

It never fails to make my blood boil. I might be able to admit that putting the child up for adoption is better than keeping him if you feel that way. I might be able to accept that in the end, it's your decision. But I will always wonder why on earth you had kids, if you didn't have enough love to be with them when they most needed you.

I will never be able to understand how someone could abandon their child.

Comments

a shame

[bamusical.livejournal.com]

when so many people who want children can't have them and those who can throw them away. I would happily take a baby that someone did not want. I have the heart and mind and home for adoption.

Go back to where you mention post-partum depression.

[lousy-timing.livejournal.com]

Start there, and rethink things from the standpoint of mental illness. You aren't supposed to understand it, because it's not rational. These things you're reading aren't excuses, they are the beginnings of explanations as to what happens in the minds of someone with an illness.

It's not about whether they love the child or should have had them in the first place. It's about what their expectations were when they had a child and how things in their minds went wrong when what they got didn't match what they'd been sold and they didn't have the coping skills, support systems, or genetics to deal with that.

One can easily not understand how or why someone could do something without having stood on the brink and looked at the abyss with a zoom lens. I have, and I can tell you that once, I said what you did, and now, I can see where the breaks in the mind occur. If you never get that close, consider yourself incredibly lucky. If you do, remember that black and white mix and make grey, and that is where most of what we do not understand lives.

Re: Go back to where you mention post-partum depression.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

My head agrees with you, and there are times when my reaction would not be as completely negative as it was today. I know all that, really I do. Like I said, I have some sympathy for the parents because there was at least one moment in my life when I looked into the abyss. But the combination of those two stories in the newspaper hit me hard, and everything my head knew couldn't get through to my heart - at least, not today.

So I might be able to see why it would happen, and pity, and forgive - but understand, heart and soul? That I can't quite do.

[shavastak.livejournal.com]

This is why you are trying to have another child, and I am still on birth control. You're ready, and I'm not. I don't think I'd abandon a child if I had one, but I know I'm not ready.

We're lucky, though; we have three advantages over other people.
1) we know whether we're ready or not.
2) we know how to prevent unwanted pregnancy.
3) we have easy access to contraception.

Every time I find someone who is pro-life, I tell them "I am pro-choice, but no one *WANTS* to have an abortion. We should all focus our efforts on decreasing the probability that someone who isn't ready for a child, or capable of caring for one, ends up pregnant or getting someone pregnant." Birth control, people. Contraception & education. I can only hope that the religious right will get off this abstinence-only kick and start realizing that we need to tell people the whole story, give them all the options, and help them realize that they need to avoid having kids until they are ready. Making birth control pills and condoms cheap and common will help too.

[velvetpage.livejournal.com]

I'm personally pro-life; that is, no matter what accident or bad thing happened to me, I could never, ever have an abortion. But politically, I'm pro-choice, because I understand that there are times when it is the lesser of two evils, and I'm not inside any other woman's headspace to be able to make that decision for her. There needs to be a choice, and I hate it, but I accept it.

It's the closest I can come on this.

I agree with you about abstinence-only education; it simply doesn't work, and it doesn't provide young people with the knowledge they need to take charge of their reproduction. Thank God that debate is pretty much over in Canada - kids get full sex ed, unless their parents opt out of it, which is quite rare.