A Society in Crisis

    A lot of news reports lately have centered around women who have engaged in acts that were not very motherly.  One report spoke of a woman in her twenties who gave birth and dumped her baby in a garbage can because she did not want her mother to find out that she had given birth.  Due to being dumped at such a vulnerable time, the baby will suffer brain damage for the rest of his life.  Also, every single time I turn around I’m hearing about women who murder their children because they are mentally ill, because of a boyfriend, or many other sick reasons that could only seem logical in their demented minds.

    I don’t want to spend a lot of time describing their heinous crimes because they disgust me and they don’t deserve any attention for what they have done.  What I would like to address, however, is the fact that some women have no business having children.  It is not true that all women experience maternal feelings towards their offspring.  As a society, I’m sure that this is what we would like to believe because it is inconceivable to us how a mother could not immediately experience feelings of loving, nurturing, and wanting to protect her child.  Unfortunately, the events that I mentioned prove that this is not the case for every woman.

    I’m not sure what goes on in the mind of a woman who hurts or murders her own children.  This is such a foreign concept to me as I felt such a strong bond and sense of love for my own boys from the first moment that I found out that I was pregnant with them.  There has never been a time when I was so stressed or so overwhelmed that it caused me to have feelings about wanting to hurt my kids.  I cannot even imagine the mental and emotional disconnect that a woman would have to go through for this to even be possible.  Hurting one’s own child goes against every single law that exists in nature.  Mothers are the nurturers and fierce protectors of their babies in every animal or species.

    So what is happening to our society that so many women are hurting and even killing their own kids?  My guess would be the breakdown of the family.  When I use the term “family” I’m not referring to only the traditional nuclear family with a mother, a father and kids.  We live in a society where “family” can mean a variety of combinations with a mother and a father, two mothers, two fathers, grandparents, and even some young people are raising their siblings.  I don’t care about the kind of family combination that exists in the home as long as it is a loving and stable one.  The problem is that too many children live in disfunctional homes where they are not being taught values and where they are exposed to violence and chaos.

    Generally, someone who is raised in a loving home with integrity and values does not grow up and kill their children.  Yes, I know there are those rare cases where sociopaths are homegrown in heartland America despite having been part of a good home their whole lives.  Luckily, these cases are not that common so it is pretty safe to say that most people who come from happy families turn out to be positive and productive members of society.  This leads me to believe that something is going wrong in the upbringing of the vast majority of American homes when young girls are growing up to become women who commit acts of violence against their own babies.

    I’m sure many of you feel somewhat detached from this whole phenomenon because you are wonderful parents who would, like me, never dream of hurting your own children.  That does not mean that we should turn a blind eye to these horrible acts.  They speak volumes about the direction that society is moving in and it is this very society that our children are going to be up against once they venture out into the world as adults.  I, for one, would like to do my part to make this a better society for my children and your children to live in.  None of us have the magical answers as to how to mend or fix these problems but, a big step in the right direction, is to acknowledge that there is a problem and not to pretend that it doesn’t exist just because it doesn’t affect us directly. 

    We need to protect the children in our society at all costs and not just our own children but all children.  They are the future and their value is priceless.  Unfortunately, sometimes this means protecting them from their own parents.  We need to speak up and speak out as we advocate for them and their right to have good lives and to not be exposed to violence or disfunction.  We need to do this ASAP because I do not want to hear anymore new reports or read anymore newspaper articles about women killing their own children.  These reports are a testament to a society in crisis.

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