Some women don’t deserve to call themselves mothers. I’m usually not this harsh but I am greatly disturbed by two sad incidents in the news recently. You may have heard about them, if not, let me fill you in.
A 31-year-old Davenport, Iowa woman allegedly tried to trade her 4-year-old son to pay off a $200 debt on a wedding dress. She faces up to 10 years in prison for this class C felony (she’s charged with one count of purchase or sale of an individual).
According to reports, on at least two separate occasions she offered her son as collateral for the payment on the dress. Someone tipped off the Department of Human Services and they contacted the police. She also has a 10-year-old son and at the time this happened, the kids had already been removed from the home. Sadly, according to a worker from the Iowa Department of Human Services, this case, although shocking to most of us, is not unheard of.
In another case, a Pennsylvania woman hurled her 4-week-old son at the child’s father after she had an argument with him. She claimed she did not mean to do it and that she didn’t realize what she was doing until it was too late. The 27-year-old told police she had been drinking when she and the baby’s father started arguing. She claims she “snapped” and started throwing things at the 20-year-old father and didn’t realize that she had picked up her son. The baby was held by his legs and swung at the father.
She faces charges of aggravated assault, simple assault and reckless endangerment. The baby suffered a fractured skull and was bleeding from the brain after the incident. She has four other children, one fathered by the man she struck. The father had the nerve to say that people were making a big deal out of it because she did not mean to do it. I’m sorry but it is a big deal. You should never get so drunk to the point that you don’t realize you are using your child as a bat. And what about the father? Even if she didn’t realize it, didn’t he see the baby being hurled at him? Then again this obviously was a violent relationship. The father reportedly punched the mother in the eye after she hit him with their son. After the incident, the remaining children were taken from the home and place in temporary custody with their maternal grandparents.
These two incidents sicken me. What’s sad is they aren’t isolated cases. Many more cases of abuse are being played out in cities nationwide. It’s the bizarre ones like these that get media attention but many more are unheard of because they are going unreported. I’ll return to what I said at the being of this blog, some women don’t deserve to call themselves women. Giving birth does not make you a mother, just like sitting in a garage does not make you a car.
See also:
Parental Alienation Syndrome Part I
Part II
Part III