With Mothers' Day approaching, it pains me to see so many BAD mothers

[SoCalDem]

I guess we have glamorized mothers over the years, and no one ever wants to BE a bad mother, but so many seem to be "achieving" that status...Can it be an accident?

The sad thing here is that the bad mother may pay with a few months in jail or a longer sentence...she may pay in later years when her surviving children don't write, call, or visit...but the ones who REALLY pay are the children she "loses" along the way.

Nature (survival of the fittest) has determined that mothers are responsible for the care of their young. It may be sexist, but for a few exceptions it's just a fact. Even reptiles who do not rear their young, have motherly duties beyond mating and laying eggs. The reptile mother who lays her eggs in the wrong spot will not have any young survive. Mammalian moms have it more difficult... they must also teach their young, in addition to feeding and protecting them.

It seems to me that the animals, as under assault as they are these days, seem to be doing a better job that some human moms.

We see the "mother" in the MJ case, who apparently pimped her kid (who had cancer) to MJ. Now even if one believes that he is not a pedophile, is it really a good idea to let a man in his 40's (famous or not) sleep with your adolescent son? Does taking money and gifts make it ok?

We see the mother who was "absent" from her daughter's life, so she lived with her Dad and his parents. Jessica was apparently well cared for (for 9 years) and I am sure her dad and grandparents loved her, but the fact remains.... a predator living practically next door killed her. I am not saying that her mother being there could have necessarily prevented it, but mothers are important to a girl that age, and perhaps having mother in her life could have "outed" this creepy guy before he had a chance to grab her.

Now another young girl is killed in Florida, and it looks like it's a guy her mother "dated". Mothers who choose companionship over their children's safety, are jeopardizing their lives for a few meals out, some flowers, a romp in the hay.

Single moms are sometimes the best moms in the world, BECAUSE they know that they are IT, as far as protecting their kids. There is no Dad to jump in and help. Single moms I have known do not even let their kids MEET their "boyfriend" until they are SURE of what kind of a person he is , and he has been "vetted".

Lots of predators LOOK for the needy woman with a child. They flatter the woman, but deep down it's their KID that they want. Somewhere along the line those mothers have turned their "radar" off, in exchange for some personal attention.

We are going to lose a lot more children if things don't change. Putting GPS monitors on every predator we know of will not keep chldren from being killed. It will only help us find the perpetrator after the fact. And "tagging" predators will not address a bigger problem.. the Dad, step-dad, boyfriend, scout leader, pillar of society, the minister, the school teacher, the coach...These are predators who sneak under the radar. They may not kill the child, but they do kill their souls, and self esteem.and worst of all. they steal their childhoods. That's something that can never be regained

A better solution might be to really help mothers..especially single moms. Lots of girls are growing up (and have been for a long time) without guidance from THEIR moms, so when they have children, they just wing it.

A few things could help a LOT:

Decent affordable day care (older children need looking after too)

Housing that is not in the WORST areas (where scuzzy low-lifes congregate)

Education so that moms do not have to work the lowest paid jobs, and several of them , just to get by...leaving no time with their children


No one looks into the eyes of their newborn and thinks that they will be a bad mom. They see those little eyes looking at them and imagine all the wonderful things in store for that baby, but somewhere along the line, a lot of those babies are being lost..

This is a stain on our society...that we cannot seem to protect our young...and we don't seem to be making much headway.

Some people march around with signs to make sure every baby is born, but how many are marching with signs, insisting that mothers get help to raise those babies??

[Warpy]

1. Look at the society as a whole

and what it gives to mothers and their children.

Yeah right, lip service. Motherhood is still slave labor, and we still don't bother to prepare women for the reality of it with child care classes during pregnancy along with those Lamaze classes or with continuing parenting classes for the long term. Most mothers come to the job completely unprepared. They are ALL doing the best they can with what they brought to the job, and it isn't much.

However, exemplary mothers and crackheads who abandon toddlers for a week at a time get exactly the same reward for the job. Nothing.

It's obvious that the society has determined the work of maternal caregivers to be utterly worthless.

No wonder some of them are bad at it. You get back what you're willing to invest.

[smirkymonkey]

2. You are right, it is the devalued status of motherhood in this

society that contributes to this type of thing. Women learn that being a mother isn't valued or important, but having a man IS! It's that "Anyone can be a mother, but I'm nothing without a man" credo that is encouraged so much in this society.

I have acquaintances who are like that - their self esteem lies primarily in thier ability to attract and keep a man. Needless to say, thier choices are famously bad. Many of them will take anyone who pays attention to them, and thier children suffer for it.

Ultimately, this entire country is going to suffer for it as well.

[ultraist]

60. Good points!

While I agree that motherhood is undervalued, I feel the real problem is that CHILDREN are undervalued. Our society treats our children as 2/3 of a person. We do not provide the care we should, from food to medical treatment, or day to day care.

Additionally, parents who do abuse their children are rarely charged criminally.

IF parents knew they would be criminally charged, they would be more apt to seek out support services (and we need more).

We didn't have a Child Protective Services until the seventies, we have a loooong way to go promoting children's rights.

The test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members"
Pearl Buck. "My Several Worlds" 1954

"It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life--the sick, the needy and the handicapped." Hubert H Humphrey

[TahitiNut]

3. Happy Mother's Day, Susan Smith!

:evilgrin:

[SoCalDem]

5. Don't forget Andrea Yeates ??

:(

[BlueIris]

8. Kick some blame on sperm donor, Rusty Yates, too, would you?

And if we're all still here come June, which I'm starting to doubt more and more, I better see a thread on the BAD FUCKING FATHERS IN THIS COUNTRY around these parts. I'll be so disappointed if I have to start it myself.

[SoCalDem]

13. Randy shoulders MOST of the blame in that case

but Andrea was the perpetrator, so she does the time. I guess she chose poorly when she selected her "mate".. Maybe we can look back to HER raising:(..that she thought so little of herself..she became a slave to her womb.

[TahitiNut]

27. Of course he does.

After all, all abused and mistreated wives murder their children ... and it's always the husband's fault, right?

[GreenArrow]

21. to be perfectly fair

how about a thread on BAD PARENTS?

[TahitiNut]

26. Gee ... why aren't the wives of male murderers blamed too?

Or their mothers??? No, that wouldn't be fair, would it? Naww. :eyes:

I think there's more than enough blame to go around. Our prisons are testimony to conditions that we all share the blame for.

[bloom]

35. Actually the OP

was mostly blaming mothers for the crimes they allowed MEN to do.

[TahitiNut]

40. Funny, I didn't read it that way. I've now reread it ...

... and I still don't read it that way. I see the post as ascribing to mothers (and parents in general) a failure to safeguard their children - sometimes resulting in avoidable harm befalling those children.

Our behavior always has consequences, whether foreseen or not. We are responsible for our behavior - and the foreseen (often intentional) consequences. Some of our behavior is rightfully measured against a higher standard, called "duty." Parenting is a duty. The standard applied to duty is called "due diligence." Most civil contracts hold us to such standards. That parents are less and less often held to such standards might be the most appropriate focus of a relevant discussion. Mythical gender differences (including gender-bashing) most certainly are not.

[bloom]

63. The post is about mothers

And even talks about holding mothers to a higher standard.

Maybe you should read it again.

[ikojo]

4. My mom was a single mom following her divorce

She had seven kids to take care of. Following the divorce she had the youth I guess that she felt she missed out on the first time around. She allowed men and women of less than stellar reputations to come to our house every weekend to party and play cards. I LOATHED the weekends and the men she chose as boyfriends. One was a big guy who liked to "wrestle" and one time while he was on top of me (I was seven or eight) my nose began to bleed and I started crying. He slapped me upside my head and told me not to be such a baby.

I believed then as I do now that my mom put her sexual satisfaction and sexual needs before the interests of her children. I know my mom should not have been a mother but she ended up that way. She'd have made a better single non childed person than she did a single mother.

Even if she had had thousands of government dollars thrown her way (we already qualified for free school lunch and she financed her post divorce house through HUD) she still would have made poor choices when it came to boyfriends. Some women are very weak when it comes to men and unfortunately it is the children who suffer. No amount of government money can change that. The primary difference is that wealthy people can send their kids to boarding schools to get them out of their hair.

[SoCalDem]

6. Education and even counselling is as inportant as money

Some of these women are trapped, and don't know they have choices..I am so sorry for what happened to you as a child.. I have seen it many times..

My own mother was not a protective mother, and I struggled mightily to not smother my kids with over-protection because of it. I wanted girls, and got 3 boys.. Maybe Mother Nature knew best.. I might have "hovered" if I had had girls (knowing what happened to me as a child)....

[shanti]

42. commiserating with you, socaldem!

i wanted all girls myself, and ended up with four boys. often, nature does know best.

[SoCalDem]

43. Katherine, Diane & Susan were never born.. But I did get

Scott, Michael & Steven :)

Those girls would have probably been whiny brats anyway :evilgrin:

[bertha katzenengel]

7. "Lots of predators LOOK for the needy woman with a child" -- that's a fact

It was so with my mother. My stepfather did this, and got me and my sisters. Then after my mother died, he did it with another woman, and got her children. And he got the daughter of his business partner. And the daughters of my mother's best friend.

I believe my sisters and I turned out well because our mother died young. We've destroyed many of the patterns we were destined to repeat, and I doubt that we could've done that if her influence over our lives continued. (We were 14, 13, and 11 when she died.)

[bleedingheart]

47. Bingo!

The real cunning jerks look for women who want and need stability.

They don't pick on the women who can defend themselves or who have any kind of opinion. They seek out the ones who have been rejected by family...those that will have no one to counsel when times are tough or when they suspect the jerk is doing something to the kids.

[Mnemosyne]

9. Good point on the MJ case, I've said it all along also,

the parents should be held just as responsible. They sold their children. I do have a problem with the housing statement you made however.

There are many pedophiles that are in the best communities, living in nice homes,and in the churches. There was one here that was always a leader of youth groups in every church he joined. Finally he was caught. The church told him to get counseling and leave the kids alone, rather than having him arrested. He just went to another church. Now he is in Nebraska doing the same thing there.
Last year he was caught again, and managed to get the charges reduced and spent weekends in jail for a couple months. He is a pillar of the community and apparently holds social events for the agricultural area at his farm.

The worst of it is he doesn't think he is doing anything wrong!!! This pervert was my neighbor growing up and he was molesting kids from age 16 or 17 on, he is now 49 or 50. People that don't know about him here, that are wealthy, still consider him a great person and salt of the earth. He was raised in a nice home with nice parents.

Being poor doesn't produce perverts. Scuzzy low lifes are not necessarily perverts. They are just scuzzy.

[SoCalDem]

11. You are right.. geography does not matter in all cases, but if you look

at poor single moms, their children are in every kind of danger ..lots of time because of where they live.. They cannot play outside, they are left alone (because of day care costs), they live in the cheapest apartments that can be found (who ELSE lives there)..

Child-predation cuts across all social strata, but I think there is a concentration in areas where desperate people are..partly because the predators feel like those children are not as "valued", and they can "get away with it"

[Mnemosyne]

15. Agreed, but those that are more comfortable financially

tend to be less vigilant and it may place their children in more danger from the perverts. Just my opinion. Good post and great to get people thinking!!! Thanks SoCalDem!

[SoCalDem]

17. The "status" of some leads them to believe that their kids are "safe"

but no child is safe, unless they are under watchful eyes, and good radar..

I think that lots of middle class and "upper-crusties" think .."not in MY neighborhood, household, school, church" .. They may be inclined to think that their place and income protects their kids, but all are vulnerable if they are not TAUGHT and WATCHED...and even then it can happen..

It's a cruel world, and predation is a fact..in all locales..

[Mnemosyne]

28. How true, there are no boundaries.

I heard someone say once "My kid is safe with "him", he's the youth leader at the church." I almost threw up. Naive. I also feel that too many are warning their child about strangers and not focusing on the fact that most abductions and molestations are committed by those known by and in the family circle. Trusted people. It's too common to hear someone forcing their child to "give Uncle Dave a kiss", not trusting a child's sometimes better instinct to stay the hell away from Uncle Dave.

[anarchy1999]

10. Incredibly harsh post SOCALDEM! Way past anything I've ever seen

you write. I'm speechless and leaving for a few hours. I've been here too long this am.

Maybe it just hit to close to home, being a survivor and all.

[SoCalDem]

12. I am a member of your "club" too... I guess this latest dead girl

hit home with me too:(

[bertha katzenengel]

18. Mothers are often at least partially responsible.

It is a rare woman who is telling the truth when she says, "I didn't know."

[SoCalDem]

29. Children send "signals", and unfortunately, lots of times

they are overlooked or "rationalized" away..

[donsu]

14. you are not looking in the right direction

the men are in charge, haven't you noticed?

I too wonder why you are so harse on mothers?

[bertha katzenengel]

19. Mothers. Are. Not. Blameless.

It is harsh but too often it is true. My mother was not blameless and she took the ultimate escape route.

In my opinion, a mother who knows her child is in danger because of her husband (or boyfriend or other somehow-close person) and does nothing is as culpable for the harm caused as the abuser is.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

32. And the opposite situation, where single fathers will throw

their children out on the streets because their girlfriend doesn't want the responsibility.

I saw that happen when I worked with street kids. It was more often the mother who dumped the kids because of a scummy boyfriend, but men could fall into that trap, too.

[SoCalDem]

34. It's odd, though. When a father has custody, lots of people

give him EXTRA credit, and lavish help, because it's assumed that he's doing something special, and deserves help (which a lot of them do :)..)

[shrike]

36. A police officer once told me that in his experience, if a woman

must choose between her children and boyfriend, she chooses the boyfriend.

[bertha katzenengel]

41. scary but true

:shakinghead: A lot of us DUers lived it, no doubt.

[Mr.Green93]

16. so many BAD mothers

'but I'm talking 'bout Shaft'

[solinvictus]

20. Here in Alabama..

We've had several cases in the past two or three months of mothers killing their children. It's really, really sad. I'm not certain, but I think one of the cases was overlooked by our local DHR.

[Bunny]

22. As a single mother, I can only say that this thread is very

depressing. Damned if you do, and damned if you don't, I guess.

[lukasahero]

58. There are those among us

who think this post is an unfair attack on mothers. Some of us appreciate your efforts. Hang in there. :hugs:

[KharmaTrain]

23. Class & Sex Warfare

The onus put on women...first to be "barefoot & preggers" and now to be "supermom" has had many effects on several generations...each one screwed up and screwing up the next.

In my rather upper middle-class neighborhood, most families are either headed by a single mother or remarried families that had troubles functioning before they did the "Brady bunch" thing and have only gotten worse.

Many women are torn between being "mom", "housewife", "business person" and still find room for a social life. Something always gives....usually it's the kids. While small kids are cute and time consuming, once they become teenagers and can think and function for themselves, they become more of a drag. Yes, this is generalizing, but a pattern my wife and I have seen repeatedly over the years and how these situations create a lot of problems for all involved.

It'd be utopian that we could focus our culture on the true meaning of the "culture of life"...how a person's standard of living reflects on our entire society and how if we look after the poorest and most helpless in our society, we all benefit through a healthier, more vibrant nation. But again, that's dreaming.

So much in your post to chew on and had to throw in just a few of my thoughts. Honestly, I can't see an easy answer to the problems many single families face since it conflicts so much with politics, religion, an economy based on crash consumerism while downscaling wages. So many places to work on, where to start?

[SoCalDem]

33. Where to start??

Mothers need support...more than just lipservice.. The snide comments from bosses about "time missed from work" is something that needs to stop. Mothers who HAVE to work, have enough pressure without fearing that if they stay home with a sick kid, their job is in jeopardy. They are most likely missing a day's pay already , without being made to feel that they are now "hurting" their employment prospects.

The children that single mothers raise are sitting next to YOUR kid in school, they are the ones who play soccer with your child, sit next to them at lunch. If THEY are shortchanged in the socialization process, EVERYONE suffers.

As usual, the ones who need the MOST assistance, are often the ones who GET the least.

Some fathers who are supposed to pay child support, think they are doing the ex-wife/girlfriend a "favor" when and if they send it.

[sandnsea]

24. Well you know

When I try to say we need to elevate mothering as a value in itself, I get attacked by people who seem to think mothering simply isn't enough for any woman to be fulfilled by it. By saying women have to have something besides mothering in their lives, we've actually devalued mothering and all those genuine needs that mothering fills in creating a healthy community. Healthy kids being part of a healthy community, but also everything else mothering skills and actions filter out to. Mothering encompasses nursing, teaching, feeding, pastoral, socialization, sanitation, security, mediation, diplomacy, and probably alot more. If we valued mothering, we'd value all these other professions alot more.

Instead, women moved away from mothering and simply bought into male oriented values. Accumulation of wealth, power, domination, physical strength, etc. Then we wonder why we live in an authoritarian country. Women helped create the illusion that these values were more important than mothering values.

Women don't have to go back to being cookie bakers, but we do have to start valuing mothering. Not parenting, mentoring, villages, or any other terminology. Mothering.

That's what I loved about Teresa. Her strength as a woman comes from her mothering skills because she knows exactly how powerful those skills are.

[Eloriel]

25. The only way people learn to be parents (for the most part)

is having been a kid. IF they had bad parents -- and ALL today's "bad parents" did -- then they're unlikely to be a whole lot better. They will wound to the exact same percent they were wounded. They can't help it.

As a society, we've got to do better. But there aren't any easy answers. We can't allow the State to take children away just because any given parent (esp. mother) isn't "good enough," there has to be a standard of harm.

[Sapphire Blue]

30. Mother's Day History

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

http://womenshistory.about.com/od/howejwriting/a/mothers_day.htm

[donsu]

38. thank you for posting this

not much has changed since that was written. women are still producing boys for men's war and violence.

we women could say NO.

religions keep women in a bind.

[Blue_Roses]

31. It is sad how

this issue is overlooked in our society. Well said:thumbsup:

[cally]

37. We've lost our sense of communities and extended families

I don't just blame the parents but our society doesn't have the community support for families it once had. When I grew up, my Mom never took me to the grocery store when I was tired and hungry. Instead she would ask a neighbor to watch me while she dashed to the store. She didn't take off work (unless I was extremely sick), instead she called her Mom or my Great Aunt and asked them to watch me. Now our families are far away and most around us are working. There just isn't support around us so the parents are much more stressed.

I think both parents are responsible for what the lack of parenting of many children but I think it's the loss of supportive elders that can teach us how to parent that is the larger problem. There's a program in many cities where an experienced mother volunteers to just go chat once or twice a week with a new mother that seems to be at risk. The programs have tremendous success. Just seeing how a good mother plays with an infant helps the new mother learn. Babies are not always so adorable. They cry and are fussy. Two year olds are a trial. Parents need to learn how to react to these stresses.

[Horse with no Name]

39. I can only speak for myself

I raised my kids as a single mother.
I only dated when my kids visited their dad. I didn't parade men in and out of my kids life and I turned down several marriage proposals because "you just don't know".
I always thought of it as letting the wolf in the henhouse.
I know there are many single women who marry and their kids are not raped or abused, but for my personal situation, I had 2 daughters and wasn't willing to take the risk.
There is one man that I miss more than anything, but he wanted marriage and I wasn't able to do it, but I don't regret for a minute protecting my kids.
Now they are almost grown, and I am older, more cynical, have more gray hair and a few more pounds...maybe one of these days I'll meet a man who will appreciate that, but even though at my age I would like for that to happen, I don't need for it to happen.:shrug:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

44. As they say about shirts,

"If you're doubtful, it's dirty."

You probably did the right thing if you weren't 100% sure that you could trust the man with your daughters.

[Horse with no Name]

52. It didn't matter who the man was

I wasn't going to take the chance. I did feel they were trustworthy and good men, or else I wouldn't have dated them.
I just wasn't going to put my daughter's at risk under any circumstances unless I could be around 24/7 to protect them, and I wasn't able to do that.
Lot's of men that were considered "good catches" molest little girls. I just chose not to play Russian roulette.

[bleedingheart]

45. It happened long ago too...

My grandmother lost her first husband in 1940. She immediately set about finding another husband, first because she needed the money as there wasn't a widow's benefit or pension for her...

She found a real winner, an ex-con out on parole for armed robbery, but he talked pretty to her and she married him. On their wedding day, the reception was at home, he was discovered upstairs sleeping with my grandmother's neice...

Over the next few yearse he then proceeded to molest her three daughters by her first husband, the eldest girl demanded to be sent to the family farm and left...but the other two (including my mom) were left to fend for themselves.

My grandmother then had two more babies with this pig and the girls at home had to raise those babes while grandma was trying to make the pig happy.

One day he came up to my mother's room and was rubbing her leg under the covers...he then went off to work. My mother was just a young girl...that day she told me there was a god...because the pig was killed in an accident at work.

My grandmother never did anything to protect her children. Nothing.

When he died she set about finding another man and making an even bigger ass out of herself...

My mother and my one aunt to this day are still affected by that experience....and it is just heartwrenching.

[TexasSissy]

46. These things have always gone on. Even in conservative

middle eastern and other countries, it is worse, where fathers "sell" their daughters for money, not caring to whom. In China and India, parents kill their girl babies. And in the backwoods areas of our country, there has always been incest and beatings and horror stories galore. They just weren't reported on. It was a way of life, and a seamy side of life, at that.

Today is no different, except there is a spotlight on it.

IMO, it's not that the women (and men) want, or don't want, to be bad parents. It's that they don't think of parenting skills at all. They just have babies, like all animals do, and then they rear them in their own lifestyle. They are wrapped up in themselves, not in their children.

It is sad all the horrible things that go on in the world, including bad parents causing harm to their children. But don't give the moms such a bad rap. IMO, I think more damage has been done by bad fathers than bad mothers. Moms, as a whole, are a pretty good group. It is, after all, a basic natural, biological feeling - that of a mother for her children. For the most part, this exists, even in the some pretty awful circumstances. (The MOST harm I see that mothers do to their children is failing to protect them from violent fathers. Thankfully, that is now a crime, I believe - to fail to protect the children from the violent dads. Believe it or not, it used not to be.)

[SoCalDem]

48. Didn't used to be..and that's sad..

Some of them were too worried about having no paycheck, so they didn't turn him in.. That was the way ot was in our family.. He ended up going to jail anyway for 2 years for molesting a different girl..but in my case,"I was trying to get him into trouble, and send us to the poor house".:eyes:..I was 8 the first time I told her..:(

[TexasSissy]

53. Oh, dear. I hope you have made to adulthood....

in one piece, physically and pschologically, though there are scars, I'm sure. This is surely a topic you know a little something about (more than most, I guess). Have you ever given your mom an earful about that past? Just wondering. I've known others with troubled childhoods, and they never seem to bring it up with their parents. It's too unpleasant, I guess, with good reason. I certainly gave my mother heck about a few things, once I reached middle age and could see that there was no excuse for some of the things she'd done (and my dad) - though nothing like you're describing. But I also recognized that they were products of THEIR childhoods, and so on, and so on.

Hope you were able to break the cycle and live a happy adulthood.

[SoCalDem]

54. Most certainly broke the cycle..

My mother never really thought she had any responsibility.Years of therapy, (some with her too) helped a bit, although she just told the shrink that she thought he had put ideas into my head..but she did admit to him that she knew he was a pedophile, and that she finally divorced him, after two more children were molested.. (she "owned" none of it)..

My boys were told about it, and are very supportive, and since they never spent any time with their grandfather, I made sure they were protected..

Ignorance is bliss for some, and that's the route my mother chose.. I gave myself permission at around 45 to finally "let her go", since there was never going to be any real common ground.. She died a few years ago, and so it ended..no resolution, but still an end.

In my childrens' lives there is no lingering residue though..so there is a happy ending.

[Fleshdancer]

49. and yet, when was the last time you thanked a GOOD MOTHER???

Moms are the first to be blamed when something bad happens and completely ignored when good things happen. All the people in this world you admire...the leaders, the artists, the activists...they all had moms too. When was the last time you EVER read a thread praising them?

[SoCalDem]

50. That's the thing... Mothers who do what's expected of them go

unnoticed by most but their own families.. I guess well raised, healthy children are the reward..the thank you :)

and I have sent Mother's Day cards to people who were not even related to me..because of the kind way they have treated my own kids:)

[Telly Savalas]

61. Good point.

Situation remedied. (A little bit, anyway.)

[CitySky]

51. here's one case where i totally blame the guy:

Coupla years ago my mom clipped and sent me an article that caught her eye in a legal journal, because she knew that in the early 1990's I had taught at the school:

A male middle school teacher in California married a teacher's aide from the school who was a single mom. Turns out: he had been having sex with the aide's daughter, a student at the school. Married the mom for more access to the daughter. A few years later, when the daughter was over 18 and tired of the ruse, she told people. The guy ended up in jail, where he should be to this day.

My mom had stuck a post-it to the legal article, scrawling, "Did you know these people?"

Know them? I had attended their wedding. He had EVERYONE fooled. The bride was just as sweet and wonderful as they come; she was also poor and Hispanic and a single mom, and everyone, including me, thought it was just wonderful that these two had found each other... ugh. Let me tell you I had chills all over when I read the story.

[walldude]

55. I think there are alot more

good moms than there are bad, it's just that the bad are much more easily noticed. I'd venture to say there are more bad dads than bad moms. Being a parent in this day and age isn't easy. I've got 3 kids and it's a daily struggle to raise honest kids in a dishonest world.

[SoCalDem]

56. Raising kids is the hardest job, and parents have a struggle every day

It's a job that's never "done", and yes..the bad ones stick out like sore thumbs, but most do a good job.. The ones who do a good jobare why the human race continues:) Without them, we would have been extinct ages ago:)

The media gave Dads a "pass" ages ago because dads USED to do hard labor for long hours, and he was not expected to "help with the kids". Modern Dad usually has more time with the kids but lots of them have not started sharing the difficult parts of childrearing:)

Lots do (mine did, and still does), but I have friends whose husband never even gave their kids baths, or watched them while she made dinner..

[skygazer]

57. Oh, good, something else to feel guilty about

The mother who keeps her child with her and the kid ends up being killed by the mother's boyfriend - that's mom's fault. The mother who DOESN'T keep the kid with her and the kid is killed while living with her dad - that's STILL the mom's fault. I'm sure both those moms will be comforted to know that no matter what choice they made, it was the wrong one and they are the only ones to blame in it.

Do you really think that you'd do so much better at "outing" sexual predators? If it were so damn easy, don't you think fewer kids would be taken and murdered by them? How does blaming their mothers do anything at all about the problem? Sure, there are lousy parents out there (not just mothers) - but there are also wonderful, loving, concerned parents who are involved in their kids lives who suffer these horrible tragedies too. I think it's pretty amazing to blame these kids mothers for their child's murder.

Mothers carry around enough guilt without having these no win situations tossed at them - damned if you do, damned if you don't. While I agree that we need to do more as a society to help PARENTS (not just mothers) do a very important and difficult job, I disagree with your premise that when a child is abducted, it is somehow the mother's fault!

[lukasahero]

59. Good catch and good post

Thanks. I was thinking the same thing myself.

[bloom]

62. Yep.

And some people still insist this issue is gender-neutral.


People seem to assume that it's the boyfriend/subsequent husband of the mother NOT the girlfriend/subsequent wife of the father that is to be more watched out for - but they want to say that women are as likely to be as abusive as men (so as not to appear "sexist").


If men are statistically more violent, abusive, prone to raping children - that is what it is - and I think it's too bad if people don't want to hear it.


While I don't excuse mothers for not doing something about the sexual abuse by men in their lives of their children - if they know - it REALLY is the MEN who are the criminals. And I don't think any criminal should be able to say - "well - it's the mothers fault, blah, blah, blah. Though I imagine some of them would.