Kate and I were talking last night about how depressing the news is. Of course we all want to be connected, to stay in touch with what's going on "out there' but sometimes it's really darn depressing. The worst of all news headlines are the child and baby killers. I thought that the reason that I pick up on these stories was because I am hyper-sensitive right now to babies. It seems to me that whenever I open a major news source website, I see some coverage about a child who was killed by their parents. After taking a closer look and doing some research, I learned why that is. According to the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System, at least 2,000 young children are killed every year in this country by their parents or caregivers and over half of them are under 1 year of age! So it's possible with today's mass media that literally, every time you watch the news you could hear of a child or baby murdered by their parents. Crazy. It might be in new Mexico, It might be in Florida, but the news is global, and it's out there. When my Dad visited this weekend, same thing, he opened the newspaper and read about a father who shook his baby to death because he was crying while the father was trying to play a video game. Uggh! And if you didn't hear about this one, well, this one is a shocker. It was a month or so ago and I remember listening to news radio when I heard about Lindsey. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This 20-something woman hid per pregnancy, then gave birth to her twin boys in a toilet and immediately smothered and killed them to hide their cries from her parents. Some people would argue she needed medical help and had a psychosis of some sort. I think she is an evil, disgusting human being. We can argue about that but that's not why I'm writing this post. Even more tragic than their deaths, is the fact that I and thousands of other couples in the US who want children, but can't, would have taken her babies and loved them and held them and helped them grow and live and thrive. When I first heard the story I was in the heat of going through our 4th miscarriage. Here's the news link on Lindsey: http://badbreeders.net/2011/09/19/25-year-old-hides-her-pregnancy-then-kills-her-twin-boys/ I don't recommend spending a lot of time on badbreeders.com. It's depressing. It's not healthy and, unfortunately just by opening the newspaper or turning on the TV, you'll see all the thousands of stories that badbreeders website compiles. For our time here on earth, I think what we can all do is be aware and awake in our communities and report if we ever suspect abuse. Teachers, Doctors, Social workers, Healthcare workers and Preschool workers have the highest potential impact to notice these things. For the rest of us? Aside from being a Foster parent, I think that all we can do is pray, shake our heads and sigh. http://www.childwelfare.gov/
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Yep, really depressing.