Abandoning Children

While listening to the radio this morning, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the story of a woman who drove from Georgia to Nebraska over the weekend to drop her 12-year-old child off at a hospital. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution has the story.

It was the opinion of the DJs and most of the callers that the mother of this child was an absolutely horrible person for doing this over mere behavioral problems. After all, they all had kids who misbehaved sometimes and they were able to deal with it, so shouldn't she?

Of course, none of us know the whole story. If she was just trying to punish her son for acting out, then her acts were reprehensible. But what if it was more than that?

I have done a tremendous amount of juvenile law work over the years, and I have worked with a great many troubled kids who were described as having "behavior problems." The problems have ranged from talking back to mom and not doing homework all the way to vivisecting the family pet in the living room and molesting the neighbor kids.

Sometimes it gets to be too much. Not knowing anything of the mother or her son or their situation and circumstances, it is wrong to pass judgment on her. Giving up a child is a hard, terrible decision to make. I have watched parents voluntarily sign their parental rights away because they finally realized that they could not possible care for a child properly - that it was in the child's best interests to have a life separate from his or her parents.

Imagine if, instead of taking advantage of a safe-haven law, she had snapped and beaten her son to death with a baseball bat? Would not the same nay-sayers be telling us that she should have taken advantage of a safe-haven law rather than cause physical harm?

Maybe, just maybe, she made a mature and difficult decision that could give her child a better chance in life than if he had stayed with her.