This is the absolute limit. Feministing published an article calling the woman who fed her daughter drugs to spare herself an inconvenience “somebody who should get every Mom of the Year Award ever.” I’m speechless. I mean, I lost my voice so I’d be speechless anyway but this is very shocking.
Parents who invade their children’s bodies, private space, life, everything are a dime a dozen. But since the word “abortion” appeared somewhere in the story, Feministing will count it as a huge victory for feminism.
If you haven’t been reading this blog for a long time, I want to reiterate that I fully support a woman’s right to control what happens inside her body at any point in time and in any circumstances. But only her own body, not her daughter’s, and definitely not to please some useless ne’er-do-well fella. Read the story in full to see what I mean.
Clarissa's Blog 
Reblogged this on Sig.Nordal and commented:
Thank you for this piece
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I dont get it, frankly. Sure, ordering pills prescription-grade online is wrong. And dangerous. And stupid. But the mother just helped her daughter achieve what she wanted, or did she not?
Plenty is wrong with what this mother did, but I can’t see her invading her daughters privacy.
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She should have taken her daughter to a clinic, to see an actual doctor. But that would have inconvenienced HER HUSBAND. So it was easier to buy some junk online, feed it to the kid with no concern for the consequences, and see what would happen. It’s not the kid’s privacy she invaded. It’s her body.
Besides, a daughter of a good mother would be using contraception and this wouldn’t occur in the first place.
As for what the girl wanted, we have no idea what that actually is. This seems like a family of “let’s not disturb the man with our petty troubles.” What the girl would have decided in a different kind of family is a mystery.
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Yes, this just sums up everything I despise about feministing. They’re ready to beatify this woman because she helped/coerced her daughter into an abortion. Nothing else matters. Had a mother been similarly intrusive and obtuse and reckless in trying to prevent an abortion she would be the worst person ever (and the role of the missing husband would be played up for maximum villany).
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“Had a mother been similarly intrusive and obtuse and reckless in trying to prevent an abortion she would be the worst person ever (and the role of the missing husband would be played up for maximum villany).”
– Exactly. There is nobody on this planet more in favor of reproductive rights than me but I’m even more in favor of the rights of children. I have an experience of raising a 16-year-old girl, also with very little money. Plus I was only 22. And if something like this happened, there is absolutely no way in hell I would have bought some crap online and fed it to her. No way what so bloody ever. Raising a teenager is very hard. Very, very hard. But one should be prepared to act responsibly and make sacrifices for the kid if needed. “It’s too hard to drive to a clinic, so what the hell, let her swallow some pills and we’ll see what happens”? Seriously?
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Nowhere in here does it mention that the daughter was forced to take the pills. The daughter asked her mother for help. Clarissa, I don’t care how much you claim to be pro-reproductive rights you are, you are just plain ignorant of real life in the USA for ordinary people living paycheck-to-paycheck with the prospect of being fired at any moment. Not everyone has a yearly contract and the financial means to enforce it should the employer renege. Not everyone has access or medical savvy or money or good lawyers. Abortion is not part of the medical system and is not available as it was in the FSU (however bad the medical care was in the FSU, there was no attempt to make abortion illegal, no doctors in bulletproof vests flying in from halfway around the country to do procedures, etc). You would be able to talk your way around any obstacle, no doubt, having grown up in the FSU where lying is an essential survival skill, at least according to your description of life there, but not every person is going to be able to work the system – some are naive, or not clever. This woman is not well off – do you think any upper middle class white woman able to afford a lawyer would spend a second in jail? Do you think that the daughter would want her mother to get fired for taking time off work without the kind of sick excuse “this employee could not report to work because she was comatose in the Neuro ICU”. After all, the mother and daughter both need to eat and have a roof over their heads. The daughter asked her mother to help her get an abortion. The mother did what she could, even if she wasn’t well-connected, wealthy, able to take days off work to get her child through the system (was there a father in the picture who would have refused consent to the daughter, and would there have had to be a legal bypass to requirement for two-parent consent required in some states?). The mother saw an apparently legitimate solution, got the pills, the daughter had a perfectly normal abortion, but the system didn’t allow for a simple honest medical checkup.
In normal rational medical practice, the daughter should have been able to get an appointment quickly at a practice with reasonable hours, been prescribed the pills, have been well informed by the doctor as to what to expect, to have been able to go to the emergency room and be honest about the vaginal bleeding. We are not talking about exotic medicine here, this ought to be something available from every family practitioner and urgent care Walmart-style doc-in-a-box. But no, you blame the mother rather than the whole misogynist society. Very enlightened.
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“Clarissa, I don’t care how much you claim to be pro-reproductive rights you are, you are just plain ignorant of real life in the USA for ordinary people living paycheck-to-paycheck with the prospect of being fired at any moment. Not everyone has a yearly contract and the financial means to enforce it should the employer renege. Not everyone has access or medical savvy or money or good lawyers. “
– Yes, very funny, ha ha. This is such an appropriate topic for humor.
“Abortion is not part of the medical system and is not available as it was in the FSU (however bad the medical care was in the FSU, there was no attempt to make abortion illegal, no doctors in bulletproof vests flying in from halfway around the country to do procedures, etc). You would be able to talk your way around any obstacle, no doubt, having grown up in the FSU where lying is an essential survival skill, at least according to your description of life there, but not every person is going to be able to work the system – some are naive, or not clever. This woman is not well off – do you think any upper middle class white woman able to afford a lawyer would spend a second in jail?”
– I wasn’t raising a 16-year-old in the FSU with a yearly contract or whatever. I was doing it on this continent as an immigrant with a collection of crappy part-time jobs. And I didn’t even have a chance to work any system because I didn’t speak the language the system is conducted in. And if you haven’t tried being a voiceless immigrant without even the linguistic skills to make herself understood, you should maybe abstain from ofering me lessons on “real life.”
“Do you think that the daughter would want her mother to get fired for taking time off work”
– This should not be the daughter’s area of concern at all. If the daughter starts even thinking in that direction – this is a crappy mother.
“The daughter asked her mother to help her get an abortion. The mother did what she could”
– And “what she could” was shitty.
“The mother saw an apparently legitimate solution, got the pills, the daughter had a perfectly normal abortion, but the system didn’t allow for a simple honest medical checkup.”
– What the daughter doesn’t have is a mother.
“In normal rational medical practice, the daughter should have been able to get an appointment quickly at a practice with reasonable hours, been prescribed the pills, have been well informed by the doctor as to what to expect, to have been able to go to the emergency room and be honest about the vaginal bleeding. “
– This is all self-evident. But not living in a rational system doesn’t free anybody from their obligations as parents.
“But no, you blame the mother rather than the whole misogynist society. Very enlightened.”
– Even in the worst societies ever parents protect their children.
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\\ And I didn’t even have a chance to work any system because I didn’t speak the language the system is conducted in. And if you haven’t tried being a voiceless immigrant without even the linguistic skills to make herself understood
Since you knew English from childhood, are you referring to French in Canada?
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Yes, this was in Quebec. The trauma of immigration was aggravated by suddenly becoming completely voiceless and dreading even the tiniest instances of having to communicate. Which was already very problematic given my autism. In any case, the point isn’t to complain about my life but to say that a parent takes responsibility, takes charge, carries the burden. A mother who couldn’t even do something as minimal as this – how can we be sure she actually gave the girl a choice? How can we be sure she actually said, “If you want to have the baby, I will be very happy, I will raise it, you can count on me as much as you need?”
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“At the time, Whalen and her husband shared one car, which they both used to get to work. And she hadn’t told her husband about the pregnancy. ”
– Nobody is picking up on this crucial fact. This is all about not inconveniencing the husband. God forbid, he should have to commute to work for a couple of days. No, let’s pump the kid full of drugs to avoid this enormous misfortune. Seriously? And that woman is the feminist cause of the day???
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You do realize, don’t you, that fathers seriously injure or kill their daughters? There are some good reasons why women hide serious issues from their menfolk. Oh, but of course she could have taken the child and gone underground. Good luck with that. The most dangerous moment for a woman with an abusive spouse or father is the moment when the man realizes that the woman has left for good.
This mother appears to have been protecting her child AS BEST AS SHE WAS ABLE. Not everyone is as perfect as you are, Clarissa.
All I can say is, with the amount of compassion you display, I would rather be your enemy than your friend.
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“You do realize, don’t you, that fathers seriously injure or kill their daughters? There are some good reasons why women hide serious issues from their menfolk.”
– Are you asking me to applaud a freak who allows her child to live in the same house with an animal likely to kill her??
“This mother appears to have been protecting her child AS BEST AS SHE WAS ABLE.”
– That’s the favorite excuse of all abusive parents. “I did the best I could” always means “I did whatever the fuck I pleased because destroying you was more convenient.”
“All I can say is, with the amount of compassion you display, I would rather be your enemy than your friend.”
– I have compassion for the child. There is a child involved. A 16-year-old girl who deserves better than being pumped full of pills so that Daddy doesn’t get upset. Asking me of all people to have compassion for abusive parents is quite bizarre.
Please observe how much space you are dedicating to the hardships of an adult woman who made her own life what it is today and how little you have to say about the hardships of a teenager, thrust into this insanity that she in no way contributed to creating. Just stop for 2 minutes and ask yourself why this is. Why are the girl’s feeling dismissed so easily with “She got what she wanted” when there is absolutely no way for us to know what it was she wanted. If you think the adult woman’s situation is difficult, surely the kid’s situation is worse. If you believe the father is abusive, she must be in grave danger right now. Why do you have so little interest in that?
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NancyP, your explosive commentary makes me wonder why this is such an emotional issue for you. Was the original post written about you? You snap at my sister, attack and then tell her to snap out of it. With an exclamation mark. You are the one who should snap out of here.
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The possibility of breaking the greatest taboo of patriarchy is too terrifying. Seeing people who break the taboo is extremely disturbing: why isn’t there an immediate punishment for such a transgression? An anxiety sets in: was it possible this entire time for me to aspire to freedom?
This is an intolerable realization, so people lash out. I don’t mind because I know that it is impossible to forget the discomfort they felt here. It will keep brewing until it finally breaks through and they will emerge as happier, freer people.
These are not the hopeless cases. The really hopeless ones are those who shrug and pass by thinking “Well, this has nothing to go with me.”
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Well I don’t think this woman is mother of the year. I don’t think she should be celebrated per se. But I don’t have the contempt for her that you do and I definitely don’t think she should go to jail. More largely, this points to a very very real abortion issue in the US.
It seems that the mother is poor, uneducated, and has limited resources. I do agree that it’s troubling that she didn’t tell her husband about the pregnancy. But I’m assuming this might be a Bible Belt family. Perhaps the husband is against abortion; perhaps she was worried he would flip out on the daughter for getting pregnant. And perhaps they really both needed the car to get to work. Not all areas of the country are accessible via public transportation.
Perhaps the bad situation was exacerbated by poor parental choices (why doesn’t a minor have health insurance for instance?) Whatever past choices were however, the mother was facing the following situation: poor, afraid of her husband, limited transportation, no insurance, limited discretionary money, tenuous but necessary employment, and a pregnant daughter. What choices did the mother really have at that point?
The daughter seems to have wanted the abortion and it doesn’t seem that she got sick from the drugs. And from what I understand, “abortion pills” are generally safe. Women typically go home after they are administered the pills and only go back to the doctor for a brief checkup. It wasn’t the safest thing to do. (It’s always better to get medication from a trusted source.) But at the same time, I don’t think it was as unsafe as you think. And I certainly don’t think anyone deserves jail time. And I definitely think abortion needs to be made much more accessible throughout the country.
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“But I don’t have the contempt for her that you do”
– Maybe I should publish more stories about my mother to make it clearer why I see through such parents and their excuses so easily.
“Whatever past choices were however, the mother was facing the following situation: poor, afraid of her husband, limited transportation, no insurance, limited discretionary money, tenuous but necessary employment, and a pregnant daughter. What choices did the mother really have at that point?”
– I’m a lot more interested in what choice the poor daughter had. The mother at least had “past choices” as well as present ones. The girl had none.
“The daughter seems to have wanted the abortion”
– How can we possibly know that? How can we know she was given a choice to want anything else?
“But at the same time, I don’t think it was as unsafe as you think.”
– What is unsafe and horribly damaging is being in a situation where your mother chooses her husband’s convenience over you, your health and safety. THis is the damage one carries forever. It is absolutely pathological that a parent should allow any concern override the need to get her child to a doctor.
Tell me, would you reaction to this woman be any different if she were a billionaire?
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“Tell me, would you reaction to this woman be any different if she were a billionaire”
Of course. If the mother were a billionaire, then there would be no reason for her to be worried about travelling 100 miles for an abortion and having to stay overnight in a hotel because of the stupid 24 hour rule. A billionaire could tell her employer (if she was even working at all) to shove it if they threatened to fire her. But a poor woman who desperately needs her job to survive doesn’t have the luxury to take off 1-2 days of work.
And truly: it seems that the daughter’s abortion was necessary. The last thing this family needs (and they do seem dysfunctional) is another life in it. They certainly couldn’t afford another baby. So it strikes me as completely believable that the daughter wanted an abortion.
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“Of course. If the mother were a billionaire, then there would be no reason for her to be worried about travelling 100 miles for an abortion and having to stay overnight in a hotel because of the stupid 24 hour rule. A billionaire could tell her employer (if she was even working at all) to shove it if they threatened to fire her. But a poor woman who desperately needs her job to survive doesn’t have the luxury to take off 1-2 days of work.”
– So it’s OK for poor people to care about their children less than rich people do? Money trumps parental feelings? There should be different standards of parenting for the rich and the poor? I know you are not saying this, but the moment we start traveling down this road, we arrive at a place where the poor are inferior.
“And truly: it seems that the daughter’s abortion was necessary. The last thing this family needs (and they do seem dysfunctional) is another life in it. They certainly couldn’t afford another baby. So it strikes me as completely believable that the daughter wanted an abortion.”
– The sentences contradict each other. “Wanted” and “realized that her parents would be financially burdened” are two very different things.
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Now I know there is something that you, Clarissa, are projecting on this situation. I also know that you are about thirty years younger than I am, and necessarily lack the sense of irremediable personal failure that comes with age and humbles all that are able to last long enough to notice. We are all failures. I am a failure. You are a failure, even though you are at the stage of life when one doesn’t admit that fact to anyone. Translated, that means, we are both ordinary human beings. Wait thirty years, wait until you have a child that blames you for ruining her or his life (and they all do, don’t confuse the behavior of a younger sister with that of a daughter or son), wait until that child gets to the point where they realize that Mother may have done the best that she could do even if the best wasn’t good enough, and wait until mother and child forgive each other for being human.
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I heard this all a gazillions times, and every time it’s more boring than the last. I’m not afraid of critical scrutiny by anybody at any point. These exhortations of “Just wait and see” don’t speak to me.
Being an abusive parent isn’t “human.” It is shitty, criminal and disgusting.
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Of course you aren’t afraid of critical scrutiny. You believe that you are better than everyone else, and that no matter what happens, you can’t make a mistake. Why the h_ll are you bothering to go to an analyst, after many tiresome posts about how people with psychological problems are Just Plain Weak and that you would never be that weak? Snap out of it!
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Please provide a quote from me where I use the expression “Just Plain Weak.” Thank you.
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Well what should have the mother done in your opinion at that moment? And let’s assume that her husband can’t get to work via public transportation.
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Obviously, the only normal thing to do is first to say “If you want to have the baby, I will be very happy, I will raise it, you can count on me as much as you need, this is the joy of my life, oh sweetheart.” Then, talk to the kid at length and not let her stew on her own, trying to guess the best way to please Mommy. And if she chose abortion, take her to a doctor.
This is exactly what I would have done 16 years ago.
“And let’s assume that her husband can’t get to work via public transportation.”
– How is that even a factor in anything? We will soon get to a point that not having a good public transportation system is an excuse to drug children. He is an adult, he should have dealt with this minor issue and not solved it through invading the girl’s body. Ask a buddy for a ride, ask a relative, a neighbor, walk to work if needed, stay in a coffee-shop next to your job overnight. This is what a normal parent does – HAPPILY – before putting shady substances into her child’s body.
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Here is the main conflict of interest here: the problems with money, jobs, insurance, etc are the parents’ problems. But they tried to solve it at the expense of a child’s safety. It should be the other way round! They should solve their own problems and gets because she can’t do for herself. She is in their care. They are not in hers.
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“And if she chose abortion, take her to a doctor.”
So risk getting fired if her employer won’t allow her to take the time off? Again, the only legal place to take the girl is 100 miles away and would require a hotel stay. That’s fine that you think that of course. I am just wanting to know if that’s what you are arguing.
“Here is the main conflict of interest here: the problems with money, jobs, insurance, etc are the parents’ problems.”
But if the parents lose their jobs, how can they take care of their child at all? If the parents lose their income, that becomes everyone in the family’s problem.
Again. I don’t think this mother is “mother of the year.” But assuming the daughter wanted the abortion, the mother was pretty much having to decide between staying employed and taking her daughter to one of the few legal facilities in her geographic area that performs abortions. You seem to think that the obvious choice is that the mother risk getting fired from her job? Is that what you are suggesting?
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You know most places of employment (even crappy ones) have days off and some flexibility about taking a day or two off for a medical emergency. Did she even try to arrange it at work?
My best guess is that she valued her relationship with her husband (apparently not the girl’s father…) over adequate medical care for her daughter. She probably had no real malice but was willing to take shortcuts with her daughter’s healthcare to try to maintain the marriage.
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“You know most places of employment (even crappy ones) have days off and some flexibility about taking a day or two off for a medical emergency”
Depends on the industry. My husband for years worked 6 day weeks and had _no_ flexibility with taking days off. And in the industry he was in, 6 day work weeks were typical. Also, do we know that the clinic had weekend availability?
“husband (apparently not the girl’s father”
Did the article say the husband wasn’t the girl’s father? I missed that.
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“Did the article say the husband wasn’t the girl’s father? I missed that.”
It chose a very awkward way of referring to him if he wasn’t. Another news story refers to her as a ‘single mother’.
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“But if the parents lose their jobs, how can they take care of their child at all? If the parents lose their income, that becomes everyone in the family’s problem.”
– And if the mother takes her daughter to a hospital, a truck can hit them on the way there and they will all die horrible deaths. How did this suddenly get to both parents losing their jobs.
“But assuming the daughter wanted the abortion, the mother was pretty much having to decide between staying employed and taking her daughter to one of the few legal facilities in her geographic area that performs abortions. You seem to think that the obvious choice is that the mother risk getting fired from her job?”
– First of all, there are to many assumptions and they all stem from the mother telling 100% truth about everything. The likelihood of that is not huge. But even if this is completely true, yes, of course, it’s the motehr’s obligation to take her daughter to a doctor. Wouldn’t you expect your mother to get you to a clinic if you needed/
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“Wouldn’t you expect your mother to get you to a clinic if you needed?”
By the time I was 16? No. Not at all. And I certainly wouldn’t have expected her to put her job on the line to get me to a clinic. By the time I was 16, I was fairly independent. I worked, I went to school, I paid for most of my clothes and most of my “fun.” My parents basically let me live my own life by the time I was 16. I think that if this had happened to me, I probably would have paid for my own abortion; gotten myself to a clinic, taken days off of school/work myself etc. I NEVER EVER would have wanted my mother to lose her job to tend to me. (Unless of course it was something dire–like cancer.)
I also truly have a wonderful relationship with my mother (and a strong–though less close– relationship with my father.) The thought that my parents should drop everything to tend to my personal needs when I was 16–almost an adult– would have been deeply humiliating to me. Perhaps it’s because I’m from a big family and when I was sixteen, we had very small children at home. But in any case, my parents really gave me a lot of latitude when I was 16. On the plus side, I always knew they trusted and respected me. On the flip (though not negative) side, I also saw myself as an autonomous being and responsible for my own choices–good and bad.
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I also always knew I had only myself to count on. Some people actually have parents. Parents who are there for them, people they can count on. I was not similarly blessed. If I’d gotten pregnant at 16, I also wouldn’t even tell them. Even if I got any help in such situation, the cost for me would have been too high.
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For me personally, it wasn’t a sad thing that I was a self reliant teenager. I knew I had my parents to count on if something terrible happened. But I also saw myself as an autonomous (and empowered) being.
My parents were–and are– always there for me. I know that if for some reason my life falls apart, I can live with one of them with no questions asked (they are divorced.) But at the same time, I would never expect them to throw their lives away for me. If I didn’t get tenure for instance, I would be deeply humiliated to think that one of my parents would drain their savings account to support– an able bodied woman.
Do you think that parents are perpetually obligated to sacrifice everything–savings, employment, comfort– for their children?
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“Do you think that parents are perpetually obligated to sacrifice everything–savings, employment, comfort– for their children?”
– Who in this story perpetually sacrificed anything? These parents couldn’t be bothered to get the kid a medical insurance. The Daddy can’t be bothered to commute to work a couple of times when she has an emergency.
I was always so proud of these cherished stories in the family lore where my parents would leave me at age 6 to babysit for my infant sister and leave for hours. I thought it was a cute story until very recently when I finally realized that the story is completely whack.
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As captain capitalism would say “The father could not be reached for comment”
Where was the girl’s father? Where was the father of the unborn child?
The more you look at this story (unless wearing ‘women must never be judged’ glasses) the worse the behavior of the adults involved….
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First of all, I don’t think she is the mother of the year, who did everything right.
However:
\\ – Maybe I should publish more stories about my mother to make it clearer why I see through such parents and their excuses so easily.
May be, you project your own experience on this family, which may or may not be the truth.
\\ “Wanted” and “realized that her parents would be financially burdened” are two very different things.
What if this family doesn’t have money for a baby now? Following this logic, if a daughter gives birth to 2-3 babies, do good parents automatically have money to support all those babies too? Adult people too don’t always have money to support (more) children.
You say “How can we know she was given a choice to want anything [except abortion]?” Well, some adult women are driven to abort because of lack of money. Do they get a choice? If a woman doesn’t have this choice herself, how can she give it to her daughter?
\\ how little you have to say about the hardships of a teenager, thrust into this insanity that she in no way contributed to creating
I don’t fully agree with “in no way contributed.” She did have sex without sufficient protection (birth control) at 16, not 6 or 14. Most likely, she agreed to this sex since nothing says anything about rape in the article. At much younger age than 16, I knew unprotected sex can lead to children and/or AIDS, and would’ve been completely horrified at the idea. It doesn’t change your points about the mother (though I don’t fully agree with them), but to say that a girl “in no way” contributed to this horrible situation isn’t right either.
I was also surprised both her mother and she were stupid enough not to say the daughter bought the Internet drug herself, secretly, and only told her mother everything after becoming horrified about subsequent bleeding. In this case, hopefully, nobody would be charged. Whatever you think about the mother, I am 100% sure that being in jail will only hurt this family and the girl even further, both emotionally and economically. In the girl’s place, I would’ve felt guilty about my actions leading to hurting my mother and other siblings like that.
\\ the only normal thing to do is first to say “If you want to have the baby, I will be very happy, I will raise it …
Do you mean “I will raise it without letting the baby affect your education opportunities”? I think my relatives would’ve done it, but not every family has the means and the desire for it. I also don’t fully understand your position: 16 year old has a baby, mother raises it till her daughter turns 18 and then the child is daughter’s responsibility? Or does mother continue raising the grandkid till the daughter gets education? Or even after?
\\ – I’m a lot more interested in what choice the poor daughter had. The mother at least had “past choices” as well as present ones. The girl had none.
Couldn’t she travel to the clinic alone, without her mother? May be, with a mother’s agreement for abortion (if it’s required), signed by a local lawyer.
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“May be, you project your own experience on this family, which may or may not be the truth.”
– Thank you, but I’m working with a very good analyst. Your services in this area were not requested.
“which may or may not be the truth.”
– The mother fed the kid drugs instead of taking her to a doctor. These are facts. None of this “may or may not be the truth.”
“Following this logic, if a daughter gives birth to 2-3 babies, do good parents automatically have money to support all those babies too? Adult people too don’t always have money to support (more) children.”
– What are you trying to convince me of here? That parents have the right to control their children’s reproduction? Why are you trying to convince me of this when it is patently useless?
“Whatever you think about the mother, I am 100% sure that being in jail will only hurt this family and the girl even further, both emotionally and economically.”
– While she is in jail, she will have no chance to do anything else to this kid.
” She did have sex without sufficient protection (birth control) at 16, not 6 or 14.”
– Which is obviously also the fault of her parents who didn’t teach her about and provide contraception.
“In the girl’s place, I would’ve felt guilty about my actions leading to hurting my mother and other siblings like that.”
– Only a child of a really shitty parent would feel guilty in this case.
“Couldn’t she travel to the clinic alone, without her mother? ”
– Yes, why didn’t the freak parent her mother but expected the mother to parent her?
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\\– What are you trying to convince me of here? That parents have the right to control their children’s reproduction?
No, that parents have a right not to have all the money and other resources required to support more children. Imo, a 16-year-old with a normal level of intelligence, while deciding whether to abort, would think f.e. about the way the child will influence her future. if she expects her parents to support this child, taking into account her parents’ money situation is necessary too. You make it sound as if her (single?) mother has a responsibility to lie: “I am so happy to become a grandmother, sorry, a mother in practice to another child. I’ll be able to raise this child and everything will be A-OK, don’t worry.” Imo, a mother has a right to be honest, at least (honest, not abusive): “I don’t know whether we will have enough money. May be, you’ll have to go working full time after graduating high-school, not go to college as planned.”
I was raised by relatives, who have been extremely close to me, and wouldn’t have expected them first to say “If you want to have the baby, I will be very happy, I will raise it, you can count on me as much as you need, this is the joy of my life, oh sweetheart.” I know they would’ve supported me either way, but they wouldn’t have begun lying to me in order not to influence my decision.
\\ While she is in jail, she will have no chance to do anything else to this kid.
I don’t think the mother thought that what she was doing was dangerous. Most likely, she isn’t so abusive that her children will be better at the orphanage, the way you present it.
\\ Which is obviously also the fault of her parents who didn’t … provide contraception.
May be, her parents didn’t even know she decided to have sex. Not everybody reports: “mother, I am thinking about having sex with John soon.”
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Normal parents teach their children about contraception a lot earlier than 16.
As for everything else, even the best parents in the universe need to be placed under critical scrutiny. In healthy families, children do that at puberty and parents welcome that. There is no possibility of reaching adulthood and maturity and fashioning a life of one’s own without this.
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\\ I was also surprised both her mother and she were stupid enough not to say the daughter bought the Internet drug herself
In case you want to say, “it isn’t her job to protect her mother” … It is the 16 year-old’s naked self-interest to protect herself and her siblings, not to go to orphanage after the mother’s imprisonment. If this man isn’t her biological father, losing a mother is extra-dangerous and frightening. And provides a further explanation why a single mother may not be able to support more children.
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” It is the 16 year-old’s naked self-interest to protect herself and her siblings, not to go to orphanage after the mother’s imprisonment. If this man isn’t her biological father, losing a mother is extra-dangerous and frightening. ”
– Losing this kind of mother is a blessing. Who knows what she will do to the kid tomorrow if she finds it convenient.
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If these people cannot miss a single day of work, what did they do all the other times their daughter needed medical care while growing up? Surely this was not the first time she would have gone to a clinic, so why was it only now that her parents would absolutely lose their jobs?
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They don’t even have health insurance for the kid. What kind of parents are these?
The entire article is very mysterious. Take this:
“And she was worried about taking time away from work and her family to make two trips or to stay overnight. ”
– What does this even mean? Isn’t her daughter also “her family”? What is happening in the family that the mother can’t leave for 2 days?
“At one point, Whalen could have pled guilty to the misdemeanors to avoid jail time, but if would have meant losing her job, which her family relies on.”
– So she chose to go to jail to keep her job? This makes zero sense whatsoever.
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Fact: 16 is a minor and no, cannot get abortion without parent or judge signing off on it. So no, she could not go to clinic herself.
Fact: Hotel stay not necessary, they could go for the consultation one Saturday morning and the abortion the next. It is only 75 miles. Caveat: maybe clinic is not open Saturday mornings (many are), maybe work has to happen on Saturdays, I don’t know.
Fact: it is entirely possible they could not afford insurance and also could not come up with the cash for the abortion. I am not buying the idea that the 75 miles was an insurmountable barrier, though.
The whole thing to me seems more foolhardy and also lazy than malicious.
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I agree it was not malicious, just careless and yes, lazy.
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The problem is that it is a very rare (and pathological) patent who sits there and plots doing damage to their child. My husband’s parents beat him bloody since infancy. Brutalized him. But they always insisted it was for his own good. And they actually believed it because they needed to convince themselves of this. There isn’t an abusive parent on the planet who doesn’t claim to abuse out of love. And this is what makes this abuse so difficult to get past: the claim of love and the child’s desperate need to believe that the love is there.
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\\ even the best parents in the universe need to be placed under critical scrutiny. In healthy families, children do that at puberty and parents welcome that.
Does placing under critical scrutiny simply mean understanding nobody is perfect and everybody can make mistakes? Or something more?
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This is actually the opposite of placing under critical scrutiny. 🙂 🙂
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\\ This is actually the opposite of placing under critical scrutiny.
I don’t understand. Does your definition include, for example, “I think I was overprotected, but sure it’s not critical enough. Must search and find at least 10 more things they did wrong” ? Could you explain, please?
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Have we agreed that “everybody makes mistakes” is the exact opposite of critical scrutiny? Because that’s an important point.
As to “I think I was overprotected,” change it to “You controlled me because that’s a way for you to express aggression in a societally legitimated way.” Avoid the passive voice and don’t forget the scrutiny, i. e. analysis.
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Could it be an expression of anxiety rather than aggression?
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That’s what I wanted to say. 🙂
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Control always = aggression. But aggression can stem from anxiety, so there is a link.
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\\ Control always = aggression. But aggression can stem from anxiety, so there is a link.
But parents who say “I will worry a lot, if you … because of danger XYZ” aren’t lying, especially when danger is real. They do feel afraid for their child, not thinking “I will take it all out on her now”.
If there is anxiety and parents themselves acknowledge it, why would aggression have to play a greater role?
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“But parents who say “I will worry a lot, if you … because of danger XYZ” aren’t lying”
– Yes, they have convinced themselves that they are acting for their child’s good. Just like my husband’s parents convinced themselves that beating a 3-year-old to a bloody pulp is for his own good. They are also convinced they were fighting a real danger when they pummeled him. It’s always the same story, always.
“They do feel afraid for their child, not thinking “I will take it all out on her now”.”
– Yes, they rationalize their aggression. And a pedophile seriously, honestly thinks he is giving the child what the child wants when he has sex with a 10-year-old. I’m not equating the two, but rather, showing that people have an enormous capacity to fool themselves in order to achieve their goals and not feel bad about what they do in the process.
“If there is anxiety and parents themselves acknowledge it, why would aggression have to play a greater role?”
– If they acknowledge that they have anxiety, they won’t need to pummel the child (physically or psychologically) to keep it at bay. They will leave the kid in peace and deal with their own psychological problems.
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Parents may overprotect if they themselves are afraid of bandits on the streets and worry because of numerous reasons after their country fell apart. I don’t think it must stem from aggression.
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“Parents may overprotect if they themselves are afraid of bandits on the streets and worry because of numerous reasons after their country fell apart.”
– You are rationalizing and making excuses again. Plus, let’s drop the childish language of “overprotection”, what is that even? And call it what it is = “control.” And countries falling apart are nothing but an excuse. In any country, under any circumstances, some people grow up happy and free and some grow up traumatized and sad.
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Re: “Countries fell apart” — I am making numerous videos on this topic. Have a look at my latest blog entries as well. Of course an explanation is not a moral justification for any sort of behavior — and it would take a clumsy mind to conflate the two…
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You are at the end of this process while other people are at the beginning or in the middle. You have worked hard and long enough and gone through all the stages. Now you can analyze the causes that made your father who he was, etc. But there is a long road to travel before one can get to this stage. And when one seriously insists that saying “everybody makes mistakes” is a way of placing one’s parents under critical scrutiny, the road to travel before one can afford a historic analysis is very long.
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Good points. Many are at the middle of the journey and may never get any further, as that is really hard to do, in fact.
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The blurb from my new video (now uploading):
In an ideal world we would all only suffer or experience reward on the basis of our individual merits. Perhaps humanity is working toward a world like that. In the mean time, the shamanic type and his or her body must be used to diffuse and handle the guilt arising in the primeval mind, as a register of historical seismic shifts. He or she absorbs much of this guilt into their body — and diffuses and reframes it. Thus, the shamanic intellectual leads the way to psychical restoration and a healthier society.
***THIS MATERIAL IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT
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Maybe this video makes some sense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiEYUKv3E9U
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\\ – If they acknowledge that they have anxiety, they won’t need to pummel the child (physically or psychologically) to keep it at bay. They will leave the kid in peace and deal with their own psychological problems.
I am not sure. What if one says “I have bad nerves / I worry a lot, please, don’t go there” ?
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This situation wouldn’t have arisen in my family because my parents would have kicked me out of the house.
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Adding: I always knew as teen I could not come to them with those kinds of problems. My mother is definitely of the “Don’t worry your father” school of thought and I knew from an early age not to go to him for advice.
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I’m very sorry, this is really sad.
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