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It's possible that I am just excessively jaded because of my job where I see such horrible stories about child abuse every day. But the story of a mother who abandoned her baby son with a babysitter she met over Craigslist doesn't seem nearly as bad to me as it might have otherwise. The mom got to know the sitter over a period of weeks and left the baby in hands she had deemed safe. That is better than most.
The mother, who allegedly works as a stripper, found the new sitter on Craigslist over Thanksgiving and began using her. This past Wednesday, she never came to get the baby, and when the sitter called, she said the baby wasn't her "problem" anymore. The baby is now with authorities.
The story is awful and sad. A mother abandoning her 1-year-old baby is never a happy story, but compared to the Casey Anthony-like cases and horrific abuse stories we see every day, this one just seems at least like the mom tried to do the right thing.
As a parent who adores my children and can barely fathom even being late to pick them up from school or a sitter's house, this story hurts my heart. But stories of mothers who kill their children, drown them, beat them, and rape them also fill my inbox daily. At least this mother tried to find someone responsible to care for her child.
The fact is, finding a sitter on Craigslist isn't all that weird, even though the story seems to imply it is. I know many upwardly mobile, intelligent women with high degrees who found very responsible, good sitters through Craigslist, so that part isn't easy to judge.
I have no idea what this mother was going through and I have never been through anything that would make me think abandoning my child was a good idea. But the level of desperation she felt must have been extreme. Selfish or not, she chose to leave her baby behind. She is no kind of mother and probably did her baby a favor.
At just 1, her baby has a good shot at finding a family who will raise him well and love him the way a parent should. This woman shouldn't be allowed to take her baby back. She made her choice.
Luckily for her baby, this isn't the end of the story. He will likely have a better life now than the one he might have had with a mother like that.
Do you think this story has a silver lining?
Image via AlishaV/Flickr
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