Elsa (who is turning 8 in a few weeks time) asked me today why there are mothers who leave their newborn babies at the hospital. She had seen a piece on the news. What do you tell a child when they come with such a question? I tried to explain that there are people who feel that they are in such a bad situation that they see no other option and that they think that their child will be better off with someone else.
- So it is not because they don’t like their child then, Elsa asked.
No, I answered. Almost all parents love their children very, very much!
As a parent you never really know if you are doing the right thing. You try to. I want to be a good mother and I want to give them a start in life that will make them strong enough to make the right choices at the right time. But how do you prepare them for life? When our guards in South Africa used machine guns on burglars in our back yard the kids slept through it all. When a paedophile was picked up outside our kid’s school in the Netherlands we never told the kids anything. Was I worried? Of course, but I did not want my fear to reach them.
Compared to our life in Johannesburg and in Boston, life in Sweden is pretty safe. Yet, things do happen everyday and everywhere. I don’t want my kids to worry. I don’t want them to know the full picture yet (which I myself can not comprehend anyway). And at the same time you cannot let them live in a bubble. They see things, hear things and they want to know. They have a right to know – at least at a certain age.
But, why do some people leave their children behind in today’s society? I have no good answer but I think that whatever the reason might be it is never done easily.
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