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troubleOnline because I am foolishly updating my list of murdered people with disabilities. Someone please tell me why it is that when a parent murders a disabled child, the defense always brings up "situational crime, not likely to be repeated"? Do they say this about the murder of non-disabled children? Is this the defense now? What about for coworkers? "Well, the defendant is unlikely to ever get a job again, so this is a situation that will never again come up, so let's give them a lighter sentence."
I don't know why people murder their disabled children, I really don't. So I don't know: is it because they're children? As was famously uttered by William Marshall to King Stephen, people do often still posses the hammer and anvil with which to make more children. Is it because they're not likely to be alone with a disabled person again? Average person in North America is going to spend 7 years of their life with a disability, so I find it unlikely that no one who murdered their disabled child will ever never see a disabled person again in their lives: parents, spouses, other children, friends, neighbours, coworkers.
Or is it simply that it's still seen as a mercy to kill a child with a disability, regardless of that child's quality of life? Is that the direction we want to go?
I know prosecutors have a responsibility - one I do respect! - to get their client the best they can out of convictions. But why do they have to go "Well, it was a situational crime, one unlikely to be repeated." Unless they make exactly the same argument for parents who murder their able-bodied children, they need to really think about what the fuck they are saying.
I don't know why people murder their disabled children, I really don't. So I don't know: is it because they're children? As was famously uttered by William Marshall to King Stephen, people do often still posses the hammer and anvil with which to make more children. Is it because they're not likely to be alone with a disabled person again? Average person in North America is going to spend 7 years of their life with a disability, so I find it unlikely that no one who murdered their disabled child will ever never see a disabled person again in their lives: parents, spouses, other children, friends, neighbours, coworkers.
Or is it simply that it's still seen as a mercy to kill a child with a disability, regardless of that child's quality of life? Is that the direction we want to go?
I know prosecutors have a responsibility - one I do respect! - to get their client the best they can out of convictions. But why do they have to go "Well, it was a situational crime, one unlikely to be repeated." Unless they make exactly the same argument for parents who murder their able-bodied children, they need to really think about what the fuck they are saying.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 12:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 01:49 am (UTC)My father adores me. He thinks I'm pretty awesome as a person, and he also has that whole paternal love and instinct thing going. He would do pretty much anything for me, and he would die for me in a heartbeat.
My father also once dropped me, from a height of a few inches, onto my parents' bed, and told my mother through gritted teeth that she should take me for a while, because he was done.
He did this because he knew that if he didn't, he was going to hurt me - shake me, probably, cause me harm, and he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he did.
I didn't have a long-term disability - I just had infant colic. Three months solid of screaming in infant pain. It was a regular cycle. Four hours of screaming, twenty minutes of sleeping, four hours of screaming.
My parents got through it, and I got through it, because my parents weren't alone in their parenting. My grandparents helped out - taking me and my older sister both, or one set of grandparents taking each of us, to give my parents some respite and a chance to sleep.
Not everyone has that. Not everyone has anyone they ask for help, and in any case, the message from society at large is that they're supposed to be able to handle this, it's What Parenting Takes. Never mind that it's quite a new shift in society for people to be so separated from extended family and older generations to help with child-rearing. (In many cultures, traditionally, child-rearing is done almost exclusively by grandparents or people of the grandparents' generation.) So they get overwhelmed, and they have nowhere to turn, and they break.
All the other stresses involved in parenting aside, no human being can remain even close to sane without sleep - it's just not medically possible.
All this is why, yes, some people empathise with parents who kill their children. They don't condone it, they don't really forgive it in any real sense - it's just that some people got to the point where they could see the place where that happens, and it scared them, and they know how hard it can be to deal with children who have problems.
I know several mothers of young babies right now. Even the ones with the most angelic babies, who sleep when they're supposed to and don't cry too much and are perfectly healthy, get to the point sometimes where they're just sick of their child. They adore them, they get half an hour away from them and they miss them and want them back desperately - but they need that half hour away now and then, because otherwise they're with this kid all day, every day, and it's natural to want a little bit of time now and then not watching over another human being.
When a child is sick, or has a disability, it can be more stressful, because they need more care. They might cry more, and my parents can tell you, when your child won't stop crying, it hurts - it's frustrating and painful to know that your child is suffering and you can't do anything to make it stop.
I can't imagine what it's like if your child has a disability that causes pain that you know will never be cured, or even if it's just that your child requires a level of care, assistance, and supervision beyond the normal that is exhausting and also looks to be endless.
But that's a burden almost no-one could ever carry alone, I think.
A parent murdering a child - any child - is a deep, profound tragedy, but part of the blame goes to society, because it never should have got to that point.
This is why respite care is critically important for carers of anyone with a disability, why people with disabilities who have spouses or partners should still get assistance from elsewhere because being a carer is not the same as being a friend or a partner, and why parents should have some childcare options even if they're not working.
And why blanket judgementalism on this topic is faintly grating.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 02:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 03:28 am (UTC)Thank you.
I just got home from therapy, so I'm feeling emotionally fragile and was wary of reading your reply to my comment at all for fear I had offended you with mine and your response was angry or hostile in some way. (Forgive me, I don't know you at all, and I'm wary of Internet People that way.)
Instead, your response is awesome, and made me feel good about people, the world in general, and the people I encounter in friends' journals, who tend to be kind of awesome.
Seriously. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 05:18 pm (UTC)Depending upon our own mental status (which varies even in healthy people under stress) we have some control over what thoughts we choose to focus on (but not as much as a lot of people believe we should have).
The only thing we can really control is what we do.
One of the reasons I don't have children is I know how quickly I can go from 0 to 60 and flip out and yell at the cats. The cats can't understand me when I yell, and I'm getting better at that, but the chance that I would ever have enough emotional control to deal with even a very healthy baby before I ran out of the physical ability to run after one or the ability to make one? Pretty infinitesimal.
Yet our society does not encourage people to take their level of energy, emotional health or physical condition into consideration when deciding whether or not to get pregnant or continue an unplanned pregnancy; in fact, people are often told that the baby will improve matters, when that's usually not the case.
Women who have mood disorders are especially prone to postpartum psychosis and psychosis in pregnancy; they don't tell you that one either, because our society is so natalist that we push women away from even considering that it might be better for their health not to parent or at least not to become pregnant, even when they get to this conclusion on their own.
Also, I think that people who are anti-genetic testing before and during pregnancy (I am definitely pro) should consider that many of the people who go for it are not in the best of mental and physical health themselves, which is why they want to know if their potential offspring (not yet born, not yet fully developed) might have problems and what those problems are likely to be.
I can't equate that with fascist eugenics even if people do decide to terminate pregnancies. In fact I would expect some terminations; but then, I believe everybody who gets born has the right to live as long as they can, and nobody has the right to force anyone to continue a pregnancy if they don't want to, period.
It's never 100% possible to know what you're getting into with a pregnancy, but informed choices are ALWAYS better than uninformed choices, particularly if the choice is to continue a high-risk pregnancy, so that you're prepared for all the possible outcomes and have plans in place to not only take care of your potentially very disabled child but also take care of yourself while doing so.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 04:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 01:26 am (UTC)The defense lawyers are aiming for no convictions, at least in USian parlance, and the prosecutors are the people attempting to make their convictions. (in the last paragraph, you have the prosecutors trying to get the client out of convictions.) I don't know if that's just getting names turned around or that things mean differently, but I thought I would point it out.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 09:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 08:53 pm (UTC)