I hadn’t quite gotten over the terrible story of the woman, Aundria Jones, who went out partying New Year’s Eve and came home at 4 am to find out her two small sons, age 4 and 7, nearly dead in a fire in her Fox Meadows condo; they died the following day. Yes, she looks pathetic in the booking mug, but really: What kind of a mother does something like that? How could she have cared so little for those boys?
Then, this morning, another story, about a Millington dad who just had to pick up some energy pills at Wal-mart, so he left his two sons, age 5 and 6, in his pickup in the parking lot. The story focused on how cold it was yesterday, but to me, the really blood-chilling thing was that this guy actually thought his kids were OK because a security camera was in the parking lot. Jesus. Fortunately another shopper noticed the boys before anything happened to them. No word yet on what will happen to the dad.
Is it really possible for parents to be so uncaring and stupid? And I know the two incidents had radically different outcomes, but they seem part of a larger issue: How to get people who have kids to take care of them? What should happen to these parents?
Poor kids: If their parents can’t even care enough to keep them minimally safe, what hope do they have of learning to read, getting a good breakfast and staying healthy? Truly a depressing way to start the year …
Responses to “Hey, it’s a kid, not an inconvenience!”
January 4th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
they make you take a test to drive a car, but they’ll let just any old yahoo become a parent.
January 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am
Kids are inconveniences. That’s why I’ll never have one. I believe that once you have a child, they come first until you have it raised and on their own. I am too selfish to put another person first. Unfortunately, some people, like Aundria Jones, are selfish like me and have children anyway.
January 17th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Although both parents were very negligent, Ms. Jones’ children died as a result. It sure is ironic that the male’s story did not get much press. Hmmm…I wonder why. I think we all know the answer to that.
When tragic stories like these happen, it should be lessons to the rest of us on WHAT NOT TO DO.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:29 am
What to me is sadder than the man leaving his children in the car is that when I was 6, no one would have blinked at the idea of leaving a 6 year old in a car briefly while shopping. (Unless it was hot.) It’s not just parents who have gotten worse, it’s the whole world.
As for Aundria Jones, the answer to your question about what kind of mother would do such a thing would seem to be “an unfit mother.” The grandmother was raising the children, so it seems everyone already knew she was unfit. It’s just tragic that she wasn’t able to control her impulses during a short holiday visit with her children. Can you imagine what the grandmother must be thinking and feeling right now?
Anyway, it’s not news to me that some parents don’t care for their children. Did you know that a child is more likely to be murdered by his or her own mother than by all other categories of people combined? And in the majority of cases of child sexual abuse, the perpetrator is the father? 25% of children are at least once during their childhood beaten badly enough to require a visit to the emergency room. If you look at nothing but the numbers, it starts to look as if birth parents are the most unfit people possible to raise children! No wonder social workers start to look at all parents as potential criminals.
The truth is that MOST parents are pretty good people who love their children a lot. But there’s no test for becoming a parent. Look at all the people in the world, the drug users, the thieves, not to mention the woman you can’t stand at work who is just plain mean to everybody around her. Those people have children too.