Filed under: Uncategorized
Awful story about an 11 year old boy in Pennsylvania who allegedly shot his Step-Mother in the back of the head while she was sleeping and then went off to school. The Step-Mother, age 26, was 8 months pregnant and her 4 year old daughter found her body.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090222/ap_on_re_us/pregnant_woman_killed
The coverage of the story is a joke which doesn’t mention anything about the levels of tensions that exist in Step-Families. The Step-Mother’s parents say the boy was “jealous” of the Step-Mother and her daughter. The Father said he didn’t have a clue what was going on.
This is so damn idiotic. Now the kid is being tried as an adult. What was a stressed out 11 year old boy doing with free access to guns for anyway?
We will never hear about all the mean and petty things the Step-Mother did to the kid in order to make him feel left out. We will never hear about how the Father is responsible for this whole thing by being oblivious to it. We don’t know if the kid has a Mother off in the wings somewhere as well to contend with (and probably defend).
If your kid goes to school and has to deal with a group of bullies you tell him to beat the bullies back. But if you are married to a bully you expect the kid to just sit there and take it. I’m not saying that this is what happened in this case, the Step-Mother may have been a great person. Because of the harassment that this blog has been receiving from the Step-Parents, I certainly think that would be an exceptional situation. An d I doubt you’d find a whole lot of Step-Children who would assume that she was a sweetheart, and probably because of a personal experience they have.
May that woman’s soul rest in peace. Wouldn’t it be nice if a case like this could lead to a reality check and eye opening to parents and society and the media (won’t even try to reason with psychologists) about how much stress a kid can take on.
Filed under: Uncategorized
On January 26, 2009 a woman named Nadya Suleman gave birth to Octuplets. These babies were the first Octuplets to all survive in the United States but because Suleman is a Single Mother the world is turning against her. Instead of offering to help her with her children people are sending death threats. The online knitting community that I belong to is doing nothing but insulting her. As a kid who watched my Mother fall apart because she knew how the world treats single women I am devastated by the level of cruelty that is being aimed at this woman. She is not beyond criticism. She couldn’t afford to raise the 6 children that she’s already got. The Doctors did nothing to counsel her for what was obviously unrealistic behavior. She evidently had plastic surgery to make herself look “marketable.” Some Plastic Surgeon probably did the surgeries for free just to practice making somebody look like Angelina Jolie. It was a really crazy thing to do, maybe delusional, maybe an act of desperation.
It seems that she did this for attention and for money. But, the thing is she needs help. Her children need help. I guess we’re all going to stand by and let her deal with this on her own. If for some weird reason a man were to suddenly have to take care of 14 kids everyone would be there pitching in. There’s another family that had 8 children, but one died at birth. I’m sure this family couldn’t afford the kids either, the parents didn’t have to opt for multiple births either, but, because the parents were married nobody insulted them. They were probably sent Pampers by the boatload.
Why are we treating this one woman so badly? Like it or not, she just made medical news. Those babies were meant to be born.
Suleman can’t afford to raise her children on her own. I just tried to check for the Suleman family’s website to find the address for donations but it has been shut down. I heard that her publicist had been receiving death threats. I’m writing this out of total disgust. What the Hell is the matter with people?
Filed under: Exemplary Children of Divorce, Movies About Growing Up in Divorce, Uncategorized
For some reason I’ve been remembering the old Horror movie from the 1960’s called Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
Now appreciated mostly as a camp classic it is one of the most psychotic portrayals of women living together under one roof that has ever been produced. The two actresses in the movie let their ugliest sides show, almost as if they were giving the finger to the Hollywood Glamour machine. At any rate, I just can’t imagine someone coming from an Intact family being able to create that level of tension within a house. The story is mostly about sibling rivalry, two spinsters with life long jealousies and resentments almost kill each other.
Just had to check…both Joan Crawford and Bette Davis were Children of D. Man, you can tell they were given way too much information at too tender an age.
Bette Davis’ parents divorced in 1915 when she would have been around 10 years old.
Joan Crawford’s father left just a few months after she was born.
Out of curiosity I checked the biographies of other screen stars from the 20th Century and found the following:
Sophia Loren – parents never married
Audrey Hepburn – Parents divorced around Age 6
Lauren Bacall – Parents divorced Age 5
Jean Harlow – Parents divorced Age 11
Lana Turner – Parents divorce around Age 9
Marilyn Monroe – Parents divorced Age 1-2
Filed under: Abandonment, indifferent parents, Mentally Ill parents, separate households, Stepfamilies, The Other Parents Genes, Uncategorized
Many kids experience the loss of one of the parents. The double relationships are too complicated for day to day life. The manipulations and fighting are miserable. The transferring back and forth and constant planning and arranging for meeting times. The awkward hellos and good-byes that aren’t supposed to exist in a family.
One parent leaves. Usually this is the Father. Sometimes its the Mother. Abandonment by Father is acceptable by society, abandonment by Mother is not. This generally leads to a feeling of confusion and anger for the kid, especially as an adult. There’s a subtle coldness in the eyes of these people if you talk about your parents to them. The parent is out there somewhere, irresponsible and indifferent, maybe dead, maybe not. Fathers will often summon their daughters back once they find out they are dying. I remember this happening to a friend of mine. The Father had left the family destitute and on welfare long ago. He remarried and lived in wealth with his new family, very rarely paying attention to his first three children who were left with a mother who sort of went insane. Suddenly he offered to let the girl live with the family. Turns out they needed a nurse.
The new Mickey Rourke movie Warrior shows this situation. Rourke is an aging professional Wrestler who has a heart attack and can’t wrestle anymore. He suddenly remembers that he has a daughter and he messes up with her one last time. She, of course, gets screwed one last time.
I have no idea what happens when the Mother tries to reconnect. I’ve actually never known anyone in that situation. I do remember a Meryl Streep movie about this. The Son is Gay and dying from AIDS. His Mother has abandonned him years before. Meryl makes you sympathize with her, of course. These situations always require so much sympathy, that’s the problem. There’s a grim, levelled off sense of completion if you can sympathize with a person’s guilt.
Often Divorce can make the situation work so that a relationship can develop between the missing parent and the child. This happened for me. My Father said in part he wanted to be able to connect with his kids. This was partly true and mostly a stupid manipulative thing to say. He shouldn’t have married my friend’s mother if I meant anything to him. But he used it as an excuse. And I did get to know him. And if you get to know your parent you get to know your gene pool. Sometimes that’s not desireable, sometimes it’s very useful.
I can say after the fact that I would have been better off if I hadn’t taken all that extra time to get to know him because it led ultimately to more hurt. I had to watch what he did to my mother, then I had to have it done to me, then I had to have it done to me through his wife. Once is enough. Best to cut the cord. That’s only my opinion, but my opinion comes from experience. But, I did get to know him. I do know that he really did try. I probably lost a big part of my self-respect helping him to be a parent. My feelings for him are still one of shock and indifference. I don’t think a human soul can open up that kind of a box.
Spoiled Children of Divorce 