Why are young parents killing kids at alarming rates?
By: Dr. Samori Swygert
Parents and guardians are killing kids at a rate that I’ve never seen before. This alarming trend appears to resurface almost weekly. We turn on the news, and see how a child has been brutalized, tortured, abused, raped, abandoned, and often times murdered.
Matthew 5:9- Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God
It truly hurts hearing the countless stories of child abuse. We hate hearing how innocent people are harmed. What is more innocent than a baby or child? What threat does a baby or little child pose to an adult? Babies are physically defenseless and vulnerable. However, babies are being discarded like trash, LITERALLY.
Caveat: I don’t have all the answers
I don’t have the answers, but sometimes good solutions develop from introducing discussion topics and touching common cords in people. I believe this current crisis is a multifactorial phenomenon.
The most visible characteristic is the young age of the parents involved. Many of the parents are young, and especially prominent in their 20’s.
Are we failing our youth, or losing the battle between older parents and the current social culture?
What do I mean? The current climate is “hyper-sexualized”. American media promotes promiscuity. However, are we providing that counterbalance to filter the message? Society sells sex, but it doesn’t initiate a nationwide campaign about the reality of parenting.
When the pleasure of sex is over, the period is late, the morning sickness develops, the EPT device shows up positive, and the doctor displays the sonogram……THINGS GET REAL FOR YOU, but the Hollywood machine continues production, and the hospital sends you the bill for delivery.
Becoming a parent places you immediately into the driver seat, and the baby in the car seat. Teenagers, and many young adults are not prepared for this LIFESTYLE CHANGE. Many don’t have a support system, a job/career to financially support this new life, and sadly many youth end up as single parents. These are adult stresses placed on a teenage and young adult mind.
Ideally, and utopian in thought, we hope for a two parent household with dual income. However, reduce this down to a teenager or early twenty year old parent by themselves and a minimum wage job (or unemployed). Cognitive dissonance may develop because being a teen parent is a lifestyle change that creates a conflict of interest to individuals unwilling to forfeit or relinquish their pre-parenting lifestyle and freedom.
Many young parents may also be foster care teens that have no parental involvement with a vested interest in their future. What will become of the decision making process of this young teenage foster parent? They can’t call on mom, dad, auntie, or uncle? Many young parents deal with shame and embarrassment of the situation of their pregnancy.
Do drugs have an implication in this?
I remember growing up in the 80s. Those were crazy times, cocaine and crack were ubiquitous. We often heard about the long-term effects of “crack babies”. Well I have a curious question, and I base it off the surge in diagnoses of ADD and ADHD when the DSM III was revised to the DSM IV. What are the long term effects of Ritalin and other psychoactive agents on children?
It’s 2014, and from the late 80s to now, the diagnoses of ADD and ADHD has exploded, along with the pharmacological treatment of these mental diagnoses. Is it possible that we are also seeing the results of long-term use of these psychoactive medications? Kids that have been on medication since 3rd grade are now engaging in intercourse, and being presented with the demands of parenthood, and never learned coping, but were taught “doping”.
We fail our kids when we don’t routinely teach them communication skills, constructive methods of expression, patience, sacrifice, coping skills, anger management, healthy conflict resolution, and how to deal with hurt and pain. We are allowing the pharmaceutical industry to do all of the above in a 25 or 50 mg tablet.
Instead of addressing all these intrinsic values, we are throwing chemicals at them. That’s like me being heartbroken because my dad died, and they say “take this pill”. The pill is only chemistry at work, but it doesn’t reconcile the root of my emotions, which is the loss of a person that gave me good memories. Essentially, I’m altering by body chemically to fix something that has no chemical cause.
However, it’s also irresponsible for me to act like mental illness isn’t real. I personally know individuals that suffer from it. I also have female friends that say postpartum depression is REAL! We also hear of parental mental illnesses like Munchausen syndrome.
Furthermore, there is another trend of parents claiming that their children are possessed and that they must exorcise and kill their babies.
Also, as friends and family members, it is our duty to be sure that our young parents and their mates are drug free! Many street drugs can also be traced back to these gruesome and heinous acts. We must speak up for them and to them, in the name of these babies being murdered. Say something if you know one or both of the parents are abusing illegal drugs.
Other impetuses
Some pregnancies are methods of entrapment. This is not gender specific, some females do this, and there are plenty of possessive and maniacal men that will impregnate a female to maintain some sort of “claim and relevance” to the female. However, a BABIES LIFE is far more important than a selfish obsession to keep a mate. What happens when the parent defies your method of entrapment and still leaves? Many times, animosity and resentment develops and the anger is displaced on the infant. Infanticide may occur out of spite, retribution, and frustration. We’ve got to stop this NOW!
What are some intervening solutions we can practice as friends and family?
