I have CNN on in the background, and Betty Nguyen had a report on children whose parents cannot be found. The last child was an 18-month-old girl. Nguyen said that the baby says, ‘Mama! Mama!’ whenever a female walks by. The she said, ‘The child’s mother is 13. The mother is also a missing child.’
Wow.
Blimey! Doesnt bear thinking about does it!
Children having children… <sigh> … like there isn’t enough grief in the world already.
When I used to work for the state health care system I used to see this a lot. And I live in Massachusetts, where we’re supposed to be all edumacated and liberal and stuff. Had a call once from a 35-year-old woman who had custody of her 5-year-old grandchild. I’m 34, single and childless so this kind of blew my mind! The one that upset me most though was a girl that I couldn’t help because of her age. She was 13 and needed to change doctors because she was pregnant. We weren’t allowed to make changes for children under, I think it was 18 but might have been 16, they had to have a parent or guardian call for them. The girl said her foster mother had just given birth herself and wouldn’t be home for two weeks. All I could tell her was to have her DSS worker call back. What the bloody hell is a pregnant 13-year-old doing unsupervised for two weeks - and that already in a foster home??
Another thing that boggled my mind was that we could update information on a baby at the mother’s request if the mother was as young as 15 - but she would still have to have her mother call to change her own information.