Friday, September 5, 2008

Everybody Isn't Meant to Be a Parent

One day I was going to the store and I saw a young woman with two children. One child was in a stroller and there was a little girl, about 4, standing next to her. The child asked for some chips, or some type of snack and whined a bit like any normal child would do. The saying "a kid in a candy shop" exists for a reason. The little girl was not being really bad or loud but her mother yanked the girls arm so hard and dragged her out of the store while muttering some type of expletive to the child. I could not believe my eyes. It was not as if she pulled the infamous tantrum and threw herself on the floor, kicking and screaming. She was calm, just the usual plea of a child who wants sugar. Another lady and myself simply looked at each other and then she said "some people simply are not meant to be parents" I am pro-choice by nature. But incidents like these make me wish there was more information and resources, not necessarily for abortion, but just about parenting in general, whether it was adoption info, abortion info, birth control info or parenting counseling. There needs to be more resources in inner-city communities to help young woman adapt to parenting or opt-out of parenting. Supposedly teenage pregnancies have dropped but the incidents of unprepared/faulty parenting have not. These are issues that need to be severely addressed.