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seldearCatherine was a few hours old when she was abandoned outside a Melbourne hospital on the 13th May - Mother's Day.
"HOW COULD SHE?" screamed the headlines on Monday.
Joan - newborn, with her umbilical cord still attached - was left in a cardboard box across the road from a Sydney church, just this Sunday 10th June.
We haven't had the dramatised headlines yet, but I'm sure they're coming.
For the first week after Catherine's discovery, the news was full of her - and particularly her parentage. How could a mother do such a thing to her child? What kind of a woman would abandon her baby? What was going to happen to her?
Interestingly, there was very little said about the father.
I was instantly reminded of an episode of Joan of Arcadia, in which a baby is left in a sports bag in a dumpster while a girl makes a tearful call to police to pick up the child, and a witchhunt is on for the irresponsible mother who just abandoned her child.
It turns out that the mother is a cheerleader, pregant to a school football player who is also the son of one of the city's officials. In the teaser, the player is shown dumping the baby (a silhouette in shadows and streetlights) and it's implied that the girl was pressured to give up the child by the father. The attempt to charge the mother with neglect is dropped once it comes to light who the father is, and everything is smoothed over...but the girl is transferred to another school.
During the episode, Joan's mother (Mary Steenburgen) tries to bring up the matter of the father, but is dismissed. She is the one who, in the end, explains to her husband why the charges aren't being pressed: the politics of it all.
I have no personal experience of motherhood or pregnancy myself - it's all theory to me. However, I understand that it's not uncommon for women to become depressed after the birth of a child. I know that not all women are instantly maternal - or even maternal at all. And I know that parenting is a tiring and difficult experience - I only have to look at my own mum for proof of that.
And I know that everyone has a bio-mother and a bio-father. (Thank you, Claire Bennett, for introducing me to the term "bioparents" - so apt!)
But only the mother came under fire.
There are similar calls for Joan's mother to step forward, with authorities citing that she won't come under any charges for needing time out from her child.
However, I'm not entirely convinced that either Catherine or Joan need their respective mothers. A mother, certainly. Parents, if at all possible. Family, for sure. But surely it would be better for a child to go to a family that wants it than a reluctant parent? Adopt or foster the child out and give it a chance to grow up in love, without the stain of "what my mother did to me when I was six hours old" shadowing the relationship between parent and child.
Madeleine comes into it where a multimillionaire elderly developer stepped forward to offer a $300,000 home to Catherine and her mother (if her mother would step forward and be identified). A financial reward was offered on the life of a child.
When I was first discussing the search for Madeleine with someone on my f-list, I expressed the question: Why Madeleine?
I'm sure that this makes me a 'bad person' to certain people, and yet the question begs asking: Why Madeleine?
Why, out of the hundreds of children that go missing every year, is Madeleine special? Why advertise Madeleine and not Marie or Drew or Charlie? Why should the recovery of this one child be worth millions of dollars, while other parents - doubtless just as frantic to have their children back, but unwilling to push themselves into the public spotlight as the McCanns have - are stuck trying to communicate with a national police force that might feel they have more productive leads to follow than to hunt down lost children?
The person I was discussing it with said, in the world-weary tones of a cynic, "PR."
Before people crucify me for "omg, not having any sympathy for Madeleine or Catherine", I'd like to point out that I'd feel so much better about these offers of assistance if they were made for someone other than a much-publicised child - or even if the offer was spread around a dozen children lately missing.
Why Madeleine? Because she's cute and has big eyes that stare soulfully out of the picture? Because it assauges a sense of obligation to the things that people don't usually see and generally don't care about until they're brought to notice? Because it's good PR as my cynical friend says?
In regards to Catherine and the $300K house offer, I can think of families struggling to make ends meet, through little fault of their own. Sometimes people lack opportunity or encouragement to go out and do things, and sometimes life, the system, and fate are just against them. Not all the poor are lazy or opportunistic. Some are just poor.
Why Catherine and not them?
I'm sure people are saying it speaks nicely of these people to have offered financial help to the parents of Madeleine and Catherine. But a part of me insists that they're not doing this because they're good people: they're doing this because they want to look good. If they were doing this because they were good people, they'd make the same offer to many hundreds of other abandoned babies or the seekers of missing children. No, you can't help them all. But even a $50K offer of assistance to a struggling family, or a $50K reward for information on missing children wouldn't go astray. Philanthropy should never be practised solely when you get PR shots out of it - or else it's not philanthropy.
I do hope they find Madeleine - and the other children missing all around the world. I hope that Catherine and Joan find good homes to go to, and people to love them and bring them up.
I just can't stop asking, Why Madeleine?
"HOW COULD SHE?" screamed the headlines on Monday.
Joan - newborn, with her umbilical cord still attached - was left in a cardboard box across the road from a Sydney church, just this Sunday 10th June.
We haven't had the dramatised headlines yet, but I'm sure they're coming.
For the first week after Catherine's discovery, the news was full of her - and particularly her parentage. How could a mother do such a thing to her child? What kind of a woman would abandon her baby? What was going to happen to her?
Interestingly, there was very little said about the father.
I was instantly reminded of an episode of Joan of Arcadia, in which a baby is left in a sports bag in a dumpster while a girl makes a tearful call to police to pick up the child, and a witchhunt is on for the irresponsible mother who just abandoned her child.
It turns out that the mother is a cheerleader, pregant to a school football player who is also the son of one of the city's officials. In the teaser, the player is shown dumping the baby (a silhouette in shadows and streetlights) and it's implied that the girl was pressured to give up the child by the father. The attempt to charge the mother with neglect is dropped once it comes to light who the father is, and everything is smoothed over...but the girl is transferred to another school.
During the episode, Joan's mother (Mary Steenburgen) tries to bring up the matter of the father, but is dismissed. She is the one who, in the end, explains to her husband why the charges aren't being pressed: the politics of it all.
I have no personal experience of motherhood or pregnancy myself - it's all theory to me. However, I understand that it's not uncommon for women to become depressed after the birth of a child. I know that not all women are instantly maternal - or even maternal at all. And I know that parenting is a tiring and difficult experience - I only have to look at my own mum for proof of that.
And I know that everyone has a bio-mother and a bio-father. (Thank you, Claire Bennett, for introducing me to the term "bioparents" - so apt!)
But only the mother came under fire.
There are similar calls for Joan's mother to step forward, with authorities citing that she won't come under any charges for needing time out from her child.
However, I'm not entirely convinced that either Catherine or Joan need their respective mothers. A mother, certainly. Parents, if at all possible. Family, for sure. But surely it would be better for a child to go to a family that wants it than a reluctant parent? Adopt or foster the child out and give it a chance to grow up in love, without the stain of "what my mother did to me when I was six hours old" shadowing the relationship between parent and child.
Madeleine comes into it where a multimillionaire elderly developer stepped forward to offer a $300,000 home to Catherine and her mother (if her mother would step forward and be identified). A financial reward was offered on the life of a child.
When I was first discussing the search for Madeleine with someone on my f-list, I expressed the question: Why Madeleine?
I'm sure that this makes me a 'bad person' to certain people, and yet the question begs asking: Why Madeleine?
Why, out of the hundreds of children that go missing every year, is Madeleine special? Why advertise Madeleine and not Marie or Drew or Charlie? Why should the recovery of this one child be worth millions of dollars, while other parents - doubtless just as frantic to have their children back, but unwilling to push themselves into the public spotlight as the McCanns have - are stuck trying to communicate with a national police force that might feel they have more productive leads to follow than to hunt down lost children?
The person I was discussing it with said, in the world-weary tones of a cynic, "PR."
Before people crucify me for "omg, not having any sympathy for Madeleine or Catherine", I'd like to point out that I'd feel so much better about these offers of assistance if they were made for someone other than a much-publicised child - or even if the offer was spread around a dozen children lately missing.
Why Madeleine? Because she's cute and has big eyes that stare soulfully out of the picture? Because it assauges a sense of obligation to the things that people don't usually see and generally don't care about until they're brought to notice? Because it's good PR as my cynical friend says?
In regards to Catherine and the $300K house offer, I can think of families struggling to make ends meet, through little fault of their own. Sometimes people lack opportunity or encouragement to go out and do things, and sometimes life, the system, and fate are just against them. Not all the poor are lazy or opportunistic. Some are just poor.
Why Catherine and not them?
I'm sure people are saying it speaks nicely of these people to have offered financial help to the parents of Madeleine and Catherine. But a part of me insists that they're not doing this because they're good people: they're doing this because they want to look good. If they were doing this because they were good people, they'd make the same offer to many hundreds of other abandoned babies or the seekers of missing children. No, you can't help them all. But even a $50K offer of assistance to a struggling family, or a $50K reward for information on missing children wouldn't go astray. Philanthropy should never be practised solely when you get PR shots out of it - or else it's not philanthropy.
I do hope they find Madeleine - and the other children missing all around the world. I hope that Catherine and Joan find good homes to go to, and people to love them and bring them up.
I just can't stop asking, Why Madeleine?
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 04:43 am (UTC)My hubby finds it a little shocking that I can say now, after what we've been through that years ago, when I wasn't ready for a kid, I would have considered abortion had I gotten pregnant. I still feel very strongly that abortion is a very valid option. Dumping your baby in a cardboard box, I find a little tougher to get my head around. But, then again, I personally know several mums who didn't connect with their babies right away and these are sorted, financially secure mums in happy, stable relationships so I can't imagine how difficult it must be for someone in a very difficult position. And that's before you even start talking about the very real illness of post-natal depression.
Right back at the start of the whole Madeline thing, I was shot down for suggesting that if she weren't some cute, white, British kid, the press wouldn't be onto it anywhere near as much as they have been, let alone all the people offering money for her return.
I am reminded of the 'every 3 seconds' campaign where a child dies un-necessarily every 3 seconds due to poverty. But you know, because the mum was probably expecting to lose the child anyway and she's poor and lives in a developing country, that's okay then isn't it?!
no subject
Date: 2007-06-11 08:45 am (UTC)Still, I know of people who would love to adopt a child if they could only find one on whom the parents had relinquished rights (that makes the baby sound like a possession, which I don't intend it to). As it is, I think they're adopting one from China or Asia somewhere.
I certainly think that one of the big reasons for Madeleine's international fame is because she's a cutie. And the family is "just like us" - there's a degree of "It Could Happen To You!" in the reaction.
It's along the same lines that the west went into shock over 9/11 - these weren't people in a far-off-country whose customs and skin colour are different and they've been at war forever anyway - these were people "just like us!"
The saddest thing is that the empathy generated from such situations never seems to extend beyond the specific situation. People will offer rewards for Madeleine, or offer to adopt Catherine or Joan, but would never think of helping another set of parents find their children, or take in another abandoned child.