JILL FARRIS writes:

I agree that it is a lack of bonding that leads to these tragedies, such as the mother who left her baby in the car. I remember a close relative who had a baby (a “wanted and planned” baby) in her mid-thirties and was not prepared for how hard it would be to leave her baby with her well-paid nanny to go back to work. I spoke to her the week she was done with her maternity pay and she sobbed over the phone about how much she was going to miss her baby.

Two months later, when I spoke to her and brought up the subject she sounded aloof and hardened. She said, “You do what you have to do” with a shrug. A year later she told me that her toddler would not go to sleep and since she had to work the next day she locked his bedroom door and let him fall asleep on the other side of the door after sobbing himself into exhaustion.

She was not a single or poor mother. I could say that she worked to pay for their swimming pool and to pay their nanny over-the-top wages but even that isn’t true. They could have had those things on her husband’s salary.

The little boy from this family grew up to steal a large sum of money from his mother and ended up going to jail for a year. Which is worse; dying in a car seat because your mother forgot about you or becoming a felon because your mother substituted material things for love?

The bond between parents and their children is a God -given one. Will God judge us for treating the gift of our children so lightly? I believe He will.

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