Strollerderby

Can a Mom be 'Too Dumb' to Parent?

Posted by JeanneSager

Barbara Gamble’s IQ is in the double digits. Officially she’s mentally retarded. But does that make her “too dumb to parent?”

 

According to the Canadian government, yes, it does. The 27-year-old Vancouver mom has given birth five times, and she’s due any day to deliver a sixth. Her first five children were each seized by child welfare officials shortly after she gave birth, and she’s dreading this labor and delivery most because she fears they’ll be back.

 

It sounds like any mother’s worst nightmare, but to be fair, at least one of the children was reportedly suffering from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder when she was removed from Gamble’s care. That would mean Gamble drank throughout her pregnancy – to such an extent that her daughter was born with permanent defects.

 

But was it because she didn’t know any better? Her intelligence quotient is between 63 and 71. That’s classified as “mildly mentally handicapped,” and psychologists who’ve reviewed the case have said Gamble is emotionally immature, egocentric and depressive. They estimate she can learn basic parenting skills but would have difficulty adapting to the constant changes of parenting in every day life.

 

By looks at a newspaper alone, that would put her on par with half the parents in America. OK, maybe not half, but pretty darn close. There are no tests to pass to become a parent (unless you count hitting the stick just right with the pee), so there are no firm numbers on just how capable any of us are of being Mom and Dad.

 

I’m not a doctor or a psychologist, so I can’t pretend to know if Barbara Gamble truly has the skills to learn to care for her children. Providing her a chance, the same chance given to anyone who doesn't immediately set off a warning bell for being unable to care for their child, seems only fair.

 

But if it's clear – the way a crack baby’s mom’s drug addiction clearly makes her unfit or the way a schizophrenic mom’s living on the street and forgetting to feed her son makes her unfit – I say take the kids . . . and run. Or is it better to leave the kids there until something does go wrong?

 

Source: Vancouver Sun

Image: Vancouver Sun, Ward Perrin


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Comments

 

Alice said:

Obviously the children were removed from her care because she did not properly care for them, not because she is mildly mentally challenged.  This piece tired to mirepresent the facts by hinting that they were removed because she is midly retarded.  She is a danger to the welfare of her children AND happens to be mentally challenged.  

September 20, 2008 11:13 AM
 

Ana Voog said:

your inflammatory and simplistic headline is misleading.

it's not about her IQ , it's about much much more than that.

here is a link to the story in the vancouver sun:

www.canada.com/.../story.html

September 20, 2008 11:35 AM
 

Melissa said:

I knew someone who was mentally disabled.  She got married to another mentally disabled person and had two children and she wasn't able to care for them either.  Even if the children are not disabled, they may suffer from a lack of stimulation and that can lead to learning disabilites.  It is hard enough to know how to handle children when you aren't mentally disabled.

September 20, 2008 12:01 PM
 

Comstock said:

Many people have IQs "in the double digits" and they are not considered retarded. Average IQ is defined as 100. Many people within one standard deviation lower are in the double digits and considered to be normally intelligent.

September 20, 2008 4:12 PM
 

Knitty said:

As Comstock pointed out, millions of people with IQs "in the double digits" have and care for children.

In this particular case, I hope they continue taking these poor babies away.  The mother doesn't work, so she collects state assistance; state assistance isn't enough to cover her expenses, so she and her husband are up half the night dumpster-diving; they don't know how to cook, so they eat a diet of fast-food.  I don't know how much stock to put into the shrink's report, but his line about her dividing people into "all good" and "all bad" is chilling.  The adorable baby might be all good, but what about when the perfect baby becomes a demanding, challenging toddler?

The fact that she gave up on her other babies and keeps taking the "easy" route of just having more is also terribly disturbing.

September 20, 2008 8:47 PM
 

Treespeed said:

This woman can barely take care of herself and obviously has no concept of birth control, and it's debatable wether she should keep her kids? Those poor kids. How is it that the state cannot sterilize her or her moron husband? Wouldn't the best thing for the children be to not have the genetic deficit of these parents?

September 22, 2008 2:19 PM
 

Tessa said:

Thank God for Government intervention!!! WOW how did we ever get this far in our society without the Government spoon feeding us??? The cavemen were not very bright and they still managed to raise their young.

There are VERY intelligent people abusing and hurting their children and are still allowed to keep them. Parents that are known to abuse their children and allowed to keep them anyway.  WHY do you give the others a chance to try and fail and then let them try again??? What did these two do to piss off the Canadian Government to be punished so severely that they would steal their newborn babies? WHERE is the protection FROM the Government? Mr. Government man (GOD you like to be called)(and I know you are a man, no women would rip a baby from a mother's breast) why didn't you just raise your mighty staff and order them to be neutered and spayed like any other animal you don't want reproducing??? That would have been more humane...

Please, don't stop with this couple, steal all the babies you "THINK" will be born to unfit parents. Steal them all and start your own colony of "legally stolen" children.

WHY would you take their children and leave the other children in abusive homes? Filthy unfit homes, hungry children whose parents don't care and can't/won't feed them?

I know, let's pay people to have babies they can't afford so the kids can run the streets while their parents collect the welfare money and buy crack and the rest of us can pay to support the crack habit…ha...The AMERICAN way.....

October 2, 2008 11:06 AM
 

Kaethe said:

It's clear?  Not to me.  The child with fetal alcohol spectrum isn't proven, just "suspected".  Given that the decision was made to take away her first infant before birth, and on bogus grounds, it seems to me that a decision has been made to forbid her the opportunity to try.  If another woman with a similar IQ has been provided in-home assistance and is successfully raising five children, then it looks like sheer bloody-mindedness never to give this woman a chance.  And why?  Because she's disrespectful to the authorities who've screwed her over at every chance in her entire life.  Seriously, when the man designated to "assess" her, is bagging her for her poverty and bad attitude, the system is screwed.  

Oh, well there's also the fact that she's not staying within a budget of $900 a month when rent is $800.  Yeah, clearly it's her IQ that's to blame.

"Psychologists who’ve reviewed the case have said Gamble is emotionally immature, egocentric and depressive."  Shockingly, no one threw in paranoid, which I would be if people kept stealing my babies, legally, on specious grounds.

October 8, 2008 1:51 PM
 

Justina said:

What I can see so far from the majority of responses, is that you people are not intelligent enough to realize that eugenics does not exist anymore.

October 10, 2008 12:16 AM

About JeanneSager

Jeanne Sager is a writer who lives in upstate New York with her husband, daughter, a dog and too many cats. She refuses to believe motherhood comes with pumpkin appliqued sweaters, and she';s not ready to apologize for having only one child. She writes about raising her kid in her own hometown and the mom stuff she's not embarrassed to own at her blog, Inside Out (http://jeannesager.blogspot.com), she's contributing editor of Grand Magazine, and she's a regular essayist here on Babble

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