There are days go by when your kids drive you nuts, no question. But do you ever stop loving them?
If you did, would you tell a British tabloid?
Shelley Price got the burden of eleven years off her chest to the Daily Mail this week, telling the paper she just can't bring herself to love the little girl she had with an ex-boyfriend eleven years ago.
"I know what people will think. Everyone will hate me. I'm the woman
who doesn't like her own child. But I'm speaking out because I'm
convinced I'm not alone," she told the paper.
I don't actually doubt her words. As a mom who went through a bout of postpartum depression (fixed by good drugs, take that Tom Cruise), I can identify with a mother's apathy. Fortunately, there is nothing but love for my daughter coursing through my veins these days, but I am willing to bet there are mothers whose depression never gets the appropriate treatment. There too are mothers who kill, mothers who abuse, mothers who neglect their children - a sure sign that not every mother is consumed by pure love for their offspring. What's more, there are mothers who perhaps got pregnant and never should - who (dare I say it?) should have gone for an abortion. We're not all made to be parents. Physically, perhaps. But mentally? Emotionally?
Price says she was meant to be a parent. Her proof? She's got nothing but love for her second daughter, two-year-old Poppy.
Which makes this story all the more cruel. Price has spoken out about her plight just as eleven-year-old Catherine is hitting puberty, a time when a pre-teen's life is already in upheaval. Adding the knowledge that her mother doesn't love her, and the whole world knows took the burden off of Shelley Price and put it squarely on the shoulders of her hormonal tween daughter. Throw in her mother's assertion that she loves her younger daughter, and gone too is the comfort that "maybe her mother wasn't made to love" or "maybe her mother has a condition of some sort." There is simply no rationalizing the facts away. The likely option a child will turn to is "there must be something wrong with me," when it's very clear to adults that the fault lies with Shelley Price.
As a parent, it is our job to protect our children. Period. From the day a child is delivered (or adopted), they become our main priority. But Shelley Price has put her own discomfort first, and by opening up "for other mothers," she has sounded the death knell for her daughter's innocence.
Perhaps this child could already tell her mother didn't love her (old-fashioned sibling rivalry, if nothing else, would likely have brought that to light). Now her mother has removed all doubt. For children, who depend on their parents not only as their first line of defense but as a stumbling block, there's always that knowledge that their parents are the sole source of unconditional love.
A little girl has lost that, and her mother gets to feel better about herself because she's "done a service" to other mothers. Shelley Price says she's now going to work to improve her relationship with her eldest daughter. "'I can't change the past, but I'm hoping we can make our relationship
better. I want to put it right, but perhaps it's too late for that."
She's sold her daughter's soul, and she can't get that back.
Source: The Daily Mail has removed the original story, but the piece is still available in full at We Kid You Not
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