by Meghan R. Coleman

Created on: May 09, 2008

People read about child abandonment in the papers, in books, and even on the computer. When most parents are charged with child abandonment, it is not always just leaving their child at the park and forgetting about them. Most of these cases are the parents still want the child, they just don't have enough common sense to put their child first, or even know what is right or wrong.

For example: a mother leaves her children with her mother for a week or so while she's out getting high. She does this all the time, it's just their grandmother, nothing is going to go wrong. It just so happens that their grandmother lives in a studio apartment, with not enough food, and a lice infestation. One day the apartment has a gas leak and someone calls the gas company. Someone comes into this residence looking for the leak, and finds this situation to be unsatisfactory and calls the appropriate authorities. The grandmother, knowing what's wrong gets scared and starts telling the authorities that her daughter is no where to be found. It not her fault she tells them. She's having enough trouble taking care of her self, let alone her two grandkids. She also states that her daughter keeps leaving them with her. Instead of her daughter getting charged with child abandonment and neglect, like she hoped, she too is charged with child neglect. You could think about both sides, why did this happen? There must be a cause to all this pain and suffering.

Yes. There are many reasons. The biggest: drugs and alcohol.

But why do people chose drugs or alcohol over their children? Possibly mental illness. What makes people depressed? Having depression is the most common illness, and most of the time it can be treated. So why aren't these parents being treated? Money. Things cost money. And when you don't have insurance, they cost double the price. How do we get money? Jobs, right? So we have someone, possibly high, who is high because they're depressed. They're depressed because they haven't been treated. They can't get treated because they do not have the money or the resources. So inevitably, if they find a job, they probably can't keep it because of their drug addiction, which also I might add is very expensive. The job that they do get is possibly part of their depression. Because when they get paid either A. they are so addicted they spend all their money on their "self-medication" or B. they get high or drunk because their paycheck wasn't enough to pay the bills. OK, so we've narrowed this

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