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My parents were what I now realize were model parents. I am the baby of the family, with a sister nine years older and a brother 12 years older. Though I was a big surprise, they accepted my birth as a blessing. I grew up thinking this was the norm, and it may have been during that era, though I am meeting more and more persons in my age bracket who were abused, kicked out of their homes, or totally neglected growing up. It possibly wasn't talked about back then, or maybe it is just much worse now. Most of my life I looked forward to being a "mom". It certainly never occurred to me that I had any options after having children but to love and care for them and do my best to bring them to adulthood as productive citizens.

There seems to be a phenomena in our modern society of parents who opt out of parenting effectively divorcing their child or children. This is utterly baffling to me. Drugs, boyfriends/girlfriends, new spouses, careers - almost anything can interrupt the desire to parent the children they either gave birth to or sired. Ergo we have a plethora of children and youth who are rearing themselves or are being cared for by someone other than their parents.

Our daughter became a mother in her senior year of high school. She kept the baby, got a job, found a baby sitter and graduated, none of which was easy. The biological father was not an option as a husband or father. She found out after the fact that he was not responsible and had impregnated other girls, one whose father did the "shotgun" wedding thing. Needless to say, that couple is now divorced and the mother is rearing the child alone. When her child was five years old, our daughter married and had two more children. One was born pre-maturely and with a cleft soft palate. He had to have several surgeries to correct it, as well has having had several sets of tubes in his ears. This was not easy either, each surgery requiring a trip to the Galveston Shrine Cranial-facial hospital. Nevertheless, she has always had a heart for deprived or abused children of others regardless of her trials and has helped whenever possible. This characteristic in her has enlightened our entire family about the aforementioned problem. She has housed runaways (with legitimate reasons to run away) more times than I can say. Within the last 3 years she and her husband have taken on full guardianship of an 8 year old girl (currently 10) and a 14 year old boy (currently 15). Both mothers were addicted to either street drugs,

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