An Elaboration on Abandonment « Foster Care Victoria

An Elaboration on Abandonment

May 22, 2008 at 4:25 pm | In Articles, Issues for Fostering, Media | Leave a Comment
Tags: abandoned, abandonment, babies, care, parents

A local Victorian paper recently wrote an article about the need for baby carers becasue of “A surge in abandoned babies and a shortage of foster carers”. While the article prompted an excellent level of publicity for foster care and generated an unprecedented number of calls from potential foster carers, we thought it best to clarify the underlying messages in the article.

Abandonment is such an powerful word; it is accusational and resentful for the birth family as much as it is sympathetic towards the child. It is so easy to begin to blame birth families of children in care, especially when they are faceless and voiceless.

One way or another, a person only neglects the needs of their own child when their own problems are so huge that they’re towering over them, clouding their ability to see anything else. These problems can include drugs, alcohol, mental illness, gambling addiction, homeslessness or poverty just to name a few.

So while “abandoned babies” grabs headlines, we must remember that most parents love their children with all their hearts. In all likelihood, our society abandoned these parents.