Pondering some parents

It makes you wonder what could actually drive a parent to kill a child. I do realize that I have recently written two posts with the word kill in them, that refer to one or both of my two oldest.

However, I would never actually harm them. And I know that there is not a thing in the world those two children could do that would cause me to actually want their deaths. Nor can I imagine that there is something that could happen to me to make me wish my children dead, and worse to follow up on it.

What makes a parent do that? What reasons can you have to shoot a 9 month old girl through the stomach? And to then kill your wife?

What makes a man come home and repeatedly stab his wife, 3 year old daughter and 5 month old son?

What went through their heads as they killed their families?

I will never forget the case of Susan Smith, who accused a man of stealing her car with her two boys inside it. I was pregnant with Taylor at the time, and I remember thinking that something about her just was not right. It turned out that she had rolled her car into a lake and let her sons drown because the man she was dating didn't want to be tied down by children. Killing your babies for a man??? I don't think so. If I was with someone who didn't want to be a part of my children's lives I would run in the other direction.

And how about Andrea Yates? What was she thinking as she held each of her 5 children down in the bathtub until they no longer were struggling? Post partum stress or no, there is no way she could not have realized after that length of time what she was doing.

I have said many times that I am far from a perfect mother, there are days when I can't imagine there is a worse parent than myself and yet when I think of cases such as this I know that my children are quite alright with me.