Will all the real parents please stand up!

This week, I was horrified by a news headline I skimmed across on CNN.com: “BABY FOUND FLOATING IN LAKE.”
I knew, before I even clicked on the link to watch the video downstream, that I’d be fuming by what I saw.
They (the media) are calling her “the little miracle in the pink dress.’ She is a two-month old infant who was discovered by bystanders who thought her cries were that of a wailing cat, stuffed in a black garbage bag and sent sailing, on a piece of plywood, down a southeastern Brazilian lake. Luckily the baby girl survived and has been treated and released to a child protective agency until the courts decides her future.
Whose fate remains uncertain now is that of the mother who claims she was not mentally prepared for parenthood so she handed over her helpless infant to a group of homeless people who she claims dropped the baby into the lake.
Yeah, the authorities didn’t believe her story either, so they arrested her and she now faces charges for attempted murder. I say there’s no need for a trial. Just throw her trifling behind in a garbage bag, dump her in a lake, and send her “up the river”, literally!
Between this story, and the countless number of local headlines we hear, or read, everyday about parents leaving their children to die of asphyxiation after being locked in cars for hours, I’m left to wonder: Where have all the REAL parents gone?
The Brazilian mother claimed she wasn’t mentally prepared to be a mother – and who is? If she wasn’t mentally prepared to be a mother, then she shouldn’t have been so ready to lay down and “make” a child.
Her reckless abandonment for her baby’s life only magnifies the growing self-absorption I’ve seen in many of my friends and family, even people in general, of our generation. People, to be a parent you have to be just that – A PARENT! Not a babydaddy, or a babymama – a parent: that selfless individual who forgoes their life for the life of their child, or children.
Before you lay down to enjoy the pleasures that making a baby can bring, you have to remember that once the pleasure subsides, and the biological deed is done, a process begins that very well may last a lifetime, and not just eighteen years.
A child is more than a tax break. And it should never be used as a manipulating tactic to keep a mate. A child is innocent, impressionable and warrants the love and attention of devoted parents who won’t just talk about being a parent, he or she will actually BE ONE!
That child didn’t ask to be brought into this world; you made that decision for it. So why not follow through with it. Don’t turn it over to YOUR parents to raise when it’s not enough to keep your mate. Don’t get angry with it just because YOU can’t go out with your “peeps” on Saturday night because you couldn’t find a babysitter. And definitely don’t wrap it up in a garbage bag and toss it into a lake like yesterday’s trash! Even if it may be a mess sometimes, that baby is YOUR mess to clean up!
Just because the parts are there and working still doesn’t mean you’re cut out to do the job. If you’re not mentally prepared to be a parent, then you aren’t mentally prepared to be having sex because the two go “hand in hand”.
Not everyone is cut out to be a parent, and that’s okay. But every kid deserves to have a selfless, devoted caretaker – that’s just right!