living doll

Alitas and I are working from home today. Neither of us are working on work for work, but rather for those projects we love. Actually, I'm biding my time before lunch and shopping this afternoon with Z & P. Then, a first date tonight . . . .

So we're discussing the 16-year-old girl Alitas is mentoring while the girl is unable to attend school. She is on bed rest due to complications with her pregnancy. My head wants to explode every time I imagine this child preparing to be a mother. I'm a dozen years older than she and I worry every day about ever being ready for that responsibility and commitment.

But what concerns me isn't even so much this girl. It's her child. This life will be completely dependent upon a child who is still too young and too inexperienced to be able to take care of herself. The mother-to-be has received support from a number of quarters, one was from someone we know who was a young single mother too. She wrote a gorgeous, sincere, and very moving letter as one scared girl to another.

There was one comment though with which I took issue. Our friend commented that the baby will be the best company a woman could have. I completely understand the spirit in which this was intended, and I think it's beautiful on a certain level. But at the same time, to me, this puts an enormous strain on the child. The responsibility to be the companion to one's parent could deprive a child of his or her autonomy. It could also create a situation in which the emotional relationship between mother and child shifts, and becomes unhealthy.

Believe it or not, there was a recent South Park episode about this. Cartman's already-sociopathic behavior was out of control. Finally, a "pet whisperer" came in to "train" Cartman and his mother, rather humorously, as if he were a naughty puppy. It worked. Cartman began to behave, but the episode twists. When his mother is rejected emotionally by the pet specialist (to whom she had grown attached) at the end of the episode, she refocuses all of that previously-unhealthy emotional weight back on her son. We see the old bad boy, who has learned to manipulate as he's manipulated, returning to the surface.

This is not to say that this girl will go the same route, but it was a chilling episode, and very real. I'm not a mother, but I do hope to be one someday. And the weight of just trying to not screw up the kid is staggering. I suppose we all just do the best we can.