Blame the Mother, Vol. 23048230545902

Independent Women's Forum slams moms who consort with "felonious polecats."

Published January 25, 2006 8:05PM (EST)

I get a kick out of reading the blog at the Independent Women's Forum, though I don't recommend doing so on a full stomach. Lately, the Independent Women (and some of their peers) have been especially enjoying the age-old hobby of blaming the mom: here, for instance, for the death of a teen who snuck out in the car. ("Shelby's parents, as you might suspect, are divorced (or possibly, they never married)," snarls the writer, Charlotte Allen, who asserts that if the girl had two parents at home, instead of one lame female one, she'd be alive today.) Elsewhere, Kate O'Beirne booster Maggie Gallagher also opines, with regard to the case of Nixzmary Brown, that -- this is blogger Bouphonia's paraphrase -- "if a man beats a woman's child to death, it's the mother's fault for being a slut."

I'm not saying moms don't abuse -- Nixzmary's has, like her stepfather, been charged with second-degree murder -- or that they don't play a twisted role when their partners do. Where appropriate, and with an understanding of the psychology and cycles of violence (I'm dreaming here), they should be held responsible.

But perhaps not quite as responsible as some would suggest. Here's where the IWF goes farther than too far. "I am so tired of women who put their 'relationships' with the felonious stray polecats they move into their homes over the welfare of their own children. The results: Beaten and dead kids," writes Allen with regard to Haleigh Poutre, the Massachusetts 11-year-old who was beaten into a coma by her stepfather last fall. "This is an aspect of the Haleigh Poutre case that our Mainstream Media refuse to look at -- because our elites believe that the traditional nuclear family is an oppressive and patriarchal institution." I'm not even gonna bother to stop and fact-check the foregoing, because what I really want to get to is the part where it gets positively Greek drama: "Haleigh's adoptive mother ultimately committed suicide," writes Allen. "At least she had a conscience that came back to haunt her."

Mmmhmm. Slutty negligent moms deserve to die. Ideally by their own hand, 'cause otherwise what proof do we have that they're contrite?

Nice.


By Lynn Harris

Award-winning journalist Lynn Harris is author of the comic novel "Death by Chick Lit" and co-creator of BreakupGirl.net. She also writes for the New York Times, Glamour, and many others.

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