Parents do not own their children. That's just a really weird and disturbing way of looking at parenthood. It's also not all that backed up by law or logic. I can sell my tv on Craigslist and yet those who have tried to do the same with children have found that the law frowns upon it and will put them in jail for it.…

I definitely appreciate the real talk! :) I needed to hear that. Yes, I am far better than his crumbs. He's had his chance and that ship has sailed, and I deserve much more than he gave me.

I was dating a guy that I thought was amazing. He was funny and smart, and we were together for almost a year, when I came to the slow realization that he didn't give a shit about me.

That is really good advice. I need to make sure I am thinking with the right parts, heh!

Copying from GT, because I find the responses so encouraging; here's to healing:

The only vaccine exemptions should be health related. If you don't want to vaccinate your kids then homeschool them. If I can't send my kids to school with PB&J, I damn well shouldn't be able to send them without MMR.

I think the real gauntlet to pass here is this: if you can't have the kind of mate you want, would you rather be single? Because you may not find him or her...truly it may never happen. If the answer is no, then it's not one of your "standards", dealbreakers or picky points. If the answer is yes, then it is.

This is something I'm slowly realizing. My life dream was to be married to a great guy with an amazing career and I'd just take care of him. That was it. All I wanted. And then at 30 and a failed 9 year relationship I realized that it wasn't going to happen. So I went to grad school and started doing the types of…

yeah, i'm intent on incarcerating women of color, with my statement, that's it. fucking, really?

Ok, I don't mean to sound totally pissed off at you, but I *do* get extremely pissed when anyone acts as if 1) women are never culpable for anything as long as there is any difficulty in their lives and 2) more time is spent listing all of the reasons a women *can't* leave a bad situation than coming up with proactive…

"Ummm... you do know that the consequences of her taking him to the doctor would have been exceeded those of having the child gone for a few hours right?"

At this point, you're just being a complete apologist for every abusive parent. The foster system is so bad by your reckoning, that abused BABIES are better off being burned, tortured, and beaten to death by their parents / live in partners than consigned to foster care?

Perhaps she didn't want to escape him. That's the great big elephant that it's in the room: some women don't want to leave. They choose the man over everything including the health and welfare of themselves and their families.

"Victim blaming"?? NO ONE here is blaming the 1 year old.

It doesn't matter, in the child welfare context, whether a mom is doing the best she can. If she's not meeting her kids' basic survival needs, the kids deserve a safe home regardless of her best efforts. Some people doing the best they can still can't meet their kids basic needs for daily care because they are very…

I worked with abused women too and although they are not at fault for their partners abusing them, they are responsible for the choices they make, such as choosing to continue a relationship with a piece of shit boyfriend that has beat the crap out of your kid in the past. She's a fuck, abused woman or not, she's a…

I so want to give this woman the benefit of the doubt, but I just can't do it. I was punched in the face for the first time in my life when I was 3 months pregnant and I was out of there the next day with not a penny to my name. I took a cash advance from my credit card to pay my first months rent and from there I…

First reaction upon reading the headline: What? Omg, this poor woman, how could they charge her?

As a child whose mother failed to protect her from abusive stepfathers/boyfriends, I say fuck her. Children are utterly defenseless and can't leave an abusive situation under their own power. This woman's kids didn't choose her shitty boyfriend.

It is SO hard for me to subscribe to this theory. I want to be generous of spirit and forgiving, but my sympathy well is close to dry. It's hard for a child to accidentally get burned, repeatedly, and burns are exceedingly painful and scary. If the moms are, for whatever reason, unable to protect their children, maybe…