Just a minor correction - the issue isn't that the seat was a Maxi-Cosi (the infant bucket seat they used to bring George home looks like it might have been the same brand). The issue is that the specific seat (a Tobi) is a toddler carseat that does not have the capacity to rear-face, and Prince George should be…

IVF isn't cheap, though, so I'm guessing these women have the ability to get help. Either they are wealthy and presumably a little older, or they have involved families willing to help out with the cost of the procedure and childcare.

Well, that Jesus guy wasn't raised by his real dad and you know what happened to him. Teenage hooliganism - I heard he threw over a bunch of tables at the temple - and then arrested and executed.

No, really, people pay huge sums of money to "cleanse" their autistic kids of the heavy metals they ostensibly got through vaccinations, despite the fact that most of those haven't been used in over a decade.

Looking at this, I really think the message is supposed to be about fertility treatments, multiples, and c-sections. All of which are way too deep into Mommy Wars territory for me to consider them part of her broader theme regarding cosmetic procedures.

But here you have two adults cooperating in horrific abuse. Unless they have a shared delusion (unlikely), the most likely answer is that they are terrible people. Some people don't deserve the immediate benefit of the doubt.

Ah, I see what you mean now. With the publicity that this case is getting (and that photo), I would guess that this particular kid (and his siblings) will find excellent foster homes and be available for adoption shortly. It's all the kids who don't have their photos in the national press that I worry about.

As for…

You joke, but the last time a horrific abuse story hit the national news (last week), the perpetrators were lesbians. I'm sure in that case it means that gay people can't parent properly. But in this case it is just bad apples.

Mmmmm...there's unfit (not having it together enough to cook dinner or clean the house) and then there's abusive. I think we can establish fault here.

Snacktastic has a great post below, but her gist is "do something." Become a foster parent, or volunteer as a mentor, or give money to an organization that helps vulnerable kids. All good ideas.

Thank you for this. You are 100% right. I used to volunteer at a homeless shelter for teen moms, just giving them some time off to decompress while I watched the kids. I stopped doing that because I moved, but you are totally right that raging at the internet is not enough. Thanks for the reminder.

I tend to agree, and not just for liability reasons. As a parent, I don't want a teacher taking my kid off campus in their own car, for any reason. That's a pretty thick black line right there.

My oldest had to do an ambulance transfer from a regular ER to the pediatric hospital across town at one point. There was an insurance mix-up (she was a newborn and my work didn't get the paperwork filed) and we were originally billed as if we didn't have insurance. I believe it was $700. That is PLUS the ER fees…

Absolutely, since they were a non-native English speaker. Speaking from experience here, the language used by non-native speakers is often quite archaic because folks are learning English from teachers who have themselves never visited an English-speaking country.

Also, we really don't know what the guy thought. The person going all atomic bomb here is his mother.

Thanks for this. My first reaction was to assume that the person was not a native English speaker. Heck, I've traveled places where the English teachers had never traveled to the English-speaking world and THEY learned the language from teachers who themselves had never traveled to an English-speaking country. This…

You do know that in this case dumb doesn't mean stupid, right? You would have to translate "deaf and without speech" for it to make sense.

Right, but you are a native English speaker. If you were not, if you learned English from an old textbook, for example, you could easily make a mistake like this one.

Go home and write George!

Please don't be American. Please don't be American. Please don't be American.