It was supposed to add credence to the claims that the Canadian government shouldn't be taking a woman's children just because they've labeled her "too dumb to parent." But the follow-up story in the Vancouver Sun about a woman with five kids and the mental maturity of a "12 to 14 year old" did just the opposite for me.
The government has seized each one of Barbara Gamble's children shortly after she's given birth. Among their reasons? Gamble's intelligence quotient is somewhere between 63 and 71, officially "mildly mentally handi-capped." She told her story to Canadian press earlier this month because she's soon due to deliver her sixth child, and she worries the government will once again step in to snatch the child. I could certainly feel her pain at never being given a chance.
Nikki Ross did. She's 31 and mother to five. She's also got an IQ just below 70. She says she's doing just fine as a mom. I'm not convinced.
A single mom (she's divorced from the father of her four oldest kids), Ross doesn't have a job. Short of babysitting as a teenager, she never has. She lives off of government assistance and financial help from her mother. A volunteer agency lends help as well - paying a counselor who helps Nikki with everything from filing income taxes to devising activities for her non-school-aged kids. Her house is filled with sticker charts so she can keep on course with her day - and sometimes she's gotten off course. She's lost her children on and off, sometimes to the state and other times her mom has stepped in to take care of a grandchild. Her biggest accomplishment of late? Figuring out a bus route so she could take herself to the doctor. She has yet to master a calendar.
I'm not arguing the rights to life of the disabled. But what about the rights of their kids? When a mom will forever be 12 years old in her mind, how can she parent a defiant 16-year-old, help an 18-year-old go off to college? How can she handle a middle-of-the-night emergency with a sick toddler when she's only just figured out how to get herself to a doctor's visit at 31? Ross has her mother to help her, but 27-year-old Barbara Gamble doesn't have that sort of help. What she has is a boyfriend who racks up bills well beyond his salary and no job of her own. What she has is a mind psychologists call immature, distrusting, egocentric and lacking in insight. What she has is the mental maturity of a 12-year-old and a uterus that has housed baby after baby since she was 20 years old.
Most of us would consider parents supporting their 12-year-old getting pregnant to be bordering on child abuse. Allowing a 12-year-old to move out on their own after giving birth is unheard of. So, no, Nikki Ross' story didn't make me feel better about Barbara Gamble walking out of the hospital with the latest child she's given birth to in an attempt to convince the government she can be a parent. It made me wonder who would leave a child alone with a 12-year-old for the rest of his or her life.
Image: Vancouver Sun
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