Help Me Understand, Please

What kind of mind must you have to think that killing your child is the best option? Instead of manning up and paying child support, you kill your child? You are probably wondering what I’m talking about…I read this story on MSNBC.com…here’s an excerpt:

NEW ORLEANS – A man who initially told police gunmen kidnapped his 2 1/2-year-old son was arrested Saturday, accused of committing an “extremely hideous” murder because he was ordered to pay child support, Police Superintendent Warren Riley said.

Danny Platt confessed, told police where to find the child’s body and will be booked with first-degree murder of Ja’ Shawn Powell, Riley said at a news conference.

“He had said he would kill either his wife or his child before he paid child support,” which he recently had been ordered to do, Riley said.

I read this story at least 3 times, trying to understand. Trying to get in the mind of this man who thought that killing this 2-year-old would free him from his responsibility. I thought, “Maybe he didn’t want this child.” And then I thought that maybe he was down and out, not really able to afford child support. But then my rational mind took over and I said that this man was running away from his responsibility and took the bitchass way out. As you can read in the story, he said that he would “either kill his wife or child before he paid child support.” I am shaking my head, and crying within.

He was already missing in this child’s life; according to the story, he had not visited the child until he picked him up on Friday. So as an absentee father, it can only be assumed that he thought that he was devoid of any responsibility. Maybe he thought that he could just move on with his life, without remembering that he had a child somewhere who needed him. And when the mother filed for child support, she gets threatened?

I know that there are women who use child support to juice the father’s of their children, and support themselves. I know that child support rarely goes to the child, and can and has been used for nail appointments, and other things for the mother instead of the child. I’ve seen mothers in grocery stores and in the malls looking like they just stepped out of the hair shop and looking fly from head to toe, while they drag around kids who look like little ragamuffins. And it does make you question why there is no check on why they are letting their children leave the house looking like this, when they don’t.

But does that give a man the right to kill the child, in an effort to eliminate the problem? Again, I go back to the fact that he was not apart of this child’s life. And, if you look at the numbers, it seems as though he was a mere 18-19 years old when this child was born…a child himself. I’m certainly not trying to justify any of his actions, but I’m just trying to make sense of it all. And I think that it is futile, because you can’t make sense out of absurdity.

Too many times the parents of a child make it about them, when it is the child that bears the brunt of the arguing, the dissent, the childish ways of the parents. The child is the one person in this whole thing that deserves the attention. And the child is the one that suffers when parents can’t get their shit together enough to realize that they have been given a gift; no matter the situation that that gift came into…that child was put there to bring something into their lives. And their thinking of that baby as a burden to them, as someone that is in their way is sad.

I’m rambling, mainly because I can’t seem to grasp the concept of this whole thing. And maybe that’s the whole thing. My mind won’t let me understand it. 

On a bigger scale, if our babies cannot trust us to love and protect us, who will they trust? Eventually the cycle of misuse and abuse needs to be broken. Who will be the first to say enough?