Woman who abandons baby should not be only one burdened with blame

A few days ago, not very far from where I live, a baby who is estimated to be about three weeks old was found abandoned. A very sad situation, I must say, but luckily the child was found alive and healthy.

The child was handed over to the appropriate authorities. As we were looking on, murmurs from the crowd arose, murmurs such as “what kind of a woman would do this?”, “how do you carry a child for nine months and then abandon them?”, “people are trying hard to have children, and here she is abandoning one”.

I was taken aback by this immediate, almost natural, response to blame the mother. When really, we do not know whether the mother left the baby or not. It could be a man that left the child; it could be a kidnapping or hijacking gone wrong and the mother is somewhere restless searching for their child. No-one stopped to speak or pose questions on the father’s role; the immediate burden of this, is carried by the woman.

This is despite knowing very little about how the baby landed there. Because the child was warmly dressed and looked well taken care of, for the period prior to being left on the side of the road.

Speculation leads me to believe that whoever put the baby there deliberately, put them there with the hopes that they will fare better in life with someone else, that there is someone who is better suited to take care of them.

We are quick to be sentimental, that who better to raise a child than their own mother? Many reflect on the hardships they went through to raise their children and how their children today are grown and thriving, despite the hardships. The challenges of being a single parent, raising a newborn baby, have become a distant memory, so like them, this woman should have “fought”.

In conversation with some of the women present at the scene, on the role of the father in what may have led the woman to this point, one said: “She would not be the first woman to be left by a man, to raise a child on her own.”

Our society has normalised the abnormal so much so that women have internalised the hardships of raising a baby, that they are okay with men being absent – not that I blame them honestly. But I cannot help but be gobsmacked at the pure dismissal of the fact that, the absence of a father could have been a huge contributing factor.

There is this expectation that a woman should be able to do it alone. In this instance, it seems, there is no room to question the man's role, regardless of the fact that a child is the result of two people. Just like that, the man is absolved of his contribution, because of the expected unreliableness of men.

However, the same logic is not applied in the context of the woman. Where compassion and empathy is felt on her behalf because it is “unlike a woman to abandon their child”. No! a woman does not get a free ticket, premised on the reliable nature of women, that there must be a bigger reason if indeed a child was deliberately abandoned, because this is unexpected behaviour of a woman.

What most people saw was a careless woman, not a woman who is perhaps suffering from postnatal depression – a very common battle in SA, with 30% to 40% of mothers battling this mental illness after giving birth.

This is the very same society that shuns, shames and ridicules girls who choose abortion when faced with unwanted pregnancies but is surprised when children are found abandoned.

Do not get me wrong, I am not justifying the abandoning of an innocent child. What I am bringing to the table for discussion is how quickly our society forgets or how quick we are to forget the context in which some situations occur and the role that this very society has played in the end product.

I am also speaking to what is a natural response of burdening women with the blame as if they were the only ones that made this child. And this is working on an assumption that it is indeed a woman who left that child. We do not stop and ask if the father was present, how differently could this have turned out.