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- Rekha Basu
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This Mother's Day, I've been thinking about the women who raised kids who went wrong. Maybe that's because of the rash of recent stories about horrible acts committed by people still young enough to be under their parents' thumbs or roofs: The school children in Massachusetts who bullied a girl into committing suicide. The father on trial in Des Moines on abuse charges related to his infant son's brain damage. The New Jersey college freshman indicted on 15 counts for broadcasting his roommate's sexual encounter with a man - which led the humiliated roommate to jump off a bridge to his death.
My heart goes out first to those victims and then to their mothers. But a piece of it also goes to the mothers who tried to do right, yet have witnessed their kids do wrong.
Our instinct is to blame children's failures on how they were raised. And since mothers still do most of the day-to-day rearing, they carry most of the guilt.
"The first thing you do is blame yourself," says Fran Koontz, 76, who faces her 15th Mother's Day in which her son, John, is behind bars on federal drug charges. "I still grapple with that. He says, 'You did your best. You gave me a stable home,' but you know, I'm his mom. I carried him in me for nine months. I made him. It's a scab that I pick every day."
There are, of course, abusive, neglectful and substance-abusing mothers, sometimes repeating generational patterns. Those families need intervention. But even a good upbringing, solid values, love and attention can't guarantee good outcomes.
John, now 55, discovered alcohol in college, his mother says. She believes he had a genetic predisposition to alcoholism though she doesn't know what genes she passed on, since she was raised in foster care. He was arrested many times for drunken driving, but received a 25-year sentence after being caught with 58 grams of amphetamines and meth.
He was a good kid in high school, says Fran - a "C" student but never a discipline problem. But Fran and her husband, Ray, watched him go in and out of treatment five times. They had him committed to Broadlawns and let him spend a Christmas in jail without posting bail. "There were times I felt like I was going to put my head in the oven," says Fran. She says he's been sober since entering prison. But he was subject to federal mandatory sentencing for drug crimes, so he'll be 62 when he is released.
What must Mother's Day be like for Joan Becker, who tried to get help for a schizophrenic son, Mark, before he killed Aplington-Parkersburg High School coach Ed Thomas in 2009? He's serving life in prison. From her letters to God back in 2007, you can see how she struggled, once writing: "Anguish and pain I see in my son's face, heart and entire being fills me with sadness."
I also imagine this day for the mother of Dharun Ravi, the Rutgers University freshman indicted last month for hate crimes leading to the suicide of Tyler Clementi.
In his senior year of high school, his parents took out a half-page yearbook ad expressing pride in him as a "caring and responsible person, a wonderful son and brother" and a "real inspiration," saying, "We will always be there to love and support you every step of the way."
There's no indication Ravi learned intolerance at home. If anything, a friend from his high school was quoted suggesting the Indian parents were so intent he be a good student that he took his college freedom too far. Was that the Asian "Tiger Mother" syndrome of which author Amy Chua boasted? Did it backfire? Can one win between being too strict or too indulgent? And how does a mother balance acknowledging something awful a child did with standing behind her or him?
So to lawmakers, an appeal on behalf of mothers everywhere for mental health parity, federal sentencing reform, more drug treatment options and more vigilant social services intervention. And to all the mothers who do their best, Happy Mother's Day.
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