“While The Balance Of His Mind Was Disturbed”

     Boromir strode up and down, speaking ever more loudly. Almost he seemed to have forgotten Frodo, while his talk dwelt on walls and weapons, and the mustering of men; and he drew plans for great alliances and glorious victories to be; and he cast down Mordor, and became himself a mighty king, benevolent and wise.
     […]
     He rose and passed his hand over his eyes, dashing away the tears. ‘What have I said?’ he cried. ‘What have I done? Frodo, Frodo!’ he called. ‘Come back! A madness took me, but it has passed. Come back!’

     Surely you know where that’s from.

     In that scene, Tolkien exploited the idea that the One Ring could overwhelm those near to it with power-lust. There had to be a flaw in their characters for it to take firm hold, but if the Ring could find such a chink in their moral-ethical armor, lust for it would penetrate and take command of them. In this fashion, Tolkien did several things concurrently:

1. He displayed Boromir’s pride and ambition;
2. He depicted the Ring’s technique for corrupting those near it;
3. Through contrast, he emphasized the character of the other members of the Fellowship.

     Fortunately for us fallible, corruptible mortals, there is no One Ring of Power to tempt us thus. But there are other powers in the world. Any of them could disturb the balance of a mind, given the right circumstances. Some of them even come with rings.

* * *

     The possibility of seizing power over others is irresistible to some. Once they have sensed it, they become fixated on it. Some are consumed by it, such that nothing else in this world matters to them. And as I’ve written on previous occasions, for the worst power-lusters there’s no such thing as enough.

     But there are many situations that involve an inequality of power. Some are transient; others persist. One arises in literally every household into which a child is born.

     It’s never been my lot to have to raise a child from the cradle. Still, I know of some of its aspects. The early months, while the baby is learning to sleep through the night, must be very stressful. For a couple of years at least, parent-to-toddler communication is exceedingly difficult. Then come the Terrible Twos, when Junior decides it’s time to assert himself against parental authority. Those continue roughly until puberty, when adolescent rebellion enters the fray. If you can get the miserable ingrate out from under your roof without having threatened him with death even once, you have earned the Medal of Parental Forbearance, with an “F for Freedom” cluster.

     Given that parents are held to be responsible for their preadolescent children – for their care and feeding, for their supervision, for their education, for any harm they cause, and so forth – while the children are deemed to be free of any responsibility under the law, who has the power in that situation? Who is capable of tormenting whom, and who would be required to bear any consequences for succumbing to it?

     We don’t condone mothers killing their children. It’s not nice. But when the little tyrants start to “pile it on,” fantasies of relief through homicide will sometimes arise. If Mom isn’t quite well – postpartum depression can be a serious condition, especially when there’s no other adult around to help – terrible things can happen. We get the Susan Smiths and the Lindsay Clancies.

     I refuse to excuse women who kill their kids. I’m interested in preventing as many infanticides as possible. And I think that recent trends in economics and family structure have been wholly negative in this regard.

* * *

     The multigenerational household is rare today. There are reasons for that, but among its consequences is that a couple that elects to have kids is frequently – perhaps usually? – without the assistance of the grandparents of those kids. That puts Mom “eyeball to eyeball with a screaming infant” (Robert S. Mendelsohn) ten to sixteen hours of every day for months, perhaps years. It’s got to be hard to take.

     Of at least equal importance is the virtual disappearance of the “neighborhood mothers club.” That was seldom a formal organization with officials and a charter. But when mothers didn’t need to work for wages, they could provide one another with a considerable degree of support in their domestic duties. Even just the ability to chat over the back fence with a kindred soul was worth something to a mother nearing the end of her tether. But the kindred soul isn’t there any more, even if the fence is.

     Add the intense pressures to earn money, the heightened expectations placed upon the families of minor children, the deteriorating social environment, the increasingly competitive nature of child-rearing itself, and fathers who come home more exhausted and more burdened than ever before, and what would be more likely than a rash of infanticides?

     There’s more to the collapse of First World fertility rates than mere self-centeredness.

* * *

     Once more: I will not excuse the murder of children. But we ought to be thinking hard about the vise that’s tightening on parents, especially the newest parents. Their power to manage and improve their situations is close to nil. While it’s not mensurable, the burden children place on their parents appears to be greater than in any previous generation of Americans. They cost more, demand more, and inflict more worries and fears on their parents than previous litters did.

     Parents need help. The best source of such help is other parents, especially other mothers. Yet we have contrived a situation in which that help is nearly absent.

     I don’t like what I foresee.