OK, look..I'm gonna say something, then y'all can attack me or whatnot...but attempting not to be cynical about the mother...and saying this was just a horrible mistake:
Not everyone is a wonderful housewife and caregiver. As has been stated time and time again, you don't need a license to be a parent, unfortunately. That said, I have friends who grew up in homes that were filthy, and had lackadasical parents, and were well adjusted and loved..I also knew parents who kept a spotless house and a tight rein on their kids, and they were cold and unloving. As a child, there is no doubt which I would prefer.
We have parents who boil everything, safety lock everything, cut grapes into four perfectly shaped squares, and their kids end up figuring out the child lock and eating a bottle of bleach and die. Or someone breaks into their house in the middle of the night and steal their child and bury them alive or something.
I love my kids, but I'm the kind of parent who never carried a baby bag, who used toilet paper for wipes, whose kid always missed their nap, who gummed french fries for dinner...i used to nap when my kids napped, and Buck, my little boy escaped twice, waking up early from our naps. Once he got three blocks away and I had to call the police, the second time was at an apartment complex with a huge DUCK pond, he was found playing on the banks of it while I slept soundly under the impression he was lying next to me. I was WOKEN up with the apartment manager, with Buck in hand, aged three. I was /mortified/. Could I have been held liable if he drowned? Absolutely. Am I bad mother? I don't like to think so.
Everytime I read about this woman, and the critism, and the finger pointing by her neighbors and such, I'm sorry, it breaks my heart. Could she have been more careful. I'm sure she could have, who couldn't? Hindsights a though. I can promise you, despite the examination of her dress, her reaction to the death of her two children, her living conditions, this is a tragedy, and if she didn't go and PUSH those children in the pond, then no one is mourning their loss more. Especially now that she is painted by the media as some sort of haggard white trash who killed her own children, if not by action, then by inaction. All I can think is that how absolutely gut wretchedly HORRID that could be, to lose BOTH your children, and for the rest of your life know that you could have prevented it. I would slit my wrists. Take away everyone blaming you.