Filly
I so agree and felt/feel the same. As a survivor I am jaded, but too bad. And I let anyone who felt slighted know why I did what I did to protect my boy. None objected, none complained. none. And not a damn one would expect less for their own children. That is how it should be.
It is how it should be. Yet for some reason, many parents do not share this instinct to protect. Let me start a story illustrating that with another story, about me and my mom. Now my mom is not the suspicious type, but her instincts are intense. For example, in the 70's, when I was 4, she watched me walk the short way to the corner house to go play with one of the 7 girls who lived there. She saw me go up the drive but then the house blocked the door, so she couldn't see if I went inside the door. She waited a few moments, and when I didn't reemerge, she believed I was inside, playing.
Well, I wasn't. I still remember that day. I sat on the stoop, thinking that Nancy would surely come home soon. I sat waiting for what seemed like forever, before I gave up. When I walked back onto the sidewalk, there was a man, balding, in his fifties, eyeglasses, in a light colored station wagon with wood panels (yes, I remember ALL of that), idling on the street in front of the house. He looked at me, said nothing, but backed up as I walked down the street.
Then, he pulled his car in the drive in front of me, blocking my path, and just stared. I started to feel weird. He pulled back out and I kept walking. He kept backing his car down the street, keeping pace with me. When we got to the next drive, he pulled in again and again, blocked my path. Never said a word. Finally, when I was right at the line between my house and the house next door, he paused in the street, held up an empty jar and said, "Hey little girl, you want some candy? Come here. I'll give you some." I didn't know what the heck was going on but I knew something was wrong because his jar was empty, for one, and he had been acting strange.
In the meantime, my mom was inside doing laundry, whistling away. Until suddenly, her head whipped up fast, her heart stopped and she gasped, "Anna." (That's me). She came running out of the house and saw me standing there, the man in the car idling at the curb and me looking scared. She yelled, "Anna! Get in the house!" I came running up. Man, she threw me in front of the t.v., and took off. She chased that guy in her little VW Bug for miles. Got his license plate before he lost her. They caught him but he said he only asked me to lift my skirt and so they let him go. (I guess you could do that in California in the 70's). He had priors for child molestation. I have no doubt that if it wasn't for my mom's instinct, I wouldn't have been allowed to live to tell a thing.
In any event, my mom has had dozens of incidents proving her strong instinct. I think it is the gift given to most mothers who love their kids.
But not all. So here's the story:
Years ago, my parents had these neighbors. Nice, middle class family with a gorgeous little baby girl. Well, they had this "friend", a single man, who they adored. They kept wanting my parents to meet him, especially my mom, who everyone loves.
So, my mom met him one day, as they were all sitting outside on the grass with the baby on a blanket. My mom sat down and chatted. The baby kept trying to crawl off the blanket. The "friend" was watching her intently and kept "grabbing" her back, and dragging her back to the middle of the blanket. He did this by grabbing in between her legs, in her crotch area. Over and over again, laughing and staring. My mom got a horrible bad vibe form him and felt immediately that something was wrong.
Later, my mom talked with the baby's mother. But when she voiced her fears that something was wrong with this guy and not to ever leave him alone with the baby, the mother was stunned and did not believe it. "No way. He's the nicest guy. I would trust him completely!" In fact, the mother was upset, kind of insulted.
See, I don't get that. If someone told me something they felt that had to do with the safety of my baby, I would not be angry. I would thank them and keep an eye out.
Anyhow, I don't know if he ever did anything to the baby or not. I do know that at some point, the "friend" wasn't coming over anymore and the neighbors never spoke of him again. I wonder if they wised up.
I guess the point of my long-winded story is that some parents do not have the instinct for danger. And poverty or youth aren't always the deciding factors in the lack of instinct. I don't know the cause, but I wish there was a class every would-be parent could take to grow that instinct. Kids are too precious to be raised without parents who can protect them from serious harm.