There’s actually a great article on this. Warning, it’s a TOUGH read.

Archive link

What kind of person forgets a baby? The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate[…]

Last year it happened three times in one day, the worst day so far in the worst year so far in a phenomenon that gives no sign of abating.

The facts in each case differ a little, but always there is the terrible moment when the parent realizes what he or she has done, often through a phone call from a spouse or caregiver. This is followed by a frantic sprint to the car. What awaits there is the worst thing in the world.

It’s a shockingly common occurrence and actually not due to neglect a lot of the time. The article posits that a large reason is because car seats were mandated to be moved to the back seat.

Ouch. I typically agree with all the comments you make around Lemmy.

But this one hurts.

Everyone come and see how good of a parent I am!

It only needs to happen once. One bad day. One day when the brain isn’t operating at full capacity, but absolutely has to. One day out of a couple of thousand at a deeply critical time. And something gives.

Are you the sort of person who falls asleep in front of the TV? There are millions of people like that. There might even be a billion. Sure, some will think “I’ll just close my eyes a sec”, but there are others who don’t make a conscious choice about anything and find themselves waking up, unaware of when they fell asleep.

Forgetting something - even a baby - is a lapse like that. That’s all it is. Just one tiny little lapse. We are not 100% in control of what goes on in our own heads.

“It won’t happen to me” / “It couldn’t possibly have happened to me.” is the height of hubris.

As for making decisions like “Some people should not be allowed to be parents.”, who’s doing the allowing there? Because that’s a horribly slippery slope. And frankly if Darwinism hasn’t got it out of the gene pool at this point, it might well be all of us with the same fatal flaw… which I think is the point I was making earlier.

Not everyone handles sleep deprivation the same. Not every baby sleeps the same amount or at regular intervals. Some babies just never seem to sleep or have weird needs that require exhausting accommodations. It’s terrible, but new babies are so vulnerable and there are so many chances for failure at the same time parents are at their most compromised. I have sympathy for the stupid, addled, forgetful mistakes anyone could make under constant, chronic exhaustion.

We were never meant to do it alone, the nuclear family is a myth.

Seems like an insane reach to say if this baby didn’t die from that incident, they’d die from another neglect related issue.

Personally, I have a hard time judging parents in this position and I can’t say I’m a fan of them being charged. All the system cares about is the illusion of justice served in the form of traumatic retribution via prison.

I’m in the same boat as you. I was more understanding before I had a child. I thought, you can forget your phone, autopilot, all other excuses. But after having two, there’s no fucking way I’d ever forget them. They’re always on my mind and the first thing I think of whenever I’m doing anything. I check on my children while driving too

Edit: I understand how easy it is to get into autopilot, and having understood that I do everything I can to change my routine. We take different routes, we stop and do something on the way, etc. But I realize that I’m speaking from a place of privilege where I can do these things and not everyone can. I recognize that it can happen to me, and I pray it doesn’t. I truly am sorry for this families loss. No one should ever outlive their child.