Why women leave their children

While browsing for books at the local library, just anything of interest to add to the already growing pile I had in my arms , I found this book and I'll be honest, I was not only happy about finding a book that relates to the very thing that has bothered me to my core but also maybe it could give me some insights to something that I can't understand. Sure, my own kids can piss me off & you can understand why some mothers in nature eat their young but all jokes aside, It will never sit right with me. Never. And I know I've lost respect for my sister now for even doing it.

US & THEM

..This is a book about women who have children & for the most part, expect to live with them & look after them during their years of childhood & adolescence. And yet, either through choice or force of circumstance, or a combination of both, they find themselves living apart from their children, sometimes far away, sometimes in a situation of love, often in one of great pain & conflict.

This is also a book about the rest of us, the people who do not leave their children, the ones who judge & sometimes misjudge, who are hostile or shocked or disturbed by the breaking of preciously-guarded rules concerning mother-love & who because of these attitudes inflict further pain on the breakers of these rules.

'It doesn't seem natural' is the way one man summed it up, & the sentiment rings true for many others, men & women alike. 'How could she?'...'I can't imagine anyone doing it'...are the kinds of responses women give to the idea of mothers wilfully living apart from their children, though we are all very familiar with men doing so.

I embarked on this book as one entering unknown territory. I wanted to know: who are these women? why do they break the rules? what happens to them afterwards? do they really love their children? If I, too, started out half-expecting unnatural women committing unnatural acts, I finished up with something far more complex, often heartrending & sometimes exceedingly disturbing.

The first chapter interestingly enough is called Leaving for a lover