It is Child Abuse if a person with Mental Illness procreates?

That is what people on reddit have hurled at the beautiful soul that is Nicole Lyons. Nicole writes the blog The Lithium Chronicles.

If it can happen to one of us.  It can happen to any of us.

She is a brave Bipolar mama.  Putting it out there.  Being honest.  Fighting stigma.  Saving lives.

She wrote this post talking about how she did NOT feel guilty for having children.

I thought it was awesome and I tweeted her right away to tell her so.  She also made me feel brave enough to out myself as a mom on my blog although I have since taken the post down because it felt too raw to me.  Maybe I will have to put it back up for her.  I have another Bipolar parent post that I have been sitting on in which I actually quoted Nicole from her piece.

At the end of her piece she says…

“To those who would shame me for choosing to have children, do you feel guilty for having children because you’re an asshole?”

 

Now I think you my smart dear readers can see what she means….

Having Bipolar is not a given that you will be a bad parent and that your kid will be Bipolar and it will all be terrible.

Not having Bipolar is not a given that you will be a great parent and nothing challenging will ever happen to your child.

There are all kinds of people in the world and everyone should think long and hard about having children.  EVERYONE.

I will go out there and say that all of the Bipolar parents I have known…and it is actually a lot…(there are TONS of us) are some of the kindest, most caring, compassionate, intelligent, people ever.

I would make an argument that Bipolar also gives us gifts that allow us to parent with a different set of skills….we are different…different life experiences.

I completely respect that there are people with mental illnesses including Bipolar who choose not to have children.

We all have DIFFERENT Bipolar

So it makes sense that some of us feel equipped to parent and some do not think they should.

That is a personal, INDIVIDUAL decision.

SO I am OUTRAGED that Nicole has been ATTACKED for standing up for herself.  For standing up for all of us who have chosen to have our babies.

It really is obscene.

And you know what REALLY disturbs me is that it is coming from within the community.

Other mentally ill people attacking Nicole for procreating….

and then for not feeling guilty about it.

This is what I mean when I say we stigmatize each other.

 

As I said before.  These are the risks we take when we put ourselves out there…

when we try to fight stigma

be honest

reach out to ease the suffering of others

This is why we have to be brave when we do it

This is why we are courageous

Because there are always going to be haters

just waiting for their chance to hate

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I have quoted some of the reddit comments below.  They are attacking Nicole but also the women who commented on her original post.

Nicole has updated her post to include these comments so you can also read them there.

Please Please hop on Twitter or go over to Lithium Chronicles and give Nicole some support and some tribe love.

She doesn’t deserve this.  She is just another beautiful Bipolar who has suffered and conquered and battled some more and is helping other people by sharing her heart and her story.

 

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The disgusting comments

This is one of my biggest triggers ever. Selfish breeders (they really don’t deserve to be called parents), who don’t care if the kid will be sick too, who don’t care about the clear impact of growing up with a mentally ill parent on a person, who just choose to ignore facts in order to cater their selfishness.

And somehow, they feel morally better for doing all this shit? Entitled to teach others “big truths about the life, where everybody must suffer anyway, so why wouldn’t I make sure my kid will suffer for me personally”. Omg, I cant even, this is just so infuriating for me.

I’ve been in favor of eugenics for years. This is yet another confirmation of my views.

Knowingly having a child with a disability — be it physical or emotional — is CHILD ABUSE. Anyone who does that is a selfish asshole or a naive simpleton who doesn’t comprehend what they’re doing to their child.

Anyone who doesn’t care if they give it to a kid clearly doesn’t give a fuck about the kid, at all.

And to the woman in the comments on that site who said women are ‘genetically built for having babies’ – fuck you up the ass with a unlubed catcus. I’m so mad at people of her ilk that all I can say is this – They are the cruelest, nastiest, lowest, most immoral and unspeakably selfish fucking cunts in the world.

I’m genuinely horrified by how many of the commenters knew they had this disorder and bred anyway.

I don’t know how people can do that with a clear conscience.

it really is child abuse, and thinking about it is terribly upsetting

It isn’t like dwarfism – it is a lifetime of psychological torture. No one has the right to inflict that upon a child who never asked for that life.