She was the perfect villainess: a callous, self-centered, derelict mother straight out of central casting. When her toddler daughter disappeared, she partied for a month without reporting the child missing. Then she blamed everyone from a fictional nanny to her own parents for the demise of the little girl whose remains eventually were found rotting in the woods.
That outrage makes a certain sense. Anthony embodies in extreme, pathological form the same narcissistic syndrome that afflicts many men and women today who mistakenly believe that the world revolves around their desires and fail to recognize that they owe anything to the children they conceive.
As comforting as it is to regard Anthony as a unique case of evil incarnate, however, the deadly consequences of her me-first fixation are more common than we care to believe. And, too often, the violence done to children in the name of protecting adult freedom not only goes unpunished, it is not even prosecuted.
Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/colleen-carroll-campbell/article_deccf258-8c84-50f1-8cff-b3ed5e8aaff2.html#ixzz1SQ7PrbUJ
That outrage makes a certain sense. Anthony embodies in extreme, pathological form the same narcissistic syndrome that afflicts many men and women today who mistakenly believe that the world revolves around their desires and fail to recognize that they owe anything to the children they conceive.
As comforting as it is to regard Anthony as a unique case of evil incarnate, however, the deadly consequences of her me-first fixation are more common than we care to believe. And, too often, the violence done to children in the name of protecting adult freedom not only goes unpunished, it is not even prosecuted.
Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/columns/colleen-carroll-campbell/article_deccf258-8c84-50f1-8cff-b3ed5e8aaff2.html#ixzz1SQ7PrbUJ
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