MJ, it sounds like you did not fully grasp the details the author provided.
When our children turn 18 they acquire full legal rights. Those rights include the right NOT to see a psychiatrist, not take medications, not live under their parent’s roof, not follow their parent’s rules. Those rights also include the right to associate with anyone they please, and have unprotected sex when they please. Note; I read a couple other pieces by this author and learned that she is raising one of her daughter’s children.
In this essay, the author explains the ways in which her daughter exercises her legal rights. She also gives us an inside view of the limited choices available to people with a mental illness.
Her daughter cannot support herself. She needs structure (rules and boundaries) to stay well but cannot provide that structure for herself.
Would you rent a room in your home to the author’s daughter? Of course not, you don’t need the money, and you don’t want the problems. So where do people with a mental illness find housing? Answer, they find housing on the streets, in abandoned homes and buildings, and in places occupied by other people who also function outside the norm (like the pedophile in the author’s story).
Again, once a child turns 18, parents face the choice of imposing boundaries and rules, or letting their child drag their families into a dark world. Would you let your daughter’s comb the streets and shelters of your city, looking for their sister? What would they do, how would they feel, when they discovered their sister preferred to live on the streets (rather than live with you)?
Yes, mental illness is a family burden. But it is also, an impossible burden. The author shares her story in the hopes that people like you and me, will stop judging her and her daughter and start judging our own conscience. If you and I were wiser, kinder, more generous and loving, there would be room for the author’s daughter in special homes and facilities where she could get the help, therapy, safety, and structure she needs to stay well.
You are right about me. I know of many similar situations. As the sibling of a child with mental illness, I also know this situation very well. However, my concern is not with the author or her adult daughter. I am very concerned about the children her daughter is creating.
You see MJ, at age 18, the rights our children gain include “parental rights” over any children they produce. Not only does the author’s daughter have “parental rights” the father has “parental rights” as well.
Those children are the reason, I think, feel and believe that society must assume financial responsibility for caring the mentally ill. Protecting innocent children begins with making sure that when children with mental illness turn 18, they have a safe place to live.
