commentary by Patrick H. Moore
I’ve gone on record stating that children should not have children and I’ve gotten some flak for saying so. Sure, there are no doubt large numbers of very young parents who bite the bullet and make the best of their lot, sacrifice mightily and manage to be good and loving parents.
But so many things can go wrong when you’re 16 or 17 and become a mom or dad. At the very least, it’s going to cramp your style tremendously. You’ll want to go out dancing or go to a concert and instead you’ll have to stay at home with the little one resenting your fate.
And if you’re a woman, what are the odds your child’s father is going to stick around for the long haul or even for the first year? Or even if you and he do last for 5 or even 10 years, subjecting your child to the heartbreak of divorce as he or she reaches adolescence is no bowl of cherries.
And because the human brain is so incompletely developed at age 18, in some instances a young mother or father is going to go more or less off the rails. Such appears to be the case with 18-year-old Desiree Ann-Marie Cozzoni, a suburban St. Louis teenage mom who, desiring nothing more than to live the life of a ‘normal teenager’, decided to give her 16-month old son away to, of all people, a HEROIN ADDICT who due to her narcotics habit, had already reportedly lost custody of her own children
Here’s how it started as reported by Sasha Goldstein of the New York Daily News:
Desperate to live the life of a “normal young adult”, Desiree “drew up non-legal papers granting a heroin user, who’d lost custody of her own kids, rights to care for her child so Cozzoni could live the life of “a normal teenager,” court documents obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch read.
According to Susan Welch of the Post-Dispatch, prior to drawing up the “adoption papers”, Desiree had been moving around from place to place, staying some of the time with the “adoptive mother” in motels.
The police report that the junkie “bought and used heroin daily, often in Cozzoni and her son’s presence.”
In early October of this year, Desiree signed over custody of her son to the woman. Once the bogus adoption papers had “gone into effect”, Desiree changed her phone number in order to prevent the junkie ‘caring’ for her son from contacting her.
Thus, her plan appears to have been to get her son completely out of her life once and for all, an absurd proposition if you think about it, for the simple reason that those who knew her best could not have been unaware of the fact she had a child and would certainly wonder what had happened to it.
Desiree appears to have gradually become aware of this thorny problem and at some point began spreading the rumor that the woman had kidnapped her son.
A scheme as unrealistic as this was clearly not going to work for long and the authorities finally were either tipped off or put the pieces together and arrested Desiree on three misdemeanor charges: making a false report, endangering the welfare of a child and unlawful use of drug paraphernalia because during the booking process law enforcement discovered a residue-drenched marijuana pipe in her purse.
Desiree was released from jail Tuesday after posting $2,500 bail.
Because this is only a misdemeanor case, Desiree does not appear to be in any danger of serving a substantial amount of time in custody. The problem is what to do with her son. According to court papers, at some point in the not too distant past, Desiree had been living at her grandparents’ house, and they may take custody of the child.
Wherever the child goes, however, as part of any custody agreement, although she will have visitation privileges, Desiree will not be allowed to live at that residence.
Needless to say, this young and woefully immature mother maintains a presence on Facebook. In a recent FB post, she wrote that her first supervised visit with the child was scheduled for Thursday, October 16.
“I just wish I weren’t a bad mom. I wish none of this happened. I just want my baby back.”
Of course, she wants her baby back now that she can’t have him. The grass is always greener. But when she had her son she went to great and rather bizarre lengths to get rid of him.
The point is Desiree is just a kid, hardly the world’s worst kid, but a kid nonetheless. By definition, a kid is not an adult and thus lacks the maturity that adults, at least in theory, possess. Raising a child requires boatloads of maturity, and as we know from following crime stories, a disturbingly large percentage of adults make pathological parents.
Desiree does not appear to have been pathological but her conduct does suggest extreme immaturity and instability. Now just consider how much better off she would be if she didn’t have a child. She would have some hope of gradually maturing, perhaps getting an education, perhaps finding a decent job one day, and like any unencumbered young person, she would also have had the opportunity to HAVE FUN which is obviously what she really wants.
But the day she got pregnant and decided to have that child, the door of freedom swung shut with a mighty crack, a fact she will be living with from now on.
As for her son, who knows what effects this whole sad scenario will have on him as he tries to navigate the thorny pathways of life.