You are correct. As my mother used to say: “Where oh where would you find a mother who would trade her boobie for another.” She was referring to the mother of my now dead brother-in-law. He could have easily been a variation of Adam Lanza, yet his mother was in absolute denial about how defective he was. The world is much better off without him.
Given the circumstances, that motherhood bond is something that is very hard for me to understand.
I like to think I’d be more objective if I had had a child with a serious psychological problem, especially one that was so obvious. But I’ve met parents who simply won’t admit it.
On the other hand, I’ve met parents who have spent their best years unsuccessfully trying to get their psychotic adolescents into residential care appropriate for their problem, so it’s hard to say that she could have managed to do so even if she had wanted to. And this is true even though she and his father had the money to help him; you simply can’t get kids like this the kind of serious (and usually residential) care they need.
Our mental health system is a disaster.