It seems for the past several months every article I’ve read and each new report I’ve seen has brought heinous stories about child abuse and child murder.

From the four children found dead in their mother’s home to the father who threw his children off a bridge to the 4-month old infant who was beaten to death by her own father …it all makes me just simply disgusted with humanity.

Guaranteed, child abuse and murder is not a new trend by any means, but with every crime reported, each have seemingly appeared to be more calculated, cold and even more cruel than the previous.

Why do people feel the need to beat and/or kill their children?

While some “activists” and mental health professionalists would attribute these crimes to severe mental illnesses, substance additions and stress of parenthood…I’ll say it’s all…in a classy manner…BALARNEY.

Yeah, I’m not a parent myself and I don’t know what parenthood entails; the stresses, the screaming, the days you do feel like killing your child figuratively, of course, not literally.

And for most parents a brief walk out of the room, a little distance between you and your child solves these stresses. For many parents, that unconditional love stays steady while the initial dark, angry thoughts subside.

It’s the normal human reaction. After all it’s your child…the being you either gave birth to or had a role in creating.

But for some that “normal” human reaction just does not quell those thoughts and that mechanism that stops many of us from killing clicks in their heads. And in the end it’s the child who suffers…no one else.

I find it really hard to listen to these “human rights advocates and activists” who call for the use of amnesty when it comes to people who kill or harm a child.

Among the excuses listed by these kinds of people, “Well, this person was beat when they were a child.” Does two wrongs make a right?

One thing these “activists” often sell to the public at large is: people can’t change.

Well, sorry, but I live in a free country and the last time I checked every one has a choice.

The whole cycle of abuse can be broken; it just takes one person to stop it, one person to say, “I’m not going to treat my child the way I was treated.”

While reading through news articles this week I came upon a story of a man who beat his four-month old daughter to death simply because she was a girl.

Do you think this happened in some third world country? Nope. Right here in the U.S., in Florida to be exact.

The man reportedly admitted to police he had routinely beaten the baby over the short four months she was alive all because he wanted a son instead of a daughter.

Well, if he had any common sense he would have simply jumped in front of a train instead of beating this innocent child to her death. Afterall it’s the father’s genetic material that chooses the child’s sex.

In the future all I can ask is the universe to somehow pay him back with a violent and twisted death.

There is absolutely no excuse to harm or kill a child.

Amanda VanDerBroek is a Staff Writer for the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. For comments and column suggestions email: amanda.vanderbroek@r-cnews.com or call (252) 332-7209.