Police believe Dae'von was killed by his mother's former boyfriend, Marcas Fisher. Dae'von was living with Fisher because his 28-year-old mother "was going through things" and parceled out her six children to friends and relatives.

In the months before he died, Dae'von told adults at school that Fisher had punched him in the stomach and slammed his head into a bathroom sink. He repeated the complaints to social workers who interviewed him and to medical professionals who examined him for injuries. But he was sent back twice to his violent home.

But it wasn't only the system that failed Dae'von. "I place the blame on the shoulders of mother Tylette Davis," a West Hills reader wrote in a letter published in The Times. "She chose to have these children, then she chose to abandon them and leave their care to others. I have trouble feeling any pain for Tylette."

County Supervisor Gloria Molina expressed much the same sentiment at a board meeting last month -- interrupting a speaker's monologue about the "gigantic, enormous problem that's within the system that needs to be rectified."

"Parenting services . . . bus tokens, housing assistance, mental health counseling . . . and constant supervision to maintain her house," Molina said, reading from the list of public services that had been provided to Tylette Davis since before Dae'von was born.

"You need to go back and sit down with this mommy and tell her she has other children to take care of. She has to get her house in order . . . deal with her issues," Molina said.

Her daughter Tylette is not a bad mother, "just spoiled," she said.

She had her first baby at 14, and five more by the time she was 23.

The man accused of killing Dae'von was the father of Tylette's youngest child "and the only daddy Dae-Dae ever knew," Dotson-Davis said. "He raised that child from when he was a baby. My daughter never thought he would bring that boy harm."

She ticks off the things her daughter has to do to get custody of her kids:

Get treatment for addiction. Find a place to live. Come up with a way to support them. Make sure the children get counseling. And, finally, pass those parenting classes.

Dale Neumann was convicted Saturday of killing his 11-year-old daughter, Madeline, because he prayed for her instead of taking her to a hospital when her undiagnosed diabetes got so bad that she couldn't eat, drink, walk or speak. She died on the floor of her rural Wisconsin home with her father, mother and a group of people praying for her healing. Neumann says he was simply putting his faith first and following the will of God, but a jury found him guilty of second-degree reckless homicide.

This event raises serious questions about the conflict between individual rights and governmental power, just as abortion does. Both involve innocent and dependent lives with no real power to contest a parent's choices.

Isn't this a Right to Life issue? And if it is, where are the Right to Lifers?

Even infants zone out in front of the television, and it turns out this translates into less time interacting with parents and possible lags in language development, a new study finds.

In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics discourages television watching before the age of 2, a time when critical development, such as language acquisition, occurs.

To figure out the TV-language link, Christakis and his colleagues rounded up 329 2-month to 4-year-old children and their parents. The kids wore digital devices on random days each month for up to two years that recorded everything they heard or said for 12 to 16 hours. The researchers didn't determine whether the adults and kids were actively watching the television or if it was just on in the background.

Analyses of the recordings revealed that each hour of additional television exposure was linked with a decrease of 770 words (7 percent) the child heard from an adult during the recording session. Hours of television were also associated with a decrease in the number and length of child vocalizations and the back and forth between the child and an adult (called a conversational turn).

With 30 percent of households having televisions on all the time, the researchers wondered how many fewer opportunities there were for children and parents to communicate and socialize.

From 18 to 24 Months
Kids should have a vocabulary of about 20 words by 18 months and 50 or more partial words by the time they turn 2. By age 2, kids should be learning to combine two words, such as "baby crying" or "Daddy big." A 2-year-old should also be able to follow two-step commands (such as "Please pick up the toy and bring me your cup").

Belinda Magana, 23, was booked on suspicion of child abuse and being an accessory to murder.

Her 37-year-old boyfriend, Naresh Narine, was booked on suspicion of murder, torture and child abuse causing injury or death, said Rene Tarkington, a Corona police spokeswoman.

The boy's body was found buried in the Lytle Creek area, about 35 miles north of Corona.

All told, the records show, 32 children in the county died in 2008 from abuse and neglect, including physical assault, drowning and malnourishment. Eighteen of the children were in families that had never been in contact with the family services agency.

But the other 14 families should have been well-known to child welfare officials, based on previous referrals and investigations. For whatever reasons, many of the earlier allegations were not substantiated.

• There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of children in Los Angeles County, as the total population is over ten million.  Still, 32 children is 32 too many.
• These are deaths.  There are, of course, other children who are neglected or severely abused and not killed.
• This is the kind of thing we need to keep in mind when “Child Protective Services” pokes around.  Better to err on the side of saving a child’s life than to have a child killed because a family’s privacy was too important.
• Children are more likely to be abused if they are being exposed to a parent’s new “honey” or date.

In the surrogacy industry, there are no consumer guarantees. A website is not a professional license -- in fact, there is no such thing. Even in California, widely considered the friendliest place in the world for people seeking surrogates, contracts tend to favor the broker agencies, not the clients.

Signing with an agency is frequently an act of faith, sometimes with bitter results. Often, aspiring parents must pay the entire bill -- $50,000 or more -- in advance. The money is nonrefundable, placing them at the mercy of the agency.

Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, a fertility specialist in Encino, said agencies often send candidates who are obese or have a history of difficult pregnancies that make them unsuitable candidates. He rules them out, but the customer still gets the bill.

Surrogates sometimes get stiffed by brokers as well.

On surromomsonline.com, a website for surrogates, one message board is called "Surrogacy community beware" and features passionate discussions of how to guard against dishonest brokers.

in the case of widows/widowers, is the parent left "bad" for not immediately getting remarried?

in the case of abusive parents, is the non-abusive parent "bad" for taking the child away from the abusive parent?

in the case of natural, if "being gay" is so unnatural, why is it that 3%, at a minimum, of any significant mammilian population will be gay?

in the case of the thousands of children who need good homes *NOW*, what do you think about states that have, or are trying to create, laws that prohibit anyone but married people from adopting those kids?

in the case of SAHMs, how many do you *really* know? and by that i mean, how many would have agreed to be a SAHM and give up their careers if they had had another choice?

European countries manage to have many, many mothers stay in the workforce, and those women don't lose their seniority, their place on the career ladder, just because they choose motherhood. what will you, personally, do about that particular injustice?

in the case of a gay person who managed to make a child in the "natural" way, how do you feel about this?

a lesbian is raped. or steels herself for something she thinks is horrible for the reward of a child (an exercise that appears to have been common a century ago, if the autobiographys can be believed). in either case, she and her female partner raise the child. is that *bad*?

do you know how MANY Native tribes actively encouraged gay couples (not called "gay" at the time, of course, but generally something that translates as "two souled") so that there would always be a family to take in orphans?

would you *really* have given up all your years of hard work, to take a 5 or so year "break" from your career, knowing that when you do try and go back to work every potential employer is going to look at that gap and wonder if you are reliable?

because that is what you are saying *all* mothers should do.

women are socialized to think what we want isn't as important as what men want.

you are quoting from Personal Failure's blog, yes - but at least two of those quotes were from me. and a couple from a few othe writers and its kinda hard to not be irritated that you are not properly attribiting them.

but that aside - did you NOT understand what you quoted by me? when i say that many women do not want to "settle" for a man, i really meant that.

look, PF and i both have the same disease that will kill is if we attempt pregnancy.

we are both in long term, loving relationships - she is married, i am engaged.

should i not marry because i can't bear children?

that seems to be an issues those on the RIght have.

"Gay Marriage" is wrong because two men cannot have children.

neither can i. so should i not get married??

even MORE, though, God granted me a BRAIN. a brain that finds tensor calculus boringly easy. a brain that tests much too high on IQ tests. a BRAIN I WAS GIVEN TO USE.

so i WILL NEVER marry a man who wants me to be a stay at home mom.

i have more important things.

there are many women who enjoy momhood, enjoy being a SAHM. i will never be one of them.

when i say that women have problems finding men for long term relationships, the thing i was refering to (you included it in your post, even) was that too many men expect the WOMAN to give up her career.

to lose their personhood, in a VERY real respect.

motherhood is important. motherhood is hard.

MEN CAN DO THE SAME THING, men are 100% as capable of taking care of a baby once its been born.

that if a woman cannot find a man "to take care of her"

which means her giving up the entirety of the life she built for herself before him - her job goes, her education no longer applies to anything, because all she can do in this is be a SAHM

if a woman cannot find a man who wants a woman who has a brain and a great job and paycheck and is able to support herself, you say she doesn't "deserve" a baby.

unless she was raped. or got drunk. or had BC fail. at which case it goes from "deserve" in the sense of a reward (for giving up everything for the horrible life and ennui of motherhood) to the she "deserves" to be PUNISHED with babies.

if you REALLY cared about all those children in foster care, or temporary care, or in orphanages or juvinile detention, you would STOP trying to prevent GOOD DECENT HARD WORKING LOVING FAMILIES from rescuing those children. even if its two wives - two wives, two mothers, is still 1000% better than NO parents.

maybe the teen birth rate was up because of abstinence only training?

because married couples in which the wife is fertile, but the man's sperm isn't doing anything never, ever use sperm banks. ever. sperm banks are only used by evil, single feminists and lesbians.

that's right. if you're not angelina jolie, you have no business ever being within 5 feet of a child.

unmarried women are all ugly and mean.

Wow. That's just [wonderful]. Who is this guy again?
...
What the hell does ability to find a mate have to do with parenting ability? Some people just aren't any good at getting into relationships (shifty eyes) but that doesn't mean they couldn't be good parents.
...
*those women, who don't "put for the effort...blahblahblah bull----"? generally can't find a man who will let them be THEMSELVES, who they are happy with and can live with. but, of course, to f------ like Walrus here, women don't matter, thier happiness doesn't matter, their very f------ LIVES don't matter, so long as they are bowing to the Patriarcy and pop out lots of babies for Thier Man. Husband. Overlord.
...
Seriously? Being a good parent is dependent upon the ability or desire to get a man?

Walrus, you just don't like women.

as if anyone would suggest to an opiner that they desired, or even worse, had obtained, an abortion.

helping babies with birth defects is bad! bad!

sarcastiquotes why?

that s--- about fat women - i mean, look everyone knows that obesiety interferes with FERTILITY, not having the f------ baby!

"...same-sex couplings have not produced anything for society, except for the spread of disease."

He's a mean, bitter, angry white male "Christian" who is not in the least bit Christ-like.

Angel Howard, 32, lay motionless on an examining table in a La Jolla fertility clinic last Mother's Day, her delicate features bathed in the blue-gray glow of an ultrasound screen as she watched a doctor try to impregnate her with someone else's embryos.

For the last month, Howard had been injecting herself with daily hormone shots that made her so sore she could barely sleep. The mother of six was tired. She had to handle becoming a surrogate without her husband, Brian, 34, at her side: The Navy Seabee had deployed to Iraq for six months.

Two months later, she was matched with a gay couple in France. The couple would buy eggs from a donor, pay a doctor to fertilize them with their sperm and transfer the embryos to Howard's uterus.

If she failed to get pregnant, she would only receive about $1,000.

Howard had always enjoyed being pregnant, ever since she dropped out of high school at 17 to marry her boyfriend and have Maria.

She met Brian at a Charleston, S.C., dance club in 1998, soon after she left her first husband, who had joined the military without asking her. Brian was different: He asked her before he enlisted, just as she would later ask him before becoming a surrogate. They married in 1999 and settled in San Diego.

Although Pentagon officials dismissed surrogacy as an "income-producing enterprise" they failed to eliminate surrogate medical coverage from recent defense spending bills.

Esteban, 46, the taller of the two with a short gray-black beard, was a child psychiatrist. His partner, Jean Michel, 50, tan and lean with gray hair, worked for the French government.

Outside, it had stopped raining. Sunbeams peeked through the clouds.