“Baby rescued from apartment after single-mother tragically died days earlier”
Didn’t think it was that difficult
It’s not, but then the headline wouldn’t subconsciously bias you towards rage clicking.
I don’t think the headline would make you rage click, it’s pretty neutral. The over the top reaction to said headline however…
It’s subtle, but it’s absolutely designed to induce feelings of negative emotions to evoke a click. If you’d like to look into this field of study, search up “shadow patterns” or " dark patterns" as that’s the modern design language meant for working with data on mass scale in order to drive engagement. (To the down voter, the fact you can’t see it is both sad and the point of the design. Unfortunate because it’s true. I’ve sat in these design meetings with software teams and marketing.)
They don’t know she was a single mother. They don’t know who she was because they weren’t told. The father could have been on a business trip for all we know. That proposed headline injects one plausible guess as to why the baby would have been alone, but without any actual data to back it up.
It also fails to indicate that the baby was alone. You try to imply it by ‘single mother’, but whose to say that there wasn’t someone else in the house that might have been important, like a sibling or extended family member? The detail that the infant was alone was key, but omitted in your version. Of course it’s awkward to try to indicate the baby was alone without using the word ‘left’ in the context of a headline appropriate short sentence.
They could have injected the word “tragically” before dies for a bit more consideration, though people can see that the tragedy is pretty self evident.
Infant only suspect in mother’s mysterious death
I think that’s a worse headline because it doesn’t involve the sad imagery of a baby alone for 4 days. “Tragic” is a kitschy word to include in a headline. And neither your headline nor the one in the meme place the mother up-front.
Well … Full disclosure. I’m not a journalist
As someone else in the comment section pointed out, this death and the infant’s precarious situation probably could have been avoided if America’s shitty for-profit healthcare system wasn’t such a god awful shit show.
The original headline ignores the mother all together to put the focus completely on the child, seeking to engage potential readers with ragebait only to throw cold water on them in the article where they disclose the death of the mother. All in order to completely sidestep any discussion of why exactly a new mother would suddenly die in our country “with the greatest healthcare in the world!”
A statistic that is becoming more and more common.
Edit: there’s also an overly heavy focus on dumping praise on the cops, which is ridiculous since they were simply doing their job.
welcome to the orphan crushing machine that first crashes the mother. you also gotto love the slight “polices are heroes and caring human beings” twist.
Don’t be ridiculous. The machine that crushes the mother is not the orphan crushing machine - that’s the orphan making machine. Different part of the same pipeline. Don’t confuse them - they are maintained by different companies.
The companies are subsidiaries of the same parent corporation. They can control the amount of orphans in circulation at will. Congress said “definitely not a monopoly” so it’s all good though.
Orphan Co. Limited ?
So i looked into it. Such deaths are not uncommon in the US. The issues that can cause maternal deaths can show up 24-48 hours after birth and the mother, having just gone through major traumatic body altering experience, may not trust her feelings that there is something wrong, and statistics show that neither do doctors. But in the US early release is the standard because maternity beds up time is money.
But i also learned of the Newborn and Mothers health protection act of 1996, that guarantee a stay of 48 hours vaginal or 96 hours c-section birth. And this must be covered by all medical insurance.
But x2. If the doctor agrees to an early dismissal, and the wife said anything but a full unquestionable rejection of the premise of early dismissal then they may be ejected. Which is a lot to ask of a new mother. At which point an advocate is the only way to reverse it. Husbands or family better be aware and on their shit i guess.
Note the story does not indicate the specific age of the baby or even that the cause of death is related to having given birth or something like post partum depression, which is also a potentially worrying cause over a longer term. It could have been an utterly accidental death or unrelated health condition.
You raise a valid set of concerns, but no indication whether it is pertinent to this story.
The article in question.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/phoenix-baby-left-alone-after-mother-dies-rescued/
It does say the mother recently gave birth. One can reasonably assume that the child in question is who she gave birth to. No matter what, the title and the article are terribly written.
Edit: fixed link
Edit 2: here is a slightly more responsibly written article and title.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/phoenix-baby-saved-mother-death-b2779209.html
Right, i don’t have that information, but when looking this up i came across a comment that said deaths soon after birth are not uncommon and that unnerved me so i went down a rabbit hole. Not saying that this is directly related… i just had to tell someone my findings
Seems reasonable enough, and a good reason to encourage particular focus after birth in your neighborhood support circle.
Which hopefully you’ve fostered in general, but I certainly can’t claim to have done so well on that front myself…
We all have our own models of how the world works. This frames how we understand the meanings of content.
The phrase “baby left alone” in no way implies it’s the mother’s fault. It is correct, a baby was left alone, in as much the fault of the ‘system’.
This meme feels more like something to instil anger and hatred than anything actually useful.
Left is the word that indicates that someone actively left this baby alone. They could have said baby found alone. Baby discovered. Heck, baby alone for days after mother’s death. Baby left absolutely implies it is the doing, or fault, of the person who left the baby. The person who is responsible. Now who will society assume is responsible for a new baby, but the mother?
Even you. You said, hey we could just as easily blame this on society as on the mother! No mention of the absent father.
Are fathers (absent or otherwise) not a part of society?
It’s seems like you’re saying society and a child’s parents are equally responsible for the child. A society is, of course, responsible to it’s individuals, but are you actually saying you think it is a common belief that society and a child’s parents are equally responsible for that child?
The “I don’t need no man” crowd would like them not to be.
in fact it even says “after mother dies”
What meme are your talking about? This is just a screenshot of a social media post.
Words do have meaning. Of course you can just imaging your own meanings but then you will be misunderstood.
Since when are memes useful? Theyre mainly propaganda tools but when theyre useless they’re called memes.
It’s not even certain it’s reasonably the fault of the ‘system’. There’s no details about how or why the mother died or why she happened to be alone with the baby for a few days. A mother taking care of a baby for a few days by herself is not a crazy circumstance without further context. At one point my wife had work and I had to take our toddler on a trip for a couple of days and no one could possibly have accused that situation of me being alone with our toddler due to some failure of the system, even if something had tragically killed me along the way.
There are so many stories about the system failing a baby or a mother, we don’t need to extrapolate this specific incomplete story with such details until the actual details are available, which may or may not be consistent with the tragic failures of the system.
There are so many things to be genuinely furious about.
I… don’t know, man, the info that she died is right there in the headline. I’m struggling to compose that sentence in English without using the word “left”.
“Police rescue baby alone for days after mother dies” doesn’t sound like English. “Police rescue baby alone after mother dies” sounds like the news is the baby doesn’t have any other family and also sounds weird.
If you take motherhood out of it altogether it becomes more obvious, I suppose. “The man was left alone on a deserted island after the rest of the plane’s crew died in the crash” is a perfectly valid way to frame that.
Blame English for using adjectives weird sometimes.
‘Police rescue baby found alone after mother dies days earlier’
Not a native speaker, but it sounds off to me.
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rage against babies
That’s what you got out of this? That she’s raging against babies and not against a system that forces women to give birth but does nothing to support mothers or their children afterwards?
ETA: oh wait you’re that same fucking pronatalist cockthistle that’s been crawling all over this post. Hail Satan, and have a lovely afternoon.
I’ve no idea what he commented, but raging against the system while reasonable by itself might or might not be related to this particular story.
We only know that a woman died and in the wake of that a baby had no one to take care of them for a few days, which is tragic but doesn’t mean that particular woman was forced to have a baby she didn’t want or didn’t have the level of support that one would have expected her to need, we just don’t have details.
So one totally hypothetical narrative that also fits the information as given:
- Woman had been trying to have a child with a committed man
- Everything seems fine, but unfortunately the man had to go on a business trip for a few days, leaving her to take care of the baby herself for a few days
- She tragically trips on the edge of a rug and hits her head just wrong on a counter corner, a death no one could have reasonably seen coming.
You can of course have a narrative more consistent with the complaint about lack of support:
- Woman is sexually assaulted and pregnant
- While abortion was legal for her, she decided she would not do it
- Some mix of unrecognized post partum depression, stress at having no money to help take care of the child, what have you caused her to kill herself
Or the mother had some medical condition that was undiagnosed due to lack of money to attend.
All of the stories are possible, and real examples of the supporting scenarios can be readily found, but we can’t assume this specific incident is part of that narrative with details as scant as this. Assuming unspecified facts to fit a narrative can lead to a credibility issue if subsequent details show that none of those actually applied in this situation.
https://www.azag.gov/issues/reproductive-rights/laws
On November 5, 2024, the voters approved Proposition 139, which establishes a fundamental right to abortion under the Arizona Constitution.
So what’s this about being forced to give birth?
You know there’s an entire country outside of Arizona, right?
You understand this is in the context of the woman dying in Phoenix, Arizona?
You have been implying that she was or could have been forced to give birth.
Given the age of the child the constitutional amendment had already been passed, meaning you have made misleading statements.
I thought you could say “I was left alone after my friend passed” or something. It doesn’t mean my friend left me purposefully but rather I was just alone after he died
It’s about the framing. The focus is on the baby being “left alone,” with passive language implying that somebody did that to them. Meanwhile, the mother’s death is treated as an afterthought, only relevant as a circumstance in the baby’s story.
Well yeah, it’s not newsworthy that a random person died. The newsworthy part is ‘holy shit this baby lived somehow.’
Yes. Because people who read local news stories tend to care more about infants than adults.
Yes. Because old people who
read local news storiesare mindlessly anti-choice tend to care more about infants than adults.FTFY
This was a living infant that in all likelihood the mother wanted to live. Celebrating its survival seems hardy “anti-choice”, even as the mother met a tragic end.
These mouth breathers call themselves “Pro-life” and all they care about is getting babies born. They couldn’t give a crap if the kid is living well after that. And they certainly don’t give a flying fuck about the mother. Otherwise they wouldn’t elect assholes who promise to cut low income benefits and free school lunch programs. They believe that being against abortion will get them into heaven and that’s is all they really care about. That and growing their insane death cult membership rolls.
But what do those people you call out have to do with this story? There’s no details one way or the other for the most part.
There’s no evidence that she was forced to have the child against her will.
There’s no evidence that it was apparent that she was in particular need of support, no evidence she was kicked out prematurely from the hospital, and no statement about whether the cause of death even relates to having given birth.
There’s no evidence that the life of the infant was in any way prioritized over the life of the mother, the mother was already dead.
Maybe one of these will turn out to be the case, but at the moment it’s a bit presumptious to state this relates.
Also, a close call with death is generally more novel than dying.
I think you can say that someone was “left alone” without any implication that it was done to them, just that it merely happened.
It doesn’t imply that somebody did it to them. The baby was left alone by the circumnstances. It’s kind of difficult to come up with as short a sentence that is reasonably possible to read without somehow using ‘left alone’ in it.
“Kind of difficult”
I’m not a native English speaker and I can easily come up with many alternatives that don’t imply the baby was left alone purposely.
I don’t think the original wording implies that at all. This is a meaning OP and others are inferring themselves.
“left” is used all the time where no one was purposely doing anything. It doesn’t imply that at all.
No, it does imply that. Completely and directly. Your obstinance does not make you correct.
A baby does not have agency of its own. If I ‘left my keys on the counter’, you SHOULD assume someone put them there, because they didn’t fucking climb up there themselves. That’s how reality works, let alone the English language…
My friend’s death from COVID left me saddened.
So you are saying my friend acted with some agency to make me sad in that sentence? The subject of “left alone” is unspecified but a very normal reading is that just the general situation left the baby alone, or maybe left alone by all of society. It’s a pretty tortured reading to declare that the mother was intended to be the subject to that verb.
“A baby was found alone days after its mother died.”
It’s truly not that difficult at all.
Was the baby dead? In trying to edit out the word ‘rescue’ you’ve left a key detail ambiguous.
You refered to a human as “it”, because you didn’t want to say “baby” twice but the details didn’t include a gender and that sentence structure didn’t provide a good way to just refer to the baby once. This is commonly considered pretty dehumanizing choice of pronoun. I’d argue this is much more likely to offend people.
All this to avoid some imagined implied slight by the choice of the phrase “left alone” when there’s no whiff that the subject of the verb would be the mother.
There was some eagerness to find offence at a really innocuous headline, but really it’s quite a fairly straightforward headline that requires the reader to pretty much try to be offended by a particular reading of what most would consider an innocuous phrase.
Oh even better: “Baby rescued days after mother died”
So easy.
Though it does omit the detail about the baby being alone since the death. As written that could refer to just a very unfortunate family where the mother died, and then while the tragedy of the mother’s death was fresh the family dealt with a separate tragedy that came close to killing the child.
Including the “alone” is pretty pertinent for the general picture.
And this entire incident is after someone managed to take offense at the concept of a baby “left alone” by a death as somehow accusatory toward the mother, which is far from a concept that I would have read into that headline.
Remember, the gripe being expressed here is that “left alone” is the action being described. You’re claiming that it’s hard to include all the same details without including that phrase, so let’s really re-write it with the exact same details so you can see how simple it is to just change the action:
A baby was found alone after days in a Phoenix, Arizona, apartment and was rescued by police officers last month after the infants mother had died, officials said Friday.
And all that can be covered in additional phrasing, but still leads with the death of the mother instead of a baby being left alone.
Get it yet?
Ah… bait.
Are they gonna charge her ghost?
Depends was she black?
I don’t know, maybe I don’t realize the actual connotations of the phrase “being left alone”, but IMO she’s not just overreacting - she’s gone absolutely batshit nuclear over some fucking (actually not) inadequate wording.
“Left alone” is an intentional act. The mother died so unless it was suicide she didn’t leave the baby alone. And then it was in the US and the US has the highest maternal mortality in the West. The headline downplays the tragedy of the mother’s death, ignores the tragedy of the high maternal mortality, makes it sound a bit like she was a bad mother rather than a mother that society didn’t do right by.
Edit: even a suicide isn’t leaving the baby alone because if you are that far out I’m not going to hold you responsible for the baby (although if I knew you I might have a very hard time forgiving / be unable to forgive you).
“Left alone” is an intentional act.
Not necessarily. “The man’s death left his wife alone.” There’s no intention in that, nor even a hint of negligence.
It seems an absolutely utterly normal phrase to describe what happened to the infant in the wake of her mother’s death.
They can’t say much specific about her death or circumstances because her identity and circumstances of death were not released. They can’t claim “orphaned” because they don’t know enough about the family. All they know in the reporting is that circumstances left an infant alone with her dead mother’s body. The only thing they have is the bodycam footage of an infant and terse description of the scene. No idea if her death was particularly related to maternity. They could have tossed the word ‘tragic’ in there but it seems self evident.
I hope that when the mother died, that all of her hardships and burdens sloughed away, and that she knows that her loved ones are safe so that she can rest in peace.
Then, I hope that all of that negative shit condenses itself into the world’s most pristine Lego that haunts whoever came up with that tone and headline. When those who are responsible wear shoes, I hope that ghost Lego becomes a puddle.
I’m with you in the first half, but people are reading way too much into the connotation of “left alone”. Anyone who at least read the full headline would not see the mother being accused of anything. “left alone” is merely descriptive and does not demand nor suggest that someone’s actions or even negligence caused it.
Trying to write an accurate, comprehensive, short headline is tricky if trying to dance around this level of presumptuous offense.
I thought the same as you did before coming in here thinking the headline was fine but reading some other comments I can see their point of view. Different people just see different things, it’s all just perspective. You’ve really gone on an unhealthy crusade in here demanding everyone see your side and that it’s the only valid one.
I can understand sensitivity to potentially troubling interpretations of a phrase, however:
I hope that all of that negative shit condenses itself into the world’s most pristine Lego that haunts whoever came up with that tone and headline
This is more than “oh some folks might have a reading other than intended” it’s demonizing someone for writing a headline that almost certainly intended no ill will. That seems really unfair to the headline writer.
I think it’s because left alone implies intention, and an explanation is only offered at the end of the headline. Whereas other phrasing can avoid that. Baby found alone after mother dies, for instance. Or even Baby found alone by police after mother dies.
Honestly, if I’m going to overthink it, I think it’s because of the cultural tropes of the U.S. and advertiser-driven media. Saying that the police rescue the baby sort of sets up the sentence for misinterpretation, but police rescuing the baby instead of merely finding it is more emotive - it drives engagement, it reinforces the notion that police are protectors.
And following, left alone vs found alone. Police rescue baby found alone […] is sort of narratively poor. There’s a disjoint that I’m sure someone smarter than me can describe, but Police rescue baby left alone […] is a better ‘fit’, even if it’s factually looser. It may have to do with cultural preconditioning where people expect police intervention only when the parent has taken an action.Heck, Baby left alone after mother dies is saved by police, establishes the narrative without burying the lede, and it even keeps the left alone phrase intact while establishing context before moving to other narrative.
But anyway, my point, I guess, is that the title is editorialized for the wrong kind of drama, and that’s dumb. The situation has its own drama if they would appeal to empathy, rather than people’s desire to bootlick and see evil everywhere.
I think people are overthinking a headline that the author likely gave very little thought about it. There was a dead mother, a baby that was alone as a result for days, and the footage we have is police bodycam footage, so the police involvement is another key salient detail, and beyond that, no information was disclosed so they didn’t have it.
I’d say in terms of being “clickbaity”, it’s pretty low on the list. You pretty much have as much of the story as there is a story as of yet just by reading the headline. ACAB crowd may take umbridge at the police ever doing anything good, but at the end of the day any people can do a right thing, and this is the sort of thing that one can respect as police activity, though one would perhaps wish for a more neutral sort of party to conduct an initial welfare check over someone being conspicuously absent without signs of violence or threat. One might also hope that a neighbor would be better situated to actively check in, but if the house is locked and she wasn’t that close with her neighbors to give them a way in, there’s a limit for what they could reasonably do. Perhaps that’s the story that was missed, the importance of a more robust support network with your neighbors that might have better mitigated this tragedy, or depending on the circumstances of her death, avoided it altogether.
Baby left alone after mother dies is saved by police
If one starts with the assertion that “left alone” is somehow accusatory toward the mother (I disagree), this retains the same issue. It just moves the police involvement to the end. One issue is that it’s a little awkward to have “after mother dies” between the subject and verb. It also omits the fact the baby was alone for days, if the baby was saved moments after the mother’s death, that’s significantly different.
Plus, “where was the father? huh??” I understand they could’ve separated, but he still had responsibilities towards this baby. So, only if the journalists had confirmed he was deceased long ago it would make sense to make this omission… but they should said so.
Seems like the authorities didn’t release a lot of actionable details to the press. They only see the baby and have a short description of the scene. Not where the scene was or the identity of anyone or a hint as to how the mother died. The journalists are simply reporting the partial story without anything further to go on at the moment. The press likely will be bored of the incident well before the details would be available.
but he still had responsibilities towards this baby.
This is going to sound harsh: If the woman can choose to abort or not, no he doesn’t. If women want the sole responsibility on whether a fetus lives, they can get it. Fully. In that case: His wallet, his choice. His time, his choice. etc, etc.
Now, if there is an abortion ban, then it’s a different story, and the man should have the legal responsibility for both mom and child, by default.
yeah… I don’t think that can be the “general rule” (e.g. law perspective) since socially men already have a lot of power… But I take your point as logic and fair: For sure, if a couple goes in that discussion, and he is clear that he won’t help at all, and she still goes along with it… then okay, maybe there’s some fairness to the situation. Specially if she knows, and can handle all by herself (e.g. has some rich parents)
Anyway, I think the “her body her choice” motto is more about rape victims… so, I believe you are just stretching the situation. Saying “his wallet, his choice” is way too much. Sounds politically incorrect in all ways. Penis and Vagina had a consent, in your example, and that should be: her decision for abortion. You want to extend it to his decision on being present… (or, asking for the abortion.) I think this was a given until recently. Parenthood tests are available, and having a judge ‘force’ such thing is relatively new for ‘human history’ (thousands of years without it.) anyway… I am just ranting by now. tl;dr I don’t agree with you but whatever we are just random people on the internet.
This of course presumes the father wasn’t in the picture, which given all we know is that she was alone with the baby for a few days we can’t say if he was just away for a week or something. Or perhaps the father is deployed in the military.
Lot of discussion in this thread asserting a certain narrative when we just don’t know. We know that, tragically, a mother died and that by some mercy the infant was rescued. That’s really all we know.
I bet a LLM wrote that headline.
Twatter and ShitGPT have a lot to answer for. It seems like a significant amount of people have forgotten how to read.
Mother’s truly are nothing to our society
What part of this says that at all?
The part where mom being dead is a footnote, not the headline.
But it is in the headline…
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That was an antinatalist community, this is child free.
That’s like saying if a group of people don’t like apples, they’re the same as a group of people who have philosophies about wanting apples banned.
Similar general idea, completely different reasonings behind it.
I’m child free and not anti-natalist.
Wait why in the fuck would antinatalists bomb an abortion clinic??? That doesn’t make an ounce of sense?
It was a fertility clinic
It doesn’t, and that is the only confirmed thing antinatalists have harmed, it was a suicide bombing where I believe the only confirmed death was a bomber.
Needless to say, didn’t understand their own ideology they claimed to have very well.
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Wait what? What connection is there between the bombing and this comm?
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