I was thinking about the episode of Vikings where Ragnar Lothbrok abandoned his disabled child in the forest with minimal resources. The logic was supposed to be that the child wouldn’t have a good life anyway, so he was sparing him from hardship. But the more I thought about it, the less sense it made.
Let’s start with the obvious problem. A disabled infant can’t survive alone in the wilderness. Neither can a healthy newborn. Babies are completely dependent on adults for years. They can’t feed themselves, find shelter, or protect themselves from predators. That’s just biological reality.
But here’s what really caught my attention about the story. Even if you accept the premise that life would be difficult, abandoning a child with an ax doesn’t solve that problem. It doesn’t ease suffering. It just creates a different kind of suffering. You’re not preventing hardship, you’re guaranteeing it.
The whole thing bugged me because it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what parental responsibility means. Whether a child is born with challenges or perfectly healthy, they need protection and care. That’s not negotiable. That’s what it means to bring a child into the world.
I think most people understand this instinctively. We protect vulnerable people because they depend on us, not because their lives will be easy or difficult. We do it because that’s what families do.
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