The instinct to keep their children alive seems to be inborn in the good majority of mothers. However, it seems as if a small minority have to learn about making their children their absolute first priority along the way. Many of the latter cases lead many people to question whether they should be allowed to become parents at all or at least not without classes and a license. It seems as if Nadezhda Yarych of Shebekino, Belgerod Oblast in Russia falls into the latter category.

On December 2,2019, Yarych gave her eight-month-old son, Zakar an excess of Vodka to go out partying with her friends. It ended up killing Zakar outright.Nadezhda was married to Mikhail Yarych. The exact nature of his relationship to Zakar is not known. However, it doesn’t seem that he intervened in the situation with Zakar. Yraych’s family and friends have said that she had been giving Zakar Vodka to make him fall asleep. He had become dependent on it and struggled to fall asleep without it. On that fateful night, when she put him down in the crib to get ready to go out, she noticed that Zakar was very sick. She did take him to the hospital. The doctors could tell about the vodka and noticed that he had a viral infection. The doctors recommended that he be hospitalized but she refused on the grounds that it was inconveniencing her ability to go the party. She took him home and tried to tried to treat him herself using western Russian remedies. She took him back to the hospital four more times and was advised to hospitalize him every time but refused every time. As a result, Zakar passed on and Yarych has been arrested for child negligence and recklessness.

Many people wonder about mothers like Yarych. As in whether something is wrong with them mentally or if they just downright can’t handle the responsibility. Many people, young mothers especially, successfully give up their youthful ways when they become parents even though it’s not easy for many of them. Choosing to have and then raise the child is an enormous responsibility like no other. During those first few years especially, the child can’t do much of anything in his or her own. As a result, they are almost completely defenseless and it’s up to the mother to ensure that their every need is met. Once someone becomes a parent and decides to raise the child on their own, it’s a 24/7 job. Babies don’t ask for much except to be loved and not be hungry, cold, hot, or wet. However, these needs are very constant as the babies are brand-new and just learning to adapt to the world. They also don’t yet have any concepts of the differences in safety levels. Babies are also very fragile and what’s perfectly tolerable at just about any other age can literally kill them. Cases like Yarych’s, however, are rather strange. On the one hand, it’s as if she was acting on an ulterior agenda of her own. On the other, she acted as if she cared so much that she didn’t trust the doctors and was willing to self-doctor her own baby instead.