Loss of Innocence Through Lack of a Moral Compass and Parental Care

In her novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, author Heather O’Neill draws on the themes of neglect and addiction to poignantly depict Baby’s loss of innocence at a very early age. Raised by a heroin-addicted father without a stable place to live, Baby finds herself drifting from foster home to foster home. She grows up without a responsible adult in her life, and never experiences any form of love and security. As a result, she is forced to juggle her responsibilities as an adult and try to keep her sanity in check. O’Neil uses Baby’s troubling narrative to highlight the bitter truth of urban society, where poverty, education, and housing play an important role as social determinants of health. People living in poverty tend to engage in risky behaviors, such as drug use which makes it harder to hold employment, and in turn find stable housing. By depicting Baby’s lack of moral values, premature loss of innocence, and an inability to sustain lasting relationships, resulting from an absence of a parental figure and safe living conditions, O’Neill sheds light on the prevalent issue in urban areas of poverty-stricken children with unmet needs, which the society is morally obligated to fulfill.

O’Neill shows that Baby is unable to develop the fundamental moral values, as well as the ability to tell the difference between right and wrong. This is due to the fact that her only role-model, her father, is never around for her, physically or emotionally. When Baby gets involved in prostitution with Alphonse, Jules resorts to verbal abuse claiming that “[she’s] a goddam liar and a whore” who will “only be fit for drug addicts” (O’Neill, 2006, p. 156) instead of helping her through that difficult time (O’Neill, 2006, p. 156). He seems to be ignorant to the fact that the only reason Baby is involved with Alphonse is because he is not there to tell her right from wrong. His casual use of foul language and absence from Baby’s life is part of the reason why she fails to develop a moral framework.

Furthermore, not only does Jules suffer from heroin addiction himself, he frequently has his drug-addicted friends like Lester over. They engage in adult conversations and are often under the influence of drugs around Baby. Baby knows about their drug use claiming that, “Jules and his friends had been calling heroin chocolate milk for years”. She further recalls that her father “had red marks like mosquito bites on his arms even in winter”, and she knows a lot about heroin as a kid just from “looking and listening” (O’Neill, 2006, p.10). Growing up surrounded by drugs, Baby begins thinking that drugs are okay. When Baby visits her father at the rehabilitation centre, “[she] wished that she was on drugs too” in order to bond with her own father (O’Neill, 2006, 71). It is this kind of careless and questionable behavior by Jules and his friends that play a big part in Baby’s lack of morals later in life.

Lastly, Baby is raised in the ‘red-light district’ of downtown Montreal surrounded by strip joints, drug dealers, and prostitution. This is not a healthy environment to raise a child. She is exposed to ‘newspapers [that] had strippers on the front page with their wrists in handcuffs and their breasts falling all over the place” (O’Neill, 2006 p.5-6) while walking down the street. She is told that if “[she] got raped after nine o’clock the courts would probably say that [she] had deserved it” (O’Neill, 2006 p.155). Given the lack of fundamental moral values, Baby struggles later on in her life as she gets involved in petty crimes, drugs and prostitution. This is the unfortunate reality of many families going through financial instability. According to episode 5 of The Raising of America, children can sense stress caused by financial issues and such stress has been shown to impact their genes in the teenage years. This generally results in anxiety, depression, and other mental illnesses. This is highlighted in the novel when Baby states, “Jules got me so worked up about him that I couldn’t eat my lunch at school the next day” (O’Neill, 2016, p. 4). O’ Neill is trying to shed light on these unmet needs of the children in her novel.

Being overexposed to an environment of crime and drugs, Baby endures premature loss of innocence and struggles to maintain long-lasting relationships later in her life. From a very early age, she begins idolizing prostitutes as “they made [her] feel bad when [she] was little because they always had beautiful high-heeled boots, while [she] had to wear ugly galoshes” (O’Neill, 2006, p. 5). Baby also expresses her admiration for women on the streets and states “the women [she] was most crazy about were the young drug addicts. They’d be sitting on the hoods of cars late at night wearing white leather jackets with wide flaps and jean shorts. When they were stoned, they’d always smile at [her]” (O’Neill, 2006 p. 243). Since Jules is never present in her life, Baby always feels neglected. This is the reason why when she meets Alphonse, her pimp, he is able to lure her with friendship and love. She reflects that “when Alphonse came into [her] life, it strangely felt a little bit like he was a mother figure” (O’Neill, 2006, p.186). She is looking to “desperately belong to someone, it didn’t really matter who” and Alphonse filled that gap in her life (O’Neill, 2006 p. 207). As a young child without a moral compass and a sense of personal integrity, she simply accepts that “[she] was going to have to turn a trick” (O’Neill, 2006, p.215). Alphonse takes her virginity, does heroin with her, and turns her into one of his prostitutes. She demonstrates addictive behavior when “she continued to get high” with Alphonse instead of going back home. (O’Neill, 2006, p. 286). Her claim that “when [one] is young, sex doesn’t mean as much,” shows that she doesn’t fully understand the concepts of self-worth and respect. Her nonchalant acceptance of sex and self-destructive behavior is evidence of how her upbringing in an unsafe environment leads to a loss of innocence at a very young age.

O’Neill shows how challenging it can be growing up and becoming a woman in the modern society, especially for Baby, who is all alone and has very little understanding of how to do so. She shows signs of distress in terms of personal integrity, and her own self-worth as she struggles to accept her character.

Furthermore, with the exposure of the adult world, Baby begins to display criminal, destructive behaviour which contributes to her struggle with the lack of a moral compass. Growing up in several different foster homes, Baby befriends many who are bad influences on her. O’Neill first shows how Theo, an outcast, is a bad influence on Baby as he leads her to vandalize and steal belongings from her friend Lauren’s house. After performing the act with Theo, Baby states, “Now that [she] was becoming a criminal, [she] thought there should be a big audience applauding [her]” (O’Neill, 2006 p. 134-5). O’Neill then highlights how Baby is charmed by Zoë when she comes into her life and teaches her that smoking pot “made you feel like a woman.” Baby later adds “[she] didn’t know about that, but [she] did like the idea of smoking up” (O’Neill, 2006 p. 151).

As Baby is exposed to the world of crime, drugs and bad influences, Baby’s shattered personality takes control over her relationships. Baby’s inability to maintain lasting relationships and commitments with the people she cares about, inhibits her from improving her overall social intelligence. Even the relationships which seem to be the right choice are not materialized due to her past decisions. The author exemplifies Xavier, Baby’s first boyfriend, as this distinct relationship. Due to the wrong decisions that Baby makes in her life, such as going into prostitution, dressing inappropriately and experimenting with drugs, makes her socially unacceptable to Xavier’s parents who refrain him from seeing Baby and state, “You can’t interfere in this, Xavier. I don’t think you should be spending so much time with her either.” This makes Baby feel incompetent as even when she tries to choose the right path of innocence, the shadow of her past always humiliates her because how Xavier’s mother looked at her, “made [her] feel naked” (O’Neill, 2006 p. 281-2).

Baby’s life depicts the vicious poverty cycle that plagues many of those living amongst us. This generally stems from environmental factors beyond one’s control such as a missing parental figure, which then impedes one’s ability to develop the moral compass and ethical values needed to make the right choices. Devoid of these values, Baby struggles to maintain stable relationships, and makes unfortunate choices including theft, drugs, and prostitution that make her unable to escape the poverty cycle.