After all the sacrifices we make for our children, after everything we do to nurture them, love them, encourage them, and after we teach them to be self-sufficient, think for themselves, encourage them to speak truth to power (yes, even our power), what does it take for parents to abandon their children?

Two of three homeless immigrant youth are in this situation because of conflict over their parents’ cultural expectations for appropriate behaviour. One in three because their parents disapprove of their sexual (LGBTQ) identity. These are the findings of a new joint study by the Children’s Aid Society of Toronto and the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health.

After everything they do for their children, it’s hard to comprehend that parents let disagreements, even vigorous ones, about cultural values, role expectations of girls, and sexual identity lead them to reject their children, to discard them, to fling them into the not-very-nice world outside.