Rick is a character that leads a very troubled life in the story Killing Babies by T.C Boyle,. Throughout Rick's whole life he had family problems. These family problems consisted of really never having a family. By the time he was twenty-three he was left alone to fight the world, without any parent or even without the support of a brother. The family problems that Rick had would later help develop his yearn for a family and the need to protect all children from the life he was forced to live. Rick's family problems in his early years were a direct cause to his reaction at the time of the shooting at the clinic.
             Rick's childhood was a dreadfully dramatic and complicated one. He was a man that had lost all of his family values due to the events in his early childhood and adult years. The death of both his mother and father played a colossal role in the development of the man that Rick would turn out to be. Philip, Rick's brother was able to escape into adulthood with these extremely important family values. In fact it was this ten year spread between Philip and Rick that made these two brothers become two totally different people and lead two totally different types of lives. Philip became an extremely successful doctor who married a wife and had what seemed to be an ordinary, loving family. Rick however had "just drifted into a kind of thick sludge of hopelessness" after he dropped out of school and joined a band that failed within one year. The failing of this band then led to numerous jobs, to a cocaine problem, then finally to a daily abuser of marijuana. The successful path Philip took was due to the influence from both his parents during his important developing years. Rick missed out on this needed influence. Their mother passed away when he was around eight years old and their father passed away when he was still twenty-three. Growing up and not having both parents created a void ...