Songfacts®:

• Judy Collins' first marriage in 1958 to Peter Taylor produced Clark, her only child. After a long bout with clinical depression and substance abuse, Clark committed suicide at his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, aged 33 in January 1992. Collins wrote this song about her distressed teenage son. She told Mojo magazine:
  
  "Clark was troubled, from about the age of 11. He came back to live with me when he was 7 or 8. I'd lost custody for a couple of years. But then he started using, and I was still drinking and I didn't know. These days we could have said, 'Let's just get him to rehab immediately,' but that didn't happen. He went to a place called Sheppard Pratt (psychiatric hospital in Baltimore) but they didn't have a rehab then. He was 16 and he ran and wrote me this letter. He said, 'Don't try to find me.'
  
  Anyway, I had in my mind something I wanted to say. And 'Born to the Breed' came. People really identified with the song. Of course it's emotional but it's easier for me to sing than the song I wrote after his death, 'Wings of Angels.'"
• Collins recorded this for her Judith album. She sang two very different songs about motherhood on the LP; this self-composed tune and the Wendy Waldman penned "Pirate Ships."