# Medicalizing irresponsibility: a term as ridiculous as "affluenza" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 23, 2017, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824 "2017-03-23T11:33:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/101 "2017-03-24T19:19:42Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > [Here’s a guy](http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-1758-5-things-i-learned-committing-campus-sexual-assault.html) who found out that he committed sexual assault after the fact. > > It happened to him, so it could happen to anyone, right? The situation in that story could certainly have happened to me, yes…but what exactly are you trying to prove with this line of reasoning? Simply put, they are not the same thing. I’ll hammer it home again. One is a conscious decision act and a bad decision may get made. The other is an unconscious omission of action. They couldn’t be more different. Also, to the best of my knowledge no-one has made the claim that being a rapist could happen to anyone whereas a mental aberration like we have suggested _can_ happen to anyone. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/102 "2017-03-24T19:39:30Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > The situation in that story could certainly have happened to me, yes…but what exactly are you trying to prove with this line of reasoning? But that couldn’t happen to me. Here’s a tip. Just because something happens to 1 or 2 people or .001% of the population, doesn’t mean it could happen to the other 99.999% of the population. > [@](#): > > The other is an unconscious omission of action And I disagree. They made a conscious decision to place “thinking about groceries” or “talking on the phone with their boss” or “worrying about dinner” above “thinking about my child’s well-being” Saying “It could happen to anyone, it’s not my fault” is just a way of getting out of the responsibility of fucking up and leaving your child in a hot car to die. ---
**Author:** ![eulalia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eulalia/32/457_2.png) [@eulalia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eulalia)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/103 "2017-03-24T19:40:45Z")
Sorry for continuing the hijack, but maybe I can cut it off here. The concept that “every man is a potential rapist” does not mean that every man is capable of rape. It means that to a woman walking down the street alone, any man who comes along might be the one in however many who is a rapist. She has no way of knowing if you are that man or not, and may not feel safe because she knows she would not be able to fight you off if you were,especially if she’s been assaulted before. You should not therefore feel personally insulted if she crosses the street to get away from you, and if you do, you’re an idiot. This has absolutely nothing to do with babies left in hot cars. ---
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/104 "2017-03-24T19:43:45Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Thanks for the explanation. As I said, I’m not a lawyer, and was asking, not telling my opinion, on intent. > > Is this the reason why parents of children who get ahold of a gun in the house and shoot themselves or siblings are not charged with a crime? Or are they? Sometimes they are - but it seems to depend on intention in those cases as well. My impression is that the cases where I have seen the parents charged as those in which the parents make no real effort to keep the gun away from the kids - the gun was sitting on the coffee table or some such thing. I’ve never heard of the parents getting charged when they forgot to lock the safe or when they kept the gun in a place that one would think was out of the kids’ reach, but they got it anyway. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/105 "2017-03-24T19:54:45Z")
> [@Hamlet](#): > > I don’t consider being in the 99.999999999% of parents who don’t leave their children in a hot car to die to be just “dumb luck”. It is completely possible to feel bad for a parent who child dies by their negligence and still believe they were negligent. The problem I have with the whole “it could happen to anyone” response is that it seems like an attempt to make an excuse for the conduct that led to the death of a child. I don’t think that “dumb luck” is the right term for it. It’s more a matter of an unfortunate confluence of circumstances and personal dispositions. Even after reading the _Washington Post_ article, i’m willing to bet that there are some types of people, with certain combinations of life experience and personality and current worries, who are more likely than others to leave their kids in cars. I’m still also comfortable with calling it “negligence” when people do this, even while understanding that it’s probably much more complicated that this one word can encompass. And it’s less about making an excuse than about arriving at some sort of understanding and explanation of why these things occur. Those things are not the same; i can understand why people do certain things, without condoning the things they do. And your use of the word “conduct” here still seems to imply a sort of intentionality, an unwilling to distinguish between acts of commission and acts of omission, that doesn’t fit these circumstances very well at all. My argument has never been that every one of these cases should simply be let go, with no consequences for the parent involved. But nor do i think it’s appropriate to march in and blithely declare that anyone involved in a situation like this must be some sort of marginal idiot. There was a time when, if you had told me i would leave over $2000 worth of camera equipment under the seat of a city bus, i would have thought you were crazy, but i went and did it, at a time when $2000 was worth a lot more to me than it is now. I understand that a child is not a camera, but anyone who reads that _Washington Post_ article and maintains **manson1972** ’s one-dimensional, knee-jerk attitude to the discussion isn’t worth engaging. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/106 "2017-03-24T20:00:11Z")
I’ve said as much as I need to. Anyone still to be convinced is not going to be so I see no benefit in continuing. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/107 "2017-03-24T20:01:18Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > Sometimes they are - but it seems to depend on intention in those cases as well. My impression is that the cases where I have seen the parents charged as those in which the parents make no real effort to keep the gun away from the kids - the gun was sitting on the coffee table or some such thing. I’ve never heard of the parents getting charged when they forgot to lock the safe or when they kept the gun in a place that one would think was out of the kids’ reach, but they got it anyway. > Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Cool, thanks for the information. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/108 "2017-03-24T20:04:09Z")
> [@eulalia](#): > > Sorry for continuing the hijack, but maybe I can cut it off here. The concept that “every man is a potential rapist” does not mean that every man is capable of rape. It means that to a woman walking down the street alone, any man who comes along might be the one in however many who is a rapist. She has no way of knowing if you are that man or not, and may not feel safe because she knows she would not be able to fight you off if you were,especially if she’s been assaulted before. You should not therefore feel personally insulted if she crosses the street to get away from you, and if you do, you’re an idiot This seems sexist to the extreme. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/109 "2017-03-24T20:09:53Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > I understand that a child is not a camera Do you? It seems not since you are trying equate forgetting inanimate objects with forgetting your own child is in your car. > [@](#): > > but anyone who reads that _Washington Post_ article and maintains **manson1972** ’s one-dimensional, knee-jerk attitude to the discussion isn’t worth engaging. And I said I read that article, several times in fact. And I agree that it is a tragedy. I just disagree with the “It could happen to anybody, it’s not my fault” reasoning. I don’t consider it one-dimensional, more like “I know the priority I place on my children, and it would never result in me leaving them in a hot car to die” And really, posters telling me “Yes, you might leave your children in a hot car to die” is rather insulting. ---
**Author:** ![Skara\_Brae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f0a364/32.png) [@Skara\_Brae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skara_Brae)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/110 "2017-03-24T20:33:28Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > This seems sexist to the extreme. Don’t worry. Everyone will see the light shining off your halo and know you’re okay. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/111 "2017-03-24T22:09:38Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > And the people who recommend harsh punishment for parents who forget, seem to assume the following: > > 1. The threat of punishment will somehow alter the brain and make the brain better at memory; > > 2. That the threat of jail time somehow will punish the parent, or deter other parents, I don’t think it matters, because, I suspect they want a _punishment_ indeed. A retribution for the death of this kid. It’s not a matter of deterence or prevention. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/112 "2017-03-24T22:19:42Z")
> [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](#): > > “There but for the grace of God”–no, I don’t think so. > > I do think these people are fundamentally different from me. > > Some of you have likened this to misplacing your glasses. I have to conclude that you don’t really, REALLY need those glasses. I have to say, during 60-some years of wearing glasses I have never once misplaced them, because they are always within my reach, because without them I can’t see. So, you don’t misplace your glasses because you have an alarm system : if you misplace them, you can’t see so obviously you’re going to notice. > [@](#): > > However strongly my specs were important to me is NOTHING compared to the way I felt about my children. Regardless how important your kid is, contrarily to your glasses, you don’t have any innate alarm system that goes off when your kid isn’t at the daycare center. > [@](#): > > Now I read the article, and I guess I admit that some busy and absent-minded parent might do this, innocently, and for those (thankfully extremely rare) times, I do feel for the parent. Except for the guy whose car alarm went off multiple times while his dying infant tried its best to make its presence known and he fucking ignored it. In fact, rather that showing that this man is more guilty than others, this case shows perfectly what is going on. It’s not that he was so busy all day that he never had a second to think about his child. It’s that as far as he was concerned, his kid was safe somewhere. Even with the alarm going off several times, it never crossed the mind of this father that the kid could be in the car. And yes, like many others, I’m totally convinced it could happen to you. This father probably thought too it could never happen to him when he was hearing about such events. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/113 "2017-03-24T22:49:12Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > Take a call from the boss? After you hang up, make sure the baby is okay. Been driving for a few minutes? Check to make sure baby is okay. Parked the car at the grocery store? Check to make sure the baby is okay. And on and on and on. OK, after reading that, I’m willing to admit there might be _some_ _rare_ people who couldn’t forget their kids. I think someone who is obssesive could be like that. Actually thinking every 5 minutes : “is my kid OK?”. During a conversation at home. While cooking. While taking a shower. Taking a phone call at work. So totally obsessed by their children that they’re constantly, relentlessly thinking about them. But barring being centered on children to such an essentially pathological level, I still don’t buy the “it would never happen to me”. On top of which, I’ve known people who are fully convinced that they \*never could possibly do X nor Y" (X or Y being something much less serious than letting a child die). In fact, I’m thinking of one person in particular. She wouldn’t admit she could. Until I pointed at her doing X. And doing it again. And then Y. She really struggled a lot with the idea. She had totally excluded the possibility that she could all her life. It was a massive disruption of her self-image, and it took her a long time to aknowledge that, yes, she was as faillible from this point of view as other humans. Maybe less than some (like me, for instance), or even less than many, but not infaillible. Nobody is infaillible. Never. Regardless how high the stakes are (like your own children dying). I tend to picture people in this thread as being like her. In denial. Many sem to say it’s a mechanism of self-defense. Others say pride. In any case, this need to think of themselves as unable to fail in this regard is probably central to their personality. And I assume that unless it happens to them (and I most certainly hope it won’t), they won’t ever be convinced. Like my gf, they would have to demonstrably fail to admit the posibility that they can fail. ---
**Author:** ![Patx2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/73ab20/32.png) [@Patx2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patx2)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/114 "2017-03-24T23:18:30Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Have _you_ ever been _severely_ sleep-deprived? > > And I don’t think sleep deprivation is necessary as explanation; it’s easy to be overly robotic, frazzled or distracted. I can see sleep deprivation leading to distraction, no doubt. I just was wondering how sleep deprived she was at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Patx2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/73ab20/32.png) [@Patx2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patx2)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2017, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/115 "2017-03-24T23:20:32Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > I don’t even think one needs to be sleep deprived for it to happen. I suspect it might happen to anyone. Very, very unlikely, but it can and will. As a previous poster said, everybody has brain farts and sometimes brain farts have dramatic consequences. > > Of course, there are careless parents, but I’m fully convinced that something awful that could in theory have been easily avoided could happen to even the most attentive parents. Agreed, but wasn’t the point being that the cause was sleep deprivation? ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2017, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/116 "2017-03-25T01:47:19Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > OK, after reading that, I’m willing to admit there might be _some_ _rare_ people who couldn’t forget their kids. > > I think someone who is obssesive could be like that. Actually thinking every 5 minutes : “is my kid OK?”. During a conversation at home. While cooking. While taking a shower. Taking a phone call at work. So totally obsessed by their children that they’re constantly, relentlessly thinking about them. > > But barring being centered on children to such an essentially pathological level, I still don’t buy the “it would never happen to me”. I find it strange to the point that I can’t honestly understand how you think that a parent that wants to know where their infant child is at all times is pathological. I mean, do you have any kids? When you took a shower when they were 1 year old, and just starting to walk, did you take a 20 minute shower thinking “I don’t have to think about them, I’m sure they will be okay”? ---
**Author:** ![eulalia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eulalia/32/457_2.png) [@eulalia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eulalia)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2017, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/117 "2017-03-25T03:00:34Z")
> [@Slash1972](#): > > This seems sexist to the extreme. And your lack of empathy is breathtaking. This explains why you can’t possibly imagine yourself in another person’s shoes. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2017, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/118 "2017-03-25T03:08:42Z")
> [@eulalia](#): > > And your lack of empathy is breathtaking. This explains why you can’t possibly imagine yourself in another person’s shoes. Sorry, i can’t imagine myself in the shoes of someone that treats every strange man as a potential rapist to the point where they should cross the street. If I crossed the street because I saw a black person coming towards me, that would be extremely racist, but for some reason, doing so because it’s a man is completely acceptable. I fail to understand this sexist reasoning. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2017, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/119 "2017-03-25T04:47:27Z")
You know, as a chronic forgetter myself, I can actually buy the possibility of there being non-forgetters in this world. I know that in my own household, for instance, there’s a large gulf between the two responsible adults in the house. He really doesn’t forget stuff- he doesn’t forget his house keys, he doesn’t forget where he put his phone, he doesn’t forget to put the parking brake on - I do all these things on a regular basis. The thing is, though, from the point of view of public policy, it doesn’t actually matter if it’s true that some people honestly truly never forget stuff. You’re outliers. It’s an unusual talent. And a person who’s a potential forgetter cannot turn themselves into a never-forgetter by an act of will. In fact, if you’re a non-forgetter, I would bet that this just feels natural to you. It happens with very little effort. This is unusual. Abnormal, even. The other 99 percent of us can and do forget things. So unless you non-forgetters would like to be responsible for a hundred babies each, we need to figure out as a society how to run things so that normal people- people who can forget things, even vital things like their baby in the car or a parachute on their back- can function with the least possibility of causing disaster ---
**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\ **Post date:** [March 25, 2017, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824/120 "2017-03-25T06:38:37Z")
> [@clairobscur](#): > > So, you don’t misplace your glasses because you have an alarm system : if you misplace them, you can’t see so obviously you’re going to notice. > > Regardless how important your kid is, contrarily to your glasses, you don’t have any innate alarm system that goes off when your kid isn’t at the daycare center. > > In fact, rather that showing that this man is more guilty than others, this case shows perfectly what is going on. It’s not that he was so busy all day that he never had a second to think about his child. It’s that as far as he was concerned, his kid was safe somewhere. Even with the alarm going off several times, it never crossed the mind of this father that the kid could be in the car. > > And yes, like many others, I’m totally convinced it could happen to you. This father probably thought too it could never happen to him when he was hearing about such events. I think most people, the vast majority, if their car alarm goes off, they might check to see what’s going on there. At least the first time. If it’s one of those hair-trigger alarms that everything sets it off, maybe not. But even the fact that it went off multiple times–he didn’t think once, “Maybe I ought to check it out”? It’s like you’re all saying that if it happens to one person, it could happy to anybody. But it’s vanishingly rare. When my kids were of the age to be in car seats I literally had never, ever heard of it. I had heard of weird brain farts like maybe you put the car seat on top of the car while you adjust something inside, but frankly, almost nobody does that. I couldn’t even get the car seat on the roof of my car, not that I would, because that seems like a fairly dangerous place even if the car is just sitting in the driveway. On the other hand, it was only when my youngest came along that we had to put their car seats in the back seat. Maybe somebody ought to rethink if that’s really the safest place, if every single parent is at risk for forgetting the kid is back there (and as you may have noted, I don’t think they are). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicalizing-irresponsibility-a-term-as-ridiculous-as-affluenza/782824.md?page=7)