You don’t think parenting falls on a spectrum? That there are parents who are better, or worse, than others? And wouldn’t the amount and severity of a parents negligence factor into deciding where on that spectrum a parent falls?
Is it the belief that parents can be judged, or the fact I think I’m a damn good parent, or at least better than those who have allowed their child to die in the back of their car after forgetting about them, that has people so up in arms? And, just so we don’t backslide into namecalling like earlier, I don’t think that means I am incapable of ever being negligent as a parent.
I think you are using outcome to judge teh severity of negligence, and it’s that standard that I object to. The law may have to look at it that way, but I don’t, in terms of my emotional reaction.
I think I am a damn good parent, but I don’t feel confident that I am a better parent than them: they may well have been every bit as good as I. I’ve just been lucky.
I think that’s what people are reacting to, yes–that you think that while you could be negligent, that you could never be negligent in a way that lead to a painful death for your child. I am not saying this is your position–it’s not clear to me–but if that is your position, it’s got a bit of “holier than thou” about it.
I was a life guard in high school and college. I did rescue breathing and CPR on a 4 year old girl, who thankfully survived. She was the guest of her grandmother at the pool, who, by any measure available loved and adored this child.
The pool was crowded and the little girl was jumping off the edge in the shallow end with her grandmother. The water was well below her head, so it was no problem and grandma was in the pool with her. Her grandmother decided to quickly “take a lap”. Best I can guess, someone was blocking the little girl’s spot so she stepped over a few inches, enough towards the deep end so when she jumped it was over her head. I was on break on the time so I didn’t see what happened, but I ended up doing the rescue. She could have died. The grandmother made a tragic mistake- but I promise, she was a wonderful grandmother and I’m sure a great parent to her own kids.
That’s the point- great parents (and grandparents) can make horrible mistakes that end in tragedy and it’s not because they are bad parents or don’t care about their kids, but because they are human. Most parenting mistakes end up being no big deal. SOme, sadly, end up tragically. It was a mistake and a lapse in judgement. But as human beings we will all make those mistakes and lapses in judgement. To pretend anyone is so immune to that is simply hubris.
Of course you don’t. But, in cases where there isn’t a “but for the grace of God go I”, I think most people do use the outcome of the actions to judge the severity of the negligence.
Forgetting you kid in the car for a couple minutes while unloading and then getting them isn’t as bad as forgetting you kid in the car for hours while it slowly and painfully dies. The outcome of your action does matter.
My negligence could result in the death of one of my children. But it hasn’t, and likely won’t. The same holds true for a vast majority of parents. There are horrible parents whose children survive and good parents whose children die, so luck is definitely involved. But I don’t think it ALL comes down to simple luck, as so many seem to think here, but in minimizing the risk, paying more attention, and not being negligent often at all. It could happen, but the odds, and my own parenting, will minimize the chances of that happening.
None of which changes the fact that these parents were negligent. Which was kinda my point.
The fact that other parents are negligent does not excuse them for their actions, or the results of those actions, just as running a stop sign, misreading a chart and overdosing a patient, falling asleep while driving, or the plethora of other examples of negligence that occur out there. I don’t see people coming to the defense of someone who ran a stop sign and killed a child by saying that “Oops, I’ve run stop signs, so we shouldn’t judge this person too hard” or “Oops, I’ve fallen asleep while driving for a second, so we can’t judge this person too harshly”. It seems to me that this particular example hits too directly at parents and the outcome is one of the worst things imaginable, that they will simply lash out at people who point out it is negligent to leave you child to roast to death in a car.
Very minor nitpick, but I see it all the time. The stuff that comes out of the sky during a storm is lightning. When the sun comes up in the morning, the sky is lightening.
In point of fact, people in the medical profession that I’ve talked to are actually pretty definitive about not judging their fellow medical professionals for making mistakes, because – again – they all do it. All doctors have made some kind of crappy mistake when they’ve worked super-long hours and have been low on sleep and etc. Just for some of them, their mistakes don’t lead to disaster. To be clear, this does not mean that they are not liable or responsible for their mistakes. It simply means that their fellow peers won’t necessarily personally judge the ones who’ve made a bad mistake as any worse than the ones who haven’t. (We non-medical people will judge them, because we simply don’t know what it’s like. I had no idea how it was before I had some friends become doctors.)
The solution is not to judge them (how does that make anything better?) but to minimize the human propensity for error – Atul Gawande wrote a whole book about this: The Checklist Manifesto.
I’m happy for you that you’ve never been critically low on sleep, or worried about / focused on a different sibling so that you’re not focused on the one in the car, or stressed out about work, while taking your child somewhere and coinciding with an interruption in schedule (which seems to be when these kinds of things happen). I really am. My husband, happily for me and my child, is much the same way: when he is in the car with her, he is focused on her, and I would say that he has a rather lower probability than average of forgetting her. He can do this because a) he never had to breastfeed an infant (talk about being critically low on sleep) and in general deals fairly well with being sleep-deprived, b) he has a relatively lower-stress job, c) we only have one child, and d) he doesn’t do much of our social/child’s extracurricular/etc. planning, so he doesn’t have to juggle any of those things, and e) we had a nanny for the first year of her life (which seems to be the riskiest, as they are rear-facing and can’t talk to tell you you’re doing it wrong). I don’t think he’s ever made any mistakes with her in the car either.
But do realize that you (and my husband) are in the minority here, and that’s why everyone is jumping down your throat. That, and you’re conflating their responsibility with your judgment. Yes, those parents are responsible for what they did, even if they never meant to. But that doesn’t mean we should be judging them for it.
Let me ask you a question. If it were a babysitter, rather than a parent, who did the actions, would the parents feel the same way? Would you?
You know what answer you’re supposed to give, but don’t you think the parents wouldn’t be able to go “Wow, that sucks. But babysitter, we don’t blame you at all, it’s a mistake anyone, including us, could have made.” I think the only reason that the parents who do this garner so much sympathy (and so little judgment) here is because, if it is negligence only, they are the ones who suffer the most from their negligence.
I think this is where I didn’t understand the level of hostility to my point. The parents in these cases will never read what I post, and will have much larger issues of their own if they ever do. I didn’t understand why the hell so many people were jumping down my throat because I judged non-posters (which is kinda the M.O. of the Pit).
Again, this is a stupid message board. I wasn’t looking to solve anything, and the posters who think that by sympathizing with the parents, or refusing to acknowledge their negligence, are somehow going to make the world a better place and less children get killed, are not necessarily correct.
I have, all of them, sometimes alone, sometimes all combined. And I didn’t, and likely won’t ever, make a mistake that leads to my child’s death. As I said, it could happen, but it very, very likely won’t.
Because I judged someone who will never, ever be influenced by my judgment or by anything I wrote. I don’t think that’s a good reason for the throat jumping.
I also think part of it is because when you (or I) judge the parents who let their kids roast to death, they take it as judging them. That personal stake in not being judged is what I think make the responses so vehement.
I think you’re still missing one point, though: It is a mistake anyone could make, but that doesn’t mean anyone is just saying “oh, don’t worry about it.”
I dunno, maybe you’re not missing that. But the crux of it, at least for me (and I think for most parents), is that it could happen to anyone…and as a parent, I find it abjectly, cripplingly terrifying. I’ve felt the moment of terror that comes with the realization that I just forgot about my kid for a moment…and it could have been the end of my world.
Yes, it’s the parent’s fault. Yes, it was negligent.
But I’ve come close enough to being in their shoes–not close, but close enough–to have a taste of what it would feel like. And I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
This topic showed up on my Facebook feed. Really depressing how many assume this would NEVER happen to them, because they so LOVE their kids and “have my PRIORITIES in order!!!”
And most or even all of them are correct: it will never happen to them. But it won’t be the fact of their wonderful parenting that keeps it from happening, it will be the fact that it rarely happens at all, even to really crappy parents.
Maybe the fact that I have landed an aircraft gear-up makes me more sympathetic to human foibles, and how a disruption in routine can screw with us.
Beyond what has been mentioned, I think there is an aspect of denial related to our automotive culture. Placing a child in a car, even one with an outstanding crash rating, even in the best car seat, is among the riskiest elective decisions a parent makes, and they do it routinely. They just can’t admit to themselves that they are exposing their child to risks far larger than the pedophiles, school shootings, or the other spectacular but rare issues that are the focus of their concern. And they certainly can’t admit that one of those risks is the failure of their own focus.
Which, once again, was my point. I didn’t come into the thread and start calling the people who weren’t acknowledging the parents negligent mistake that they were pitiable, pathetic, assholes, or scary. Yet, when I do point out it was negligent, that’s what happened to me.
Missed the edit window. When I said “I disagree with none of this”, I didn’t mean that I agreed that andros had been negligent, just that I had been. Sorry.
Excellent point. I had to repeat this fact to my wife and various friends fifty times over the past few months, as we had booked a flight with our child on Malaysia Airlines. After enough repititions, it finally sunk in to her (and them) that there was no reason to spend thousands of dollars (and disappoint her family/my in-laws) by cancelling our summer travel plans…that it would make MUCH more sense for us to never drive anywhere, ever. Ever.
(P.S. We made it to Malaysia just fine. Great airline – though perhaps they’re being extra-friendly these days. We did have a mock-nervous chuckle, though, when that progressive flight map on each passenger’s video screen stopped functioning for a while, about an hour into the flight…)
The OP outright said “you will NEVER convince me those are usually accidents.” In other words, most cases are murder disguised as accidents, which I think we can dismiss as nonsense.