Professionalism and Responsibility

Great Debates
21

PLD:

Lest it seem that I’m ignoring a strong point of yours, I’d agree that overconfidence/a feeling of invulnerability is delusional and dangerous.

When I hear or read about an accident involving small children I usually think about whether or not I’m vulnerable to the same. If I am, I try to take steps to mitigate or eliminate the risk.

For example, there is a small goldfish pond about two feet deep 3 feet wide and 4 feet long in front of out house. It should be damn near impossible for our daughter to ever get out of the house and fall into that pond unattended. I recognize mistakes happen, and I decided to fill it in anyway.

In certain things I try to be redundant, and have multiple fail safes.

Of course I remain completely vulnerable to many unforseen dangers. I have made and I will make many mistakes. Some risks can’t be eliminated, and random circumstance will always produce new dangers.

lucwarm:

Yes, but there are certain mistakes that no decent Doctor or lawyer should ever make. As you say, some of the “Basic Stuff.”

I remember reading about that hospital in Florida that labels limbs to be operated on. “Don’t amputate me!” They write on the good limb.

22

You can attempt to polish it any way you want, but it’s still a turd, Scylla. Even the most prepared and vigilant person, in the exercise of any activity, can (and will, sayeth Mr. Murphy) find him- or herself in a combination of circumstances, however rare, that such an occurrence is not only likely, but inevitable.

This is just arrogant silliness. The best laid plans of mice and men, and all that. Apparently, you have such a, well, unreasonable definition or “reasonable precautions” that very few people could possibly live up to it.

It’s great that you’re such a great parent. Bully for you, really. I hope your daughter grows up uninjured, unscarred, and fully prepared to take care of herself. But one day, despite all your precautions, something is going to happen to her–something that was probably easily avoidable, and that you had taken reasonable measures to prevent, but nevertheless, because of a combination of circumstances, will happen anyway. I hope you are as hard on yourself then as you are willing to be on others.

It only takes a single, momentary lapse in judgement or thought for tragedy to occur. And, yes, that can even extend to not knowing that a child is in a carseat in the back of the car. No matter how prepared you are, no matter how much a creature of preparedness and habit and procedure you might be, you are still capable of a lapse in judgement. If you are not, you are unique in all of human history.

I am reminded of an article I recently read in The Best American Science Writing 2000. It concerned accidents in the field of medicine, particulary in the ER and the OR. Essentially, the gist was: Mistakes happen. Bad ones. Ones that cost people their lives. No matter how prepared and experienced a physician is, they happen. They don’t just happen to the bad doctors–they happen to all doctors. Surveys of physicians show that nearly all of them have made horrible mistakes at some point, even life-threatening mistakes.

They can happen to anyone.

23

Wow. With all the objections here to the OP, it’s suddenly a bit more clear to me why I see such poor parenting so often. It stuns me to read some of the comments from posters I think of as caring and responsible people.

Is the concept that Scylla puts forth in the OP really so difficult to accept? Sure, we don’t hold private drivers to the same professional standards as bus drivers, or pilots of private aircraft to the same standards as airline pilots, but there is, for the sake of public safety, a minimum standard to which we do hold these private operators. Should we not hold parents at least as accountable as we hold day care workers and babysitters?

Yes, accidents happen. A brick falling off of a building and smashing into a child’s forehead is an accident. Leaving a child locked up in a car through forgetfullness is NOT an accident; it’s a failure to deliver the minimum expected standard of care. Calling it an “accident” trivializes the responsibility an adult assumes when caring for a child.

In IzzyR’s example from the thread that generated Scylla’s OP, a mother, through tiredness, forgot that her baby was in the car and went in to have a nap, leaving the baby to die. But surely there was more than tiredness at work in this act of neglect? The mother was unmindful and careless of her child’s safety. She failed to maintain the minimum level of awareness we damn well expect her to have when dealing with her children. Her actions in leaving the child in a hot car because she was “tired” are no more excusable than if she’d rolled her child in a stroller up to the edge of a busy street and walked away from it without setting the brake because she was “distracted” by a pretty dress in a store window. In both cases, there’s a reason for the neglect. In neither case is that reason sufficient excuse for the neglect.

Forgetfullness is a forgiveable human frailty. We can all understand it. “I left the car window open and now the upholstery’s all wet from the rain” is a statement that evokes immediate empathy. “I forgot I had a helpless infant in the car, for whose safety I was solely responsible, and now she’s dead” is surely more serious than a rain-dampened bucket seat.
On preview:

Phil, is it really “arrogant silliness” for me to believe I can prevent my child from dying of heat exhaustion today by not leaving him locked in a car? Are you being deliberately obtuse or can you seriously not see the difference between accidents which happen despite due vigilance and reasonable precautions and accidents which happen due to the lack of vigilance and precautions?

24

No, it’s “arrogant silliness” to believe that you are humanly incapable of being in circumstances in which you would do so.

Not only are there a lot of True Scotsmen at the SD, there are a lot of Psychic Friends, too.

25

Would you care to elaborate on this particular sentence?

26

PLD:

Being horrendously accident prone, I am all too aware of what you are saying.

Horrible accidents happen. Lapses of judgement occur.

Doubtless you are right, and I will fuck up big time.

If I could tell you how I was going to fuck up, it would never happen.

I can’t.

But, I can tell you some ways that it won’t, some mistakes that won’t be made. Some lapses of judgement that cannot occur, some risks that have been eliminated.

By know means have I even gotten close to catching them all. That’s unrealistic. However, I’ve eliminated some of the common ones, and some of the ones that are easy to eliminate.

Hopefully by doing so I’ve increased my daughters chances at a good and healthy life.

The other idea, which is one that I got from both my father and from an airplane pilot, is that by taking reasonable precautions in a variety of things I do, and by doing them the same prudent way every single time, I have eliminated some unforseen risks.

Most disasters occur not because of a single large mistake, but because of a chain of smaller innocuous ones.

Around my daughter I try to eliminate those. I am extra careful in much the same way that I realize I am engaging in high risk behavior every time I pick up my chainsaw.

I slow myself down, become extra deliberate, and careful. I simplify, and I don’t try to do multiple things at the same time.

It is still possible, likely even that I will screw myself up with the chainsaw if I use it a lot. However, there are some mistakes with that chainsaw that I will simply never make.

I may and certainly will make a variety of really fucking stupid mistakes, but there are some that I will never make, and that no one ever should.

27

Back in the original thread, I agreed that any forgetting or neglecting of a child, intentional or accidental, was criminal activity. After discussing it for a short while, the debate turned to “well I left my child in the car for 14.5 seconds while I put a bag of groceries inside the door, so I think it could happen to anyone.”

I’ll repeat, there is a world of difference between the grocery drop and letting your child die in the car. Still, I’d advocate caution during these little sorties, since you never know when you will be delayed or who is watching.

Now we seem to be discussing whether any accident is completely avoidable. I think Scylla had the right idea, but I see far too many absolute terms being used for my comfort. Terms like ‘always’, ‘never’, and ‘100%’, in some cases in big bold type. Using *Scylla’s example of his father and gun handling, I think there is proof right in the story that no precaution is 100% reliable. Not only does his father check the chamber for a round, but he also never points the gun in an unsafe direction. If either precaution were 100% effective, he would only need one or the other. Truth is, no matter how remote the possibilities, someone learned the hard way that both safety measures are necessary. Eg. Checking for rounds has an error rate of .01% (yes I know it is even lower, but bear with me for a moment) as does pointing the weapon only in a safe direction. By using both you have reduced the mishaps an order of magnitude to .001%. And that is the goal of these multi-step procedures and cross-checks. The exist because accidents do happen.

“So Waverly,” you may say, “why argue over the difference between 99.99% and 100%?” Because to say ‘100%’ or ‘never’ implies that anyone who is the victim of a freak accident is negligent. Given the large numbers of people we are dealing with, even a small margin of error is going to result in the rare accident. To sum up, these ‘professional’ style safety measures are good, but they do not make you infallible.

28

PLD:

True or false?

Certain specific accidents are 100% avoidable (or so close to 100% that they should be statistically impossible.)

You’re way over my head with these. I don’t get 'em.

29

We’re closer to middle ground then we both think, Scylla. I think they key is this:

They shouldn’t, but they do. And it isn’t(necessarily) because the people are incompetent–it’s because they’re human.

I’ve never made a mistake that approaches the tragedy of a child’s death. But I’ve made some dumb ones.

When I lived at home with my mother, we had a dog. Now, I hope that, throughout my history on the SD, I’ve established myself as an animal lover and a knowledgeable, responsible pet owner. Nevertheless . . . in the morning, whoever was up first was responsible for letting the dog out into the fenced-in backyard to use the bathroom. When she was finished, she’d come back and scratch at the door to be let in. In the summer, no problem; in the winter, you’d close the back door so as not to freeze the house, and listen carefully for the dog to scratch. If you weren’t listening, it was just second nature to check the back door after five minutes or so.

One winter morning, when I was the only one home, I let the dog outside as usual. I was exhausted from work the night before, so I ate my breakfast, then I went in the living room to do some studying. Two hours later, I remembered the dog was still outside in the snow. This wasn’t a big, hardy, weather-proofed dog. It was a little poodle. She could have run away, she could have gotten seriously ill, any number of things could have happened. Luckily, they did not. It had never happened before, and it certainly never happened again. But it happened. Not because I was incompetent, but because I am human.

30

Waverly:

Yes, but to take your example a step further, combine this his keeping the bolt open 100% of the time, and he’s reduced his chances even more.

Ideally he’s reduced his chances so that statistically it should never happen.

Some people count the safety as an additional feature. My father does not, being one of those people who believe a safety actually causes more accidents than it prevents.

31

IMO, false.

From http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/acr/argue.htm#scots:

The “No True Scotsman…” fallacy
Suppose I assert that no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge. You counter this by pointing out that your friend Angus likes sugar with his porridge. I then say "Ah, yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.

This is an example of an ad hoc change being used to shore up an assertion, combined with an attempt to shift the meaning of the words used original assertion; you might call it a combination of fallacies.

In this example, “No competent parent would ever do X.” “But I know a woman who did X.” “Then she was not a competent parent.”

As far as the Psychic Friends quip, it’s easy for xeno to say, “Surely there must have been more at work,” but until he’s at least talked firsthand to the people involved, he maybe shouldn’t be so sure about that “surely.”

32

Sure.

If so many people are willing to permit such laxity in parental responsibility that tiredness is a legitimate excuse for neglect, then it’s no longer a wonder to me how some parents can believe they’ve fulfilled their obligations with a five minute “Drugs are bad, m’kay?” lecture when their kid is 15. (“How could this happen? We told him drugs were bad, officer…”) It boggles my mind no more that some parents leave loaded weapons in unlocked cabinets in the same room as their unsupervised toddlers. (Hey, they put the gun away, didn’t they? Who knew the kid could climb that well?) It ceases to amaze me that some parents don’t know where their teenagers are supposed to be, when they’re coming home, what they’re studying in school or who their friends are. After all, kids’ll be kids and you can’t control everything.

Parents are only human.

33

PLD:

[quote]
false, IMO**

Well please tell me how my daughter is going to drown in my small fish pond now that I’ve completely filled it with dirt.

To be fair I’ll give you a better example.

I don’t want it to be possible for me to scald my daughter in the tub with hot water.

To prevent this:

  1. I always test the water both from the spicot and in the tub before I put more daughter in.

  2. I always get in the tub first before I take my daughter in (also helps prevent drowning and such.) If the water is not hot enough to scald me, it’s not going to scald my daughter.

  3. I have lowered the heat on the hot water heater to a damn inconvenient level, so that the hottest water it produces is not enough to induce a scald.

  4. I always sit with my back to the spicot (also stops her hitting her head on it while she splashes around.)

I’d like to think that I have eliminated the possibility of a bathwater scald in my house 100% of the time.
Yes, the accident with the dog is an understandable and regrettable lapse, but the standard of care you must apply to a dog is far less than what you would be expected to apply to an infant. Yes?

34

Phil, I claim no psychic abilities, nor do I need to in order to conclude that the parent was (pay attention here) unmindful of her sleeping child. The specifics of the situation and the very definition of the word “unmindful” lead inescapably to that conclusion. My opinion, which also requires no psychic abilities, is that such heedlessness of an infant under her care amounts to criminal neglect.

35

It would appear that you have completely misunderstood the issue. No one is saying that a parent could deliberately and consciously decide to neglect their children because they are tired (which is analogous to your examples involving weapons and drugs). Rather, that when a person is tired their mind can play tricks on them, and they may get a false impression as to the actual state of affairs. In this instance, the woman thought she had actually dropped the child off at the sitter’s place. She did not decide to give the child a lesser level of care because of her tiredness - she falsely perceived herself as having followed proper procedures. Please keep this distinction clear.

Furthermore, no one has suggested that “such laxity” is to be “permit[ted]”. Rather that it is not far removed from the type of error to which ordinary humans are capable of on rare occasions, which sometimes have tragic results.

A better analogy would be to a person who is somewhat tired late at night but decides that he can drive home safely. On the way, he encounters a difficult driving situation, fails to respond adequately, and causes someone’s death. In retrospect, this person should not have driven, and his mistake makes him responsible for the victim’s death. But is this person a uniquely incompetent or criminal person?

36

Scylla: Each successive safety measure, while good practice, just proves that there are errors rattling around in the system and that is why they were added. I don’t think the exercise of assigning accurate failure rates and doing the math is possible, so neither of us gets to use objective data. I can only agree that the chance of failure is low, but there is no evidence that it is statistically insignificant.

It may seem like nitpicking, but however small, the ‘parental error rate’ is assigned to millions of parents and millions of kids over some period of time.

37

Scylla

Do you seriously believe that such precautions as you describe (e.g. your bath procedure) are precautions that you feel every parent should take, or else be condidered negligible? If not (and frankly I can’t imagine that even you could think so) then they are not relevant to this issue.

38

Well, surely the word “tiredness” can encompass anything from (pay attention here) “I could sure use forty winks” to “I just came off of a thirty-hour stint at the ER.” You seem inclined to presume the former, when the situation could as easily be the latter, or somewhere in between. And one is far more likely than the other to lead to (pay attention here) unmindfulness.

**

Has anyone here suggested otherwise? Nope. Did I not say in my second post in this thread, “Not that that means that people should escape punishment for mistakes that end in tragedy, as long as we are willing to distinguish between acts of deliberate malice and acts of negligence.” [sub]::: scrolls up :::[/sub] Yep, I sure did say that. “How about a little fire, Scarecrow?”

Scylla: I concede the point. I can imagine an amalgamation of events in which your daughter could be scalded, but they would probably fall under your definition of “statistically insignificant.”

I’m going to get flamed for this, but no, not to me.

39

Sure. Let’s call the concept “nil,” meaning immeasurably small but still a positive.

Ideally the chances shouldn’t be in the millions, but in the billions. But, let’s call it the millions like you say.

I know of many rolling car accidents. I know of many heat stroke from being left in the car accidents. Most people know of several cases of these accidents. They happen all the time.

Therefore people are not making the reasonable effort to reduce the chances of these occurences to nil.

So, what we have may be 10,000 cases of careless and neglectful parents who killed their child through incompetance, and one case where while getting out of the car a parent suffered a heart attack and collapsed before she could remove her infant, and the infant died trapped in the car.

That’s 10,000 cases of incompetance, and one unforseeable and unproventable accident.

40

Izzy:

Yes.

Perhaps they have different but equally useful precautions, but in concept, yes.

Scalding is a very common accident with tremendous consequences. Turning your hot water heater down so that it will not destroy your child’s life is a reasonable and prudent precaution that the parent of every infant and toddler should take.

Testing the water before putting your child into it is just the same.

Not all parents take baths with their toddlers, so the rest may not be applicable.