There’s nothing more touching than seeing a rescuer hand off an endangered child to a grateful parent, but I’m always left wondering “Er, why are you safely outside the burning building/car/danger zone while your kid was left behind to fend for him/herself?” Jumping around on Netflix this weekend I saw this about 6 times.
Then there’s the classic “Let me back in there! My kid’s are still inside!” after carefully ensuring there are enough unoccupied people to stop you actually having to do it. After all, the first responders had to respond - you’ve been outside alone for who knows how long before they got there, not noticing your kid isn’t with you.
I’d hate to be a kid in the Marvel or DC Universes. “Hey, Mom! Do you smell smoke? …Mom?”
This thread reminds of something I witnessed as a kid. I was walking down the street with my dad and step mother. A dog came barking and charging out of a yard running straight towards the three of us. My dad in a panic grabs his wife by the shoulders and positions her in front of him using her as a shield from the vicious mutt.
I made a mental note that day: In case of an emergency - don’t count on dad. He may be a coward.
My god was she pissed off at him…for days, if I remember correctly.
Parents and children usually don’t sleep in the same room, and frequently are not in the same room when they’re awake, either. So the parent might know that the kid is still inside, but wasn’t able to grab said kid before escaping.
Ever been on a commercial flight? There’s a reason why the adults are told to put their oxygen masks on first, before helping the child. If an adult attempts to save a child before saving him/herself, both adult and child die. If the adult saves him/herself first, then at least one person is alive, and it’s possible that the adult can get help in saving the child. Frequently saving someone from a burning building (or whatever) will require specialized skills and equipment. I don’t know how to safely extract a baby from a room with flames in all entrances, do you? And I don’t have the protective gear to do so, either. If an unskilled person tries to save someone else from that danger zone, you’re likely to end up with two people who need to be rescued, not just one.
Also, movies should not be mistaken for real life.
Not everyone can be a hero, or even be counted on to act effectively in a dangerous situation. There is no reason to berate a person for not living up to your concept of how they *should *have acted.
Because my chances of saving my kid go up exponentially if the firefighters know were she is *before *they enter the smoke filled apartment. I don’t have a better way to tell them that than to run outside and say, “There’s an 8 year old in the northeast bedroom, hiding in the closet on the east wall!” If I stay inside to try to tell them, then I may be overcome by carbon monoxide and pass out before they get to me, or they may not be able to hear me through their gear in the roar of fire.
Now if I can grab her on the way out, sure, that’s Plan A. But I’m not going to waste the time coaxing her out past smoke and flames when there’s a large man with a respirator and flame resistant gear getting ready to enter.
In a car accident situation, I can’t realistically get her seat belt unbuckled from inside the car. There just isn’t access with today’s seat arrangements. So I’m going to have to get out first. If someone is standing on the other side of the car, yeah, I’m going to yell, “There’s a kid in the backseat, please get her out!” Again, saves time while I’m wobbling and staggering around the side of the car seeing double.
slight hijack, but remember how Wonder Woman always gets herself tied up? i don’t read comics, so it’s only now that it occurred to me that, being a woman, it is handy to both be the damsel-in-distress and the hero.
People don’t behave logically in an emergency situation. I’m sure if they had a few hours to decide, they would pull out the children, but in the heat of the moment, that can be lost.
It may be impossible for them to get the kids even if they wanted to: if the fire is between you and your child’s room, going after her will only get yourself killed, too.
Finally, with older kids, the procedure is for everyone to get out of the house via personal exit routes and meet outside. If the route is blocked, then someone has to go in after them, and the fire department know what they’re doing.
Okay, so which is it? We can have a world where guys fly, swing from spider webs, and pop admantium claws from their hands, but one where parents save their children from danger is too unrealistic?
This is just fan-wanking for bad writing. Take the fire scene in the second Spider-Man film where Peter saves the toddler. He was last on the scene and made it up 3 stories, found the kid, and got out. Unless the fire started in their apartment, Mom had a better shot of getting the kid out before the building was fully engaged. The fire dept. was right there, long before Pete showed up, so they also had a less damaged building and loads of equipment. (And WhyNot didn’t allow for this scenario, in which Mom indeed told them exactly where her kid was only to be told “Yeah, sorry, we’re not going in there, lady -building’s too far gone.”). And ironically, Pete had no powers, so basically the scene says “Yeah, pretty much anyone could have saved the child.” Mom, the firefighters, the numerous bystanders watching…
Seems to me, since we’re talking comic-book fiction, that it’d be better writing to have mom or dad heroically get their child to safety only to become trapped themselves. The emotional stakes are just as high when the hero rolls onto the scene, with some little kid screaming “Mommy! You have to save mommy!” And hey, the parents don’t look like selfish douchebags, which is always nice. And trust me, the old “I was running to get help! I was going to come back…” line goes over about as well as George Costanzas “I was leading everyone to safety.” bit.
Well, I think I’ve told this story before, but I’ve been in this situation (as the child). An enormous fire started next door, my mother and her friend were woken by firefighters, who promptly hustled them out the front door. I’m pretty confident they were screaming non-stop about the kids in the back bedroom, but the firefighters were getting the easiest people out first. Then the firefighters broke in the back door (I have a vivid memory of waking up to an axe coming though the wall next to me) and got me and the friend’s daughter out. I remember them hauling me out wholesale, still wrapped in blankets and sheets, and dropping me in mom’s arms. All of that seemed pretty responsible and appropriate to me, even if it was scary at the time.
GEORGE (voice is hoarse from screaming): I…was trying to lead the way. We needed a leader! Someone to lead the way to safety.
ROBIN: But you yelled “get out of my way”!
GEORGE: Because! Because, as the leader…if I die…then all hope is lost! Who would lead? The clown? Instead of castigating me, you should all be thanking me. What kind of a topsy-turvy world do we live in, where heroes are cast as villains? Brave men as cowards?
ROBIN: But I saw you push the women and children out of the way in a mad panic! I saw you knock them down! And when you ran out, you left everyone behind!
GEORGE: Seemingly. Seemingly, to the untrained eye, I can fully understand how you got that impression. What looked like pushing…what looked like knocking down…was a safety precaution! In a fire, you stay close to the ground, am I right? And when I ran out that door, I was not leaving anyone behind! Oh, quite the contrary! I risked my life making sure that exit was clear. Any other questions?
Yeah, but there were forcibly removed by the firefighters. The truck didn’t pull up to find them outside at the curb like…
“Thanks goodness you guys are here! My kids are still inside, they’re sleeping in the two rear bedrooms! I didn’t have time to get them before the fire spread!”
“Thanks, ma’am, we’ll take it from here! So, you were still awake yourself? Because you’re fully dressed…”
“I couldn’t run out in my nightgown!”
“…and the bag was already packed?”
“Excuse me, my Vera Wang is not insured, I couldn’t leave it!”
“Where’d you get the Starbucks at this hour?”
“Oh, the one at North Avenue is open 24 hours, so I ran over while I waited for you guys…”
“The two rear bedrooms?”
“Yes, please, you have to save my babies!!”
I mean, c’mon, the self-sacrificing parent is a standard of fiction. Let’s face it, James and Lilly Potter were actually kind of jerks, as we learned in the later books. Their sole redeeming quality was they died protecting Harry. Imagine the series if James died and Lilly disappeared that night, turning up teaching at Beaubattons in Goblet of Fire. “Well, when Voldemort burst in and killed your father, I ran to get help. I mean, world’s most powerful wizard, I knew I couldn’t take him. As I was going down the drive, I saw this flash of green light in the nursery window and figured you were dead too, so I scarpered. Fled the country and took a job teaching abroad. I was really broken up about it, though. Glad it worked out for you. Him? Well, I guess that’s your step-dad, Jean-Pierre. Yes, he’s a bit younger - we met when he was my personal trainer… Jean-Pierre! Come meet my son Garry!”
<snerk!>Well, of course, I wasn’t there, and I had to rely on the story they told me afterward…
But seriously, I have a lot of faith in my mother: she would have let the professionals do their jobs, but she also would have killed anyone standing in her way had there been any immediate threat to me.
