Ditto
No. There’s even a fair chance that if I could sacrifice a strange kid to save myself, I would. But of couse, you never really know until the situation arises.
I’d choose to stay home and avoid the situation altogether. I don’t believe in the sacred nature of children, and I still have things I want to do.
I am not a parent. I have filled a parental role in a child’s life more than once, so I am not entirely unsympathetic to them, but they have no more value than I do.
If it were my niece or nephew, absolutely; a random child, no. Strangely, the issue with the OP’s scenario is that I know about it beforehand. If I didn’t, I’d likely make the attempt.
Yes. Of course.
I can understand cases where a parent might believe that he or she is more important than their child, certainly if there is more than one child and especially if that person does not have a partner to help out.
I also saw an episode of ER that applied for me in this case, at least for now - I do not have children - in which a father had to choose between saving his wife or their unborn child.
For some reason, the ER staff claimed they could only save the unconscious (?) mother or the near-term baby. It was an agonizing decision for the father, and I forget if relative chances were given or if the father had his hand forced by a change in one or the other’s health. My memory seems to be that one would definitely survive and the other not. Anyway, he ended up picking the baby; I don’t recall if he delayed so long that the mother declined, or what happened. At the end of the episode, I turned to my husband and said, "If you’re ever in that situation, pick me!. Is it really better to be a widowed single father than one of a couple grieving over the loss of their child?
Anyway, as I said before I do not have children, and regardless of the age of the child I would choose to avoid the street that day. If I saw something happening in front of me without forewarning and the absolute knowledge that I would die in the process, I might try to help if I could, but the thought of intentionally going out knowing that I absolutely would die, to save only one life, is not really acceptable to me.
No, but I honestly believe my answer.
For the OP and a random child I’d not turn up, and probably not even give it a second thought afterwards
If it was my niece then I’d be devastated, (but 100% chance of death? Better you, her, anybody than me.) I love my niece and I’d give her a lung or a kidney if neccessary and my sister/her boyfriend weren’t good matches, even if there was a probability of fatal complications, (just not 100%). I imagine that an attachment to a child that is directly mine would be greater, but it would need to be many many orders of magnitude greater than the way I feel for my niece, and I’d throw her under the bus if it was the only way to save my own life.
I would seriously think about giving up my life to save one of my nieces or nephew’s life…
… but it would be my damn luck that after I gave up my life for them they would probably get into an accident the next week.
God forbid, of course.
It’s a commonplace that when the woman is presented with this choice her answer is to save the child.
Well, that’s why I differentiated between what you’d choose to do intellectually and what you’d actually have the cojones to do.
It is, but I don’t think the difference is exactly gender-based. The father and mother are in different situations. The father will grieve either way. The mother will either die or suffer the loss of the child, a fate she may see as worse than death. I expect there would be no difference in situations where fathers face the same choice as mothers.
It is worse than death.
Yes, huge difference, and kudos for articulating that in the OP instead of having it torn down by hypothetical haters.
If I knew ahead of time, I’d avoid the street. As others have said, I’m no less worthy of life than the kid, I have my own children to raise and my own family would feel just as much grief as that kid’s family were I the one to die. There’s, I suppose, the slight chance that I just let the next Albert Einstein die, but there’s probably about an equal chance that I just let the next Jeffrey Dahmer die and a far, far greater chance that it’s just the next Joe from accounting, so I can’t let the Hitler effect weigh too much.
If I didn’t know about it ahead of time, I’d grab and pull - not push - the kid out of the way. Pushing away is not an instinctive move for me* - I’d want him nearer to me, nearer to safety. If this meant that now we’d both be hit by the bus, I wouldn’t know it, and thus would not seek to avoid it. Even if I “should have seen it coming”, I probably wouldn’t; I’d be thinking about the danger to him, not to me.
*When I did a self-defense class, it was discovered that my natural inclination in dangerous situations is to grab things to me, not push them away.
I’m not going to respond to any particular poster, as I don’t wish to be insulting, but I honestly do not understand the mindset of any adult who would not sacrifice himself, at the very least, to save the life of his or her own child. To me it seems both a violation of the social contract and contrary to evolutionary fitness. A parent’s job (I believe) is to see to the survival and prosperity of his or her minor children. While I can understand someone freezing when faced with the prospect of violent death–while I can even understand someone, given foreknowledge of the situation, avoiding the circumstances that would necessitate the choice–I find it incomprehensible that people can envision themsleves choosing not to act to save their children’s lives.
For people who say they would die to save a strange child–there are kids every day dying because they need organs of one type or another, but I’ve never heard of anyone, anywhere ever trying to prematurely and anonymously donate organs to help dying kids. Not that they’d let you, of course, but it’s not like there are people–like there is ANYONE–clamoring for the chance. How is that different?
Would I risk my life to save a strange child? I sure hope so. And in the real world, it’s always going to be about accepting risk, not certain death. But no, I wouldn’t flat out trade my life for any stranger unless I had concrete reason to believe that that person’s life would matter to society in some way that mine would not.
Is there any way that I could throw a second child under the bus’s back wheels? Seems a shame to waste a perfectly good axle.
No, I would not sacrifice myself to save someone else’s child. But I don’t need to see the child die either, so I would avoid the street.
I’ll have one shortly and probably wouldn’t, either.
You’d not sacrifice yourself for your own child, or for someone else’s?
I would not do it. Probably just avoid the street. I don’t like being messed about.
For my child maybe, that would honestly depend on how many other children i have. I wouldn’t leave seven children without a father to save the eight for example. For someone elses child though? no, why would their life have more value than mine? Im sure losing a child is a horrible experience, but being that both my parents are still alive and well i wouldn’t want to put them through that either.