Entrusting Parents
Society entrusts the welfare of children to their parents. Who best to ensure that children are raised in a loving, supportive, instructive environment than the parents of children? From whom else could it be anticipated that children would receive unstinted efforts to fulfill their every emotional need, to love them unconditionally, make certain that their lives are safe, their futures as assured as possible, after all.The answer is a simple one: parents. Mothers and fathers who love their children, as indeed nature has intended them to do. The care-mechanisms that nature has instilled in her animals, including the human animal, to assure perpetuation of the species. Needless to say, human warmth for their own goes well beyond what nature had intended, since as creatively intelligent beings we not only want to ensure that our offspring prosper in their unfolding world, but that they take their place in said world as responsive, responsible and caring individuals. Like their parents.
And then we read of events made public through the reportage of news occurring here and there and elsewhere around the world, including our own very little corners of the world. We learn that there are parents who abandon their children for various reasons, the most obvious of which is the personal constrictions that raising children places on their lives. Not everyone is cut out to contemplate sacrificing certain aspects of lifestyles because they may be inimical to a child's welfare.
So there are parents who expose their children to risk, such as those who deem it a requirement for their lifestyles to succumb to the lure of excessive alcohol consumption which renders them from time to time incapable of adequately caring for their children. And there are parents who deny the evidence that medical science makes available that tobacco consumption is inimical to health. And then there are those parents whose idea of making a good living is to transform their living environment into a greenhouse to grow crops for sale to the pot-loving community, in the process exposing their vulnerable children to the deleterious effects of illegal activity, and the not-inconsiderable effects of living with mould conditions.
Oops, let's not forget the loving parents who value a nice green lawn above the health of their children, and see nothing wrong with the liberal applications of pesticides to make certain they have those nice green lawns, while disdaining to appreciate that they're exposing their children to future medical conditions some of which are fairly lethal, as a result.
There's no dearth of activities inviting to adults and to which children should never be exposed. A fairly innocuous one that is not given the serious thought that many sad outcomes might dictate is the family swimming pool, and the summertime tragedies of toddlers somehow transcending barriers inadequate to begin with, in their curiosity about forbidden activities. Speaking of summer, how about those personal watercraft that indulgent parents permit too-young children to operate, with sometimes truly disastrous results?
All-terrain vehicles, there's another transcendent experience that no pre-teen should have to miss; whizzing about at a speed previously unknown to the child who is physically and psychologically not yet capable of controlling the powerful instrument of 'fun' he has been permitted to operate. From rueful family members and friends of the family we learn through the media reports about what wonderful parents this kid had, and what a great little kid he was.
How about those fathers and mothers, singly, or twosomely, whose addiction to gambling has them gambling with the safety of their children by exposing them to situations certain to strain the incredulity of police and community at large. Children left to their own devices, to sit waiting in cars, or to wander about the parking lots of gambling casinoes? Belgium, it would seem, has recognized it has an especial problem with these, as a number of such semi-abandoned (albeit temporarily) children have consequently been abducted.
Then there's loving mothers like the young Vancouver woman, with landed immigrant status, a single mother of an infant who decided she was dreadfully bored, and needed, immediately, to get away for some fun. When she returned from a week-end of debauchery it was to discover the lifeless form of her child, dehydrated beyond help, in its crib. Charges were laid in that case, a trial held, and the mother convicted. The child is still dead.
But we're a tolerant society. In Wednesday's paper there was a brief news piece about a 32-year-old father who forgot where he had parked his car. With his sleeping 8-year-old daughter in it. He realized his lapse of memory later in the evening, after his downtown prowl for the services of a hooker. Another one who doesn't believe his lifestyle need be impacted upon by the needs of a child to be protected by its parent/s. The father flagged down a police car at half-past three in the morning to ask for help in finding his car. wherein his daughter still slept.
Incredibly, the man was not charged, but released, his daughter left to his "care". Why charge the man, after all? The constable was quoted as saying: "No criminal act was committed in this case".
Don't we have interesting standards relating to parental responsibilities.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, June 29, 2006
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