License to Parent
We’ve all heard the wisecrack that the government ought to regulate parenting the way it regulates driving, or any potentially dangerous activity. “People ought to have to qualify for a license to become a parent,” we say.
I was definitely thinking of that sentiment tonight, as my wife and I witnessed one of the most extraordinarily neglectful and dangerous acts of parenting we have ever witnessed.
We were coming home from the grocery store when I suggested my wife drive through Wendy’s for me. A Wendy’s taco salad is superb, mostly because of the chili on top, and I had developed a strong craving for one of these fine salads. So we pulled through the drive thru after ordering my meal, and as we were sitting there waiting for the cashier, we noticed a group of people hanging out in the parking lot.
There was a large, eighties-model pickup with a man sitting on the wheel well, inside the bed talking to a man and a woman leaning up against the driver’s side of an older model, small Toyota of some kind.
But what really attracted our attention was that there was a little boy, perhaps between one and two years old, running around on the roof of the Toyota. He was shoeless, and may well have been so all day judging by how black his little feet were. He wore only a pair of bib overalls over his diaper. He was obviously at that age where children are still learning to walk; they kind of toddle when they run, which I suppose is why they are called “toddlers.”
He would run across the roof, stomp his feet a few times, apparently enjoying the sound of the roof denting and then expanding back into place, and then he would sit down hard on his bum and slide down the windshield. Then he would scramble back up, toddle across the roof as fast as his little legs would go, stomp a few times, and slide down the back glass.
We watched him do this three or four times. The people standing beside the Toyota, whom we assumed were his parents, were intent on their conversation and did not even look at him.
“He’s going to fall off of there!” Lynn said.
“Are those people stupid?” I asked.
We were absolutely dumb founded.
“Where are the police when you need them?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but those parents aren’t even watching him!” Lynn said.
Finally, as we watched in horror, the boy sat down on the driver’s side roof, between the man and woman.
“He’s going to try to jump off there!” I said.
And sure enough, he tried to slide right off the roof. The man and woman did not even make an attempt to catch him. He landed hard on his bare feet and fell flat on his face on the asphalt.
I yelled and put my hands over my eyes. Lynn screamed.
“He landed on his face!” I said.
“Oh my God!” Lynn said.
The woman standing by the car grabbed the boy by his arm and lifted the screaming child off the ground. She was not his mother, apparently, because she passed him to the man in the truck who, amazingly, bounced the boy on his knee and continued his conversation.
None of them seemed in any way affected, except the screaming boy.
After a bit, the boy’s mother came over. She had been at another nearby vehicle talking to someone. She took the boy from the unconcerned father and held him, trying to soothe him by walking him back and forth in the parking lot.
“What were those idiots thinking?” I said. “Even if they had been parked on grass, that was incredibly dumb.”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to say something,” Lynn said.
“No, don’t!” I said, playing the roll of the man who just wants to mind his own business, in those “The More You Know” spots about child abuse or spousal abuse.
“I’m just going to tell her she ought to take him to the emergency room,” Lynn said. “he could have a concussion or a broken nose. Who knows? He fell right on his face on the asphalt!”
So after getting our food, Lynn pulled the car over to where these people were parked and rolled down her window.
“Ma’am, you really ought to take him to the emergency room and have him looked at. He fell right on his face, and you never know, he could have a concussion.”
The woman looked at Lynn a moment, then just said, “Thank you,” and turned away.
Lynn rolled up the window and we drove on, continuing to talk about what we had witnessed.
“Did we overreact to that?” Lynn asked. “Are we just over protective parents?”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I was allowed to do some dumb things in my childhood, like ride in the back of a pickup, but I was much older. Those people are just plain ignorant.”
I hate to unfairly generalize, but the word “white trash” would probably be appropriate to describe them, and not just because of the way they were dressed, or because of the vehicles they drove.
Maybe because they had nothing better to do but hang around a fast food parking lot on a Sunday evening, talking with friends?
Maybe because they did not even put shoes on their child before taking him out?
Not only that, but maybe because they let him run around shoeless on top of a car–not even their own car–while no one paid the slightest bit of attention for his safety?
Or perhaps it was the Confederate flag sticker on the bumper of the pickup truck. I don’t know. All I know is, if there were ever a case to be made for requiring people to meet certain competency standards before giving birth to a child, that mother and father should be exhibit A.
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It does irk me that there are a lot of genuinely loving, careful people out there who are childless, but that other people can procreate easily and don’t give a shit.
At the risk of sounding like a conservative, I’d have to agree with you. People need to take parenting classes and demonstrate they can take care of a child before being able to procreate.
At some point, when population becomes an issue (because I’ve read too much sci-fi) it’s going to come down to that.
Comment by Mel B. — Sunday, 20 May 2007 @ 11:50 pm
Incredible.
I wonder what it would take to get these parents’ attention?
Comment by Heather — Monday, 21 May 2007 @ 4:45 am
The parents looked quite young, maybe just out of High School, but that doesn’t excuse their idiocy, in my opinion. Someone had to make the conscious decision to put that child in that situation, because the kid was way too small to get up there on that car roof on his own.
Can you imagine someone saying: “Hey, this sounds like a great idea. Let’s put this small child who can barely walk on a car roof and let him run around.” Yeah.
Comment by greypilgrim — Monday, 21 May 2007 @ 6:22 am
I’m unsure if I would call a “license” conservative. It sounds liberal to me. I have a gut level reaction against any government intervention. But I will agree that something needs to be done–This really is amazing.
On the other hand, I recall stories of kids in South America who play quite comfortably and safely with machetes. We bourgeois Americans may have higher “worry thresholds” than others… But that fall sounds really bad
Comment by Todd — Monday, 21 May 2007 @ 10:55 am
Licensing and regulation is more of a liberal penchant. I don’t seriously propose the regulation of who can have a child. There’s no way to efficiently stop people from having a child, save via mandatory abortions.
Perhaps some mandatory parenting classes would be a good thing, however. Especially for young or first-time parents. You would think it would be common sense: “Don’t put your baby on the roof of a car to play.” But common sense is sorely lacking in our society, methinks.
One other point, Todd: just because a practice is accepted within a culture does not mean it is a right or just practice. Fundamentalist Islam such as practiced by the Taliban proscribes some pretty harsh penalties for crimes such as theft. Adultery is also severely punished in conservative, fundamentalist cultures.
Do Americans just have a lower “justice threshold” because we don’t cut off someone’s hands for theft, or is there right or wrong independent of culture and religious belief?
Comment by greypilgrim — Monday, 21 May 2007 @ 11:44 am
I’m just thankful, during all those times I let Elliot run on our car roof, that nothing happened. Who would have thought such a thing would be dangerous
Seriously, that really is appalling, and I’m frankly amazed at the restraint behind Lynn’s comments. I would have been so tempted to include some line like, “What is wrong with you people?”
Comment by Dawn — Monday, 21 May 2007 @ 7:11 pm
Lynn said later that she just wanted the person to know that someone had seen what happened. Maybe knowing that we saw what happened will make the mother more careful, next time. At the very least Lynn hopefully embarrassed that mother into some semblance of attention to the care of her child.
Comment by greypilgrim — Monday, 21 May 2007 @ 7:27 pm
I don’t know - I’ve always thought maybe they have the right idea on the cutting hands off thing.
Seriously, though, it breaks my heart to see kids so neglected. I agree with you that government regulation is not the answer - Kant, Hobbes, and others have suggested that but it has never worked out as a solution for any societal ills. In this case, I’m proud of your wife for saying something, even if it felt useless and “too little”.
We really let each other down as a community sometimes - I think community is what’s missing in many of these cases. I also think community, churches and civic groups and plain-old neighbors, are intended to fill this type of gap and stem this ridiculous ignorance that people have. Sadly, our society does not seem to be headed in a relational direction - instead we continue towards our individualistic, isolationist ideals.
(Can you tell I’ve been reading some philosophy lately? “Total Truths”, as a precursor to Schaeffer.)
Comment by Step — Monday, 21 May 2007 @ 8:01 pm
When I say licensing parenting in a conservative way, I mean in a way that controls freedom of reproduction, and also in some way judges people by setting up criteria.
It feels conservative and constrictive to me, but I am often wrong.
I recently reread Larry Niven’s Ringworld books, and a subplot device is control of population. In that, you have to earn the right to have a child, and to have additional children, have other hurdles to overcome. One way to earn another child is through a lottery.
Comment by Mel B. — Tuesday, 22 May 2007 @ 12:58 am
You’re correct that control of reproduction (mostly on moral grounds, however) is a conservative device for imposing order on society. The idea of population control through political means, i.e. China’s imposition of the “one child” policy, is more liberal than conservative. I always think of the word “liberal” as being synonymous with freedom and individual rights as well, but speaking purely in terms of politics, it is not.
I still remember my h.s. political science teacher explaining that politics is a continuum rather than a line. Eventually, conservatives and liberals meet along the continuum in a kind of nearly identical fascism. i.e., there was very little difference in practice between the “liberal” fascism of a Joseph Stalin and the “conservative” fascism of Adolph Hitler. Both meant extreme societal control and genocide for those who did not fit in or disturbed the order of things.
Comment by greypilgrim — Tuesday, 22 May 2007 @ 6:24 am
That’s an interesting viewpoint from your teacher. I guess it becomes hard to tell when the lines of politics blur in extreme control.
Comment by Mel B. — Wednesday, 23 May 2007 @ 1:55 am
Extreme liberalism means a very strong emphasis on the individual, with almost no “relationship” (without choice) - this includes family. Once you get there, the only way to still have a society is to cede control (and the only remaining loyalty) to the state. This was part and parcel of Locke and Hobb’s thinking on liberalism from naturalism. Now if naturalism turns out to be wrong…
Comment by Step — Wednesday, 23 May 2007 @ 8:49 am
That’s an interesting take on liberalism. I don’t know that I would use the word “loyalty” to describe the liberal’s relationship to the state, however. I tend to think of the conservative as being more inherently “loyal,” i.e. patriotic and unquestioning of authority. I am probably getting in over my head here with this debate, however.
But anyway, going in deeper…I would describe the liberal as having faith in the state, but not without reservations. If people are by nature evil, or born sinful as the Bible tells us, then it falls to government or society to contain the evil of humanity. This is in essence the liberal point of view, I would say: a faith in government’s ability to restrain the individual from fulfilling his most selfish desires.
Comment by greypilgrim — Wednesday, 23 May 2007 @ 9:15 am
You are trying to get me into a debate that could be endless. . . My short response is that, while we must at moments act as if there are universal laws and rights, we must always act with an awareness of the specific cultures that are being acted against: in other words, a supposedly universal law should be enforced, but only in view of its own arbitrary nature and in view of the particular cultural context that it is infiltrating.
But what these comments reveal more than anything is the nonsense of the labels we use in this country. Conservative will, at moments, defend the community or family, just as well as the individual. The exact same thing is true of liberal. I don’t think there is a clear distinction to be drawn.
Comment by Todd — Wednesday, 23 May 2007 @ 12:09 pm
Better late than never!
That puts a whole new meaning to my phrase let them go they’ll learn. This makes me rethink that comment of mine.
At least you said somethig. You did the right thing. She will hopefully think about that for a long time or she will never think about it again.
Just think Lynn, you might have him as a student in 14 years. When you think to yourself (WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU) You’ll know he fell on his head!
Comment by Shell — Sunday, 3 June 2007 @ 11:00 pm