Reason.com has yet another
example of how the US child care and protection authorities are horribly overreacting.
A mom, dad, and their preschooler went to Home Depot in Valley Stream, Long Island, last Saturday to get some Christmas lights. The boy fell asleep in the car, so the parents cracked open the sun roof and let him snooze while they ran their errand. A passerby saw the boy and called 911 to report a child in a car, "unconscious."
When the parents came out about 20 minutes later (the lights had been hard to find), they found a huge commotion at their car. Cops! Firemen! An ambulance! A fireman had smashed open their rear passenger window and was extricating their son as if the car was on fire.
Then, rather than seeing that the boy was startled but fine, the safety kabuki began.
I was just thinking, there is no way I would leave a child sleeping in a car for twenty minutes when I read the following:
"Now, maybe you wouldn't let your child wait in the car for 20 minutes. But chances are that your parents did that with you, because this was once universally acceptable."
It's true. As children we were always left in the car when my mother did the supermarket shopping. She would not have dreamed of dragging us around with her. And she was a teacher.
2 comments:
I myself would have climbed through the sunroof. But this is America.
I suspect the horrified onlookers will now seek damages from the recalcitrant parents, after being subjected to the emotional trauma associated with the incident. No wait, what am I thinking? The child will sue the parents for the psychological harm inflicted.
The police and firemen will receive counselling. The children will be taken into state care and placed with a caring family who own a car which does not have a broken window.
In the movie Madonna will star as the cynical ambulance person who helps the family recover from the ordeal by singing Xmas carols and finds redemption after running over a stray dog while on her way to Burger King to pick up the leftovers which she distributes to homeless people...............
Dunno if I've mentioned this one but in 2005 we had a 40th reunion of our training group. We'd spent a year on the West Coast and there were a good sprinkling of WC wives at the reunion and they were reminising about childhood. How on a Saturday after lunch mum would put them in their swimming togs with a towel and dress to pull over the top and send these seven/nine year olds off to the river with instruction "I don't want to see you till teatime".
But then kids were a dime a dozen and plenty of families managed six of them.. life was cheaper and there were plenty of spares. Now its one or two at most and their value and lives are much more important.. particularly when they are birthed at age 35 rather than 18-22.
Back then the median age was maybe 25, now its near 40 for Europeans. Put it all together and you have a massive seachange in human values and mores based purely on age and family structures.
And its why a median age 40 year old sometimes looks with askance at a Maori culture with a median age of 24.. its not race, its a cultural chasm. Ironically 50-60 years earlier respectable European families would easily fit the characteristics of Bogans.
JC
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