Stupid Parents

[talon]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/01/us-recalls-target-idUSTRE72078T20110301

What parent in their right mind would hang beaded curtains if they had children young enough to play in them?

This recall isn't because beaded curtains are dangerous. For older children and adults, they are perfectly safe and can be a positive home fashion statement.

They are only dangerous if parents buy and install them in spite of having children young enough to play in the beads. Those parents are too stupid to consider the consequences of their purchases.

Here's a hint all you stupid parents with young children who bought beaded curtains: it's part of child-proofing your home to not hang beaded curtains when you have infants, toddlers, pre-schoolers, and possibly even children in the early grades. Just like putting covers on electric outlets and locks on cabinets and drawers, and padding on sharp table corners, and electric cords out of reach.

Target shouldn't have to recall beaded curtains because of stupid parents.

If the curtains were actually defective - say, the beads shattered when people walked through them, or the cords holding the beads tended to break - that would be valid reasons for recalling them, not that young children will play in them and possibly become entangled or even strangle themselves because smart parents wouldn't buy and hang beaded curtains until their children were old enough to deal with them.

I get really annoyed by parents who force businesses to eliminate perfectly good products just because they can't be good parents to their own children.

We don't need child-proof caps on everything. Child-proof caps should be an option for parents to choose, but for all the households without children - especially the ones containing people with arthritis! - childproof caps shouldn't be the only sort available.

Cigarette lighters shouldn't have to have child-proof igniters on them because children shouldn't have them to begin with and parents ought not to buy them or leave them where their small children can get to them (child-proofing, duh!).

Our society doesn't not consist of just children and should not be totally child-proofed and sanitized. Some danger is necessary in order for children to grow into responsible adults. Parents are supposed to do their best to teach children how to be safe. You can't do that if children are exposed in small gentle doses that increase as their coping skills increase. Children kept swaddled in cotton grow up into adults who can't cope with anything - we see that all too obviously all around us. Yes, children will get hurt in the process, perhaps even die. It's a sadness and a caution to both other parents to be more aware of those dangers so they can teach their children to be wary of them and to children to pay better attention to the world about them. Those children's deaths shouldn't be spent taking things away from responsible parents and their well behaved children, not to mention adults who either choose to be child free or don't yet have children or whose children are also all adults.

Our society needs to be geared towards adults with safe pockets for children.

We should not be forcing children to be in places not meant for them, nor should we be forcing every single place in society to be completely childproofed.

This latter is because excessive child-proofing is a fragile crutch. Stupid parents come to rely on this child-proofing as completely fool-proof instead of their parenting skills. When their child manages to get hurt or killed anyway (and it's inevitable - some child somewhere will manage to circumvent protections and safeties and get hurt or die on something that thousands of other children have used safely or grown up around safely), they feel angry and betrayed because "you should have kept my child safe", not "I should have kept my child safe." They will blame the object, the manufacturer, society - anything except that it was most likely a regrettable and rare accident. And sometimes, it is their fault. These beaded curtain hazards? Totally parental stupidity. Any parent who hangs long dangly shinies in a house where there are small children attracted to shinies is setting their child up for injury or even death.

Don't blame the beaded curtain, blame the stupid parent.

All that said, I don't think we should prosecute stupid parents whose children get hurt or die because they relied too heavily on other people to keep their child safe instead of themselves - they are punished enough by their child's injury or death. There's no need pile up further punishments.

And certainly don't punish parents whose children get hurt while in the care of other people; like the woman who was facing charges for allowing her son to sleep over with a friend and that friend burned her boy. The friend's parents are the ones at fault here because those parents should have known done more to keep their guest safe - and for crying out loud - why would they try to douse the flames and treat the burns with Dr. Pepper instead of water? Stupid parents!