The Right to Parent as You See Fit

One issue that has become touchy with me in recent years is that of parental privacy. Basically what I'm referring to is the right to raise your children however you see fit, without outside interference, particularly that of the government.

Somewhere along the way, we decided as a society that the proper response to seeing other people parent their children in ways we don't agree with is to label it "abuse" or "neglect" and whisper gossip to the local authorities, in this case Child Protective Services (henceforth termed CPS).

Try being a parent in this climate.

Dare to scold your youngster for having a tantrum in Wal Mart, and you better make sure no one follows you to your car and sees your license plate; otherwise, odds are very good an open CPS case will commence. Leave your child in the car--even if you're only 20 feet away, well off-road and with the air conditioning going--and someone says "what are they doing leaving that child alone in there like that!" and picks up the cellular phone. So, even though your child is sound-asleep and you don't feel like lugging them out yet again--and they're safe--you go out of your way to conceal it, or (worse yet) you disturb them anyway, due to fear of being reported.

Again, try being a parent in this climate.

In one instance around 2000, a young woman I knew--a rather well-off woman with a nice house in a well-endowed neighborhood and with a penance for Rolex watches, certainly not someone who would have insufficient finances for caring for her children--she was the victim of a CPS investigation, simply because her daughter (about age 5) mumbled in the background repeatedly "mom, I'm hungry". Her mother was calling the local shipper to check on the status of a package and, apparently, the agent on the phone overheard and thought this a reason to report her.

This is getting entirely overboard.

I am 40 years old, and I well remember as a child around age 8 or so riding in the back of my father's open-bed pickup truck, on the highway at highway speeds (55mph). I also well remember my sisters, cousins and myself riding to our summer-time vacation destination, White Lake; we would ride in the back of my aunt's Toyota truck with a camper shell--during summer, with no air conditioning mind-you. (There were windows that pivoted open, however.) How perfect it was--we were able to be kids, noisy as we wanted to be, our joy totally uninhibited, yet our parents (my mother and my aunt) were upfront with a nice, quiet cabinet to have their private adult conversations without us rugrats shouting in their ears.

No one thought anything of it--not the police, not the locals, and as parents or children you certainly didn't have the worry that a nosy busy-body with more hateful motivation than brains (to say nothing of respect of the common adage "mind your own business") was going to pick up their cellular phone and report "child endangerment" to the local social services agency with your license plate number.

Granted, cellular phones didn't exist back then for all practical purposes, but many folks did have CB radios; had the desire to report on their part existed, it could've been facilitated. But no one did so? Why? Because they respected parents' rights to parent their children as they existed.

(And no, I do not agree with the idea that "you can't do that in today's world, too many crazy drivers out there." I think a little study of the history will show that crazy drivers and highway fatalities existed back then, too, and not necessarily in smaller numbers either.)

It shouldn't surprise us that, in a society where you are co-erced legally to wear seatbelts based on the "I don't want my medical insurance going up on account of your negligence" argument, ditto motorcycle and/or bicycle helmets laws, cellular phones in cars laws, mandatory usage of child-safety seats (even at age 8!)--it should come as no surprise that people fail to respect that how someone parents their children, barring REAL abuse (example, going upside their head with a baseball bat), simply isn't any of their business.

Understand--this view of mine does not apply (typically anyway) to family-members. In fact, I think that parents benefit very highly from the support of family. That's my point, really--people, with some exceptions, would much rather have supportive, loving family members provide advice and guidance for parenting than having some nosy outsiders doing it, or especially the government. When family members provide this, it's usually with a motivation based on love and grace, not the "look at that wacko, someone oughta report them!" mentality that is more likely when it's strangers.

The government already intrudes on too much as it is, now it's the government's business NOT to prevent abuse (which is understandable) but to even dictate what your parenting styles hould be? How we choose to parent our children, so long as REAL abuse (leaving outside in 32'F weather with no clothes on, beating with a 2x4 on a daily basis) isn't occurring, it simply isn't anyone's business, especially the government's.

Parents need to be left alone, if you want to help with a LOVING attitude great, otherwise butt out. This is a family issue, and if you aren't in the family your opinion, unless asked for, isn't warranted or needed. Butt out.

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Links
¹ Yahoo! Article I Posted to (Comment #42)
² Yahoo Article #2 I Posted To, Talks About Moms Letting Themselves Go Post-Children (Comment #248)

Introduction: Who I Am

As this is the 1st post in my blog (if not my 1st blog, I had a previous one that I can't track down), I thought I would give a quick "who I am" type of post.

I am Larry Harrison Jr, age 40, white-male (and that doesn't make me evil), married for 8½ years to the same woman (unlike half of Hollywood), 3 children, with a passion for computers, photography, the ability to type 70-odd words per minute (as far back as high school), and I reside with my wife in a decent-sized 3 bedroom home (okay, trailer, so what?) out in the woods of Leverett's Chapel.

OK, you have no idea where that is. It is in eastern Texas between Kilgore and Overton.

I am on the Internet very often (perhaps too much?), I love sites such as Wikipedia, DPreview, Yahoo! and Fred Miranda. Within this post, and other blogger posts, if you see a word or phrase underlined (like this), then that means it's a hyperlink that refers to an external website that elaborates on the topic matter in more detail. (If you go to such a site you won't lose your place here.)

I have been online since 1997, first with America OnLine (I later wised up), I used to have "Personal Web Pages" (with my opinions and photographs posted) long before we had Facebook, MySpace or Twitter. I now have a MySpace (which I barely use), a Facebook (same thing), and a PBase site for my photos (used very heavily). To make it easy for any of you, in case you care--as long as you keep track of this site, or my PBase site, that's all you need to do. Anything else is "cyberjunk" (or, if nothing else, already referred to at this site and/or the PBase one so you won't have to keep up with it all).

I also am a North Carolina Tar Heels fan (and we won it all in 2009, nanny nanny nanny!).

I hold (basically) conservative views, and I created this blog as an outlet for expressing them.

Among other things: I believe that far too little is respected as "none of your business" nowadays, and I fight for a return to that. I believe how someone parents their children is no one's business. I believe that if someone wants to use a cellular phone in their car for talking, texting, or MapQuesting--so long as they're not weaving and/or crashing into light-poles, that's not anyone's business. If two adults desire to have consensual intercourse in a homosexual context in the privacy of their homes, that's also no one's business--BUT it isn't a marriage, either. (Carrie Prejean was right.)

I dislike slow drivers, but I also dislike "rat runners," people that take shortcuts through residential areas to avoid busy streets but in doing so create annoying road noise for residents trying to escape it (and often-times paying good money to do so). Consistent with my "mind your own business" point of view, I believe traffic-law enforcement is extremely over-the-top. My proposal--if someone has a good safety record, leave them alone, period.

I also don't believe in abbrevations, like "LOL" or "c u l8r," I consider it lazy-typing. Some are okay, ones like DVD, VCR, NASA--but these cutesy Internet/texting acronyms? Lazy typing. I don't engage in it. Whenever I see a need for abbrevating within this blog, most likely you'll see me refer to it by its full name earlier in the post, with something like "(henceforth known as DVD)" or the like following-it for clarification.

Well that's it for now. Here we go.