As a (nearly) 41 year old I'm prone to "back in the good old days" wonderings of the brain if I'm not careful. However, the more I live & experience, to more I feel inclined to simply state this--I do not subscribe to the whole "it's a different world since 9-11" paranoia that seems to be sweeping the nation.
As one example, one recent story1 commented on how big-city random police street-searchings have doubled in the past 2 years or so, and people applaud this--after all, crime has dropped. Others do not, they consider it a violation of privacy and demeaning--even going so far as to change their route to-from home/work to avoid them. I subscribe to that mentality myself. Believe me, I am thankful for attempts to reduce crime, but at some point it begins to make me uncomfortable, as if we are pushing our society towards a police-state of sorts. I want no part of it.
Like the person highlighted in the story who started taking a different route between home & work because he found the constant searchings demeaning and a nuisance, I myself just want to live and be left alone. There is a reason we moved from the big city (Tucson AZ) to the "boonies"--to live without being bothered and hassled by, among other people, the police.
By the same token, I don't agree with warrantless wiretapping of phones, photo-finishers phoning police over every bathtub photo taken by parents of their children (in fact I applaud the parents who sued WalMart2 for doing this), I think it's totally ridiculous for someone like me to encounter "don't take photos of my kids, you pervert!" when I'm at the lake snapping photos of the ducks as part of my legitimate (and legal!) photography hobby (I don't snap photos of their kids, but in fact, it's legal to do, it's called Freedom of the Press).
Likewise I do not act all nutty and crazy if my daughter Helen (2½ years of age) is friendly with people she doesn't know. I don't want her running off with a stranger obviously, but I don't want her being all scared of everybody either. I much prefer a friendly, trust-presuming type of society myself. I watch old DVDs of "Highway to Heaven" and love it when the Michael Landon character, in response to someone saying to him "but why would you help me, we're strangers" and he responds "because people CHOOSE to be, I would rather choose to be a friend." I love it, too, when he asks someone he barely knows if they'd like to go with him to do whatever--young females, even, and they trust him. Right on. That is my kind of society.
That society is dead, you say? As he would say--only because we choose to do so. Just because 9-11 happened is no reason for us to lose our heads and assume a "trust no one" stance. I want no part of a world like that.
We need more of that "Highway to Heaven" type of thinking, and less of this crazy paranoia that I'm seeing in the 2000's & beyond. At the same time, those of us like me who value our privacy and being left alone by the police when we've done nothing wrong are not nut-cases with something to hide, we just don't like being hassled--and freedom from a police-state type of society is something that should ever go out-of-style, 9-11 or not.
Links
1 Police Stop more than 1 Million People, source: Yahoo.Com
2Parents Sue WalMart For Bathtime Photos, Text-Based Article
3Parents Sue Walmart, Video Clip
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parenting. Show all posts
Friday, October 9, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Parental Rights II: Daniel Hauser (child w/cancer)
I write again today regarding parental rights, something which has become a real hot button for me in recent years.
Basically, my view is--parents should be able to parent however they choose, even if everyone in society disagrees with their choices. I definitely don't object to, and even appreciate, advice from family members and best friends, but the government butting its nose into a family affair and telling us what to do is not American in the least. Neither is it proper for strangers amongst me to butt their nose in, either.
The case of Daniel Hauser, the 13 year old who has cancer and whom doctors say needs chemotherapy, but doesn't want it1, and whose mother wants alternative medicine treatments instead on his behalf, is a perfect example of the government butting its nose in where it doesn't belong. Here you have the state of Minnesota using the legal system--even to the point of employing international agencies like Interpol--to strong-arm the mother & son into returning home to be forced into a form of treatment neither of them agree with.
Once again, the government tells you how to parent your children. It doesn't suggest or advise, or even strongly advise, it orders.
Who is the parent here anyway?
Granted, this is apparently a serious life/death situation, but as one reader wrote in a letter-to-the-editor2 in the NorthJersey.Com newspaper, this form of government intervention doesn't stop here. Further, as the letter-to-the-editor stated, this is a God thing; God placed these parents in charge of these children's lives, not the state or government. This is nothing less than the government disrespecting God and his principles full-blown.
Except in extreme cases, we're supposed to let parents decide, but we don't. Already, you are not allowed to decide for yourself whether or not to let your children enjoy the back of an open-bed pickup truck due to safety, whether they should be confined to child seats in the car (miserable in the process, often-times) or be allowed some freedom to move about, and some states are doing their best to eliminate the option of home-schooling your children, so tough luck if you don't like what they're teaching your children in school these days about homosexuality, evolution or the like.
Here we go with yet another intrusion--the government can order the parents to provide the type of medical treatment they think is right, and can even force the child to accept it if they don't want it. This sort of thing is actually happening in the USA?
I sure am glad this type of ridiculous oversight didn't exist when I was a child. All those wonderful times riding in the back of my father's open-bed pickup truck--at highway speeds, mind you, all those times my cousins and sister rode in the back of my aunt's camper-shelled Toyota during the summertime on the way to White Lake, all the times I rode my Big Wheel® on a 55 mph rural highway as an 8-year old (with my mother inside, mind you), playing unsupervised at my grandaddy's home with all that junk he had outside there (and in the barns I used to sneak into also), I am so glad there wasn't some busy-body with a cellular phone (or CB radio) calling the government and using them as a tool to impose their parenting views on my family.
What does one have to do now to parent as one sees fit, move to a 3rd world country, or never leave the rural country for the city?
Growing up, I always saw my parents--not my government, not social services, not CPS--as the final authority as to what went down in my life. Heck I didn't even know who CPS was. At times I hated it, sure, but I respected it--and for the most part I wouldn't have had it any other way. Really, the only time I would've had it any other way was when I wanted to be mischievous and get away with it.
Which brings up another aspect--how is anyone supposed to parent if their children know that there's always someone they can go to outside their home that is above their parents? Growing up I always believed that, if I didn't like how my mother parented me, the only option I had was to run away, period. Any family members I went to backed my mother up, and rightly so. No one in school or anywhere else would referee and force my mother to do as I wanted her. And so it should've been.
I understand that parental rights doesn't mean a parent should be able to be deliberately negligent or deliberately harmful, I certainly wouldn't agree with a parent taking their child to one of those "fringe" churches where people let poisonous snakes bite you while you trust in God to heal you. But some examples where I've seen people call for intervention I haven't agreed with it being done--Michael Jackson and the "baby dangling," Britney Spears and her forgetting to buckle her children up, Steve Irwin holding his child in his arm while feeding a crocodile. Granted those were risky behaviors, and I understand that they shocked people, but do we really think it's any of our business to use the government to butt into their affairs and tell them how to do their job as parents? Where does it end? Who gave us the right to judge others, when we're not perfect ourselves?
To be sure, this is why even more mundane adventures such as taking a child to the pool with you in the deep end (even with floaties), letting a child ride in the back of an open-bed pickup and feel the wind in their hair, letting them ride a bicycle without those stifling (if protective) helmets--now parents aren't able to make such decisions about such matters for themselves. Previously, it was left up to US to decide what safety/adventure ratio position we wanted to take. Maybe our choices weren't agreed with by everyone, but our right to choose as we saw fit was respected--even though some deaths occurred. It should still be this way, I strongly feel, even with the occasional death, yet it isn't, and that's wrong.
I will recreate the Letter To The Editor which I linked to above, in case the link has expired:
The Daniel Hauser case should outrage all Americans ("Boy in need of chemo can stay with parents," Page A-8, May 27).
I understand that Daniel's life may or may not be in danger depending on whom you believe: his medical doctors, who feel chemotherapy is necessary to save his life, or his parents, who believe there are other methods of curing cancer without chemo or radiation.
The Hauser case cuts directly to the heart of the American dream and the American promise: freedom and the right to self-determination. For generations, people from around the world have sought to come to America not just because we are such a wealthy nation, but because we are supposed to be a nation that allows people to determine for themselves how to live life and raise families. Here people may live as they choose and worship, or not worship, as they choose. Freedom also includes the right to choose how to care for disease.
Daniel is a minor, and I would agree that he is not capable of self-determination. Further, it's probably true that Daniel does not fully understand his condition. However, I believe Daniel's parents do. The doctors in this case might argue that his parents don't fully understand his condition and therefore are not fit to make decisions about his medical care. But that is a slippery slope. Where does that end?
America was based upon this ideal: "In God we trust." If we, as a nation, still do believe in God and still trust in God, then we should accept that Colleen and Anthony Hauser are exactly the right parents providing exactly the right kind of care for Daniel.
The Hausers were given the task of raising and caring for a child, Daniel, by their creator. It was the Hausers who were assigned the job of Daniel's decision-making until he is an adult, not the government of the United States or the state of Minnesota. The Hausers are not neglecting Daniel. They are providing care they believe in, which is outside commonly accepted medical standards.
When the Hausers disappeared before a court hearing, U.S. marshals were sent to search for them. Is this how our tax dollars should be spent — sending marshals to search for a mother who has determined what she and her husband believe is best for their child?
As a parent, I can tell you that I do not want the government telling me what is best for my child. This should outrage every parent. Cases like this one set a dangerous precedent for government to tell us how we should raise our children. Even worse, this case gives way too much power to medical doctors to dictate, backed by the government, what kind of medical care families choose.
My heart goes out to the Hausers, not only because they are dealing with their son's health challenge, but also because now they must cope with the government dictating to them which course of care is best. Making our children's health decisions is nerve-wracking enough without our government and a group of medical doctors forcing their will upon us.
I believe Colleen and Anthony Hauser should be honored as true, brave Americans who are bold enough to follow their own path and stand up for the right to freedom and self-determination, instead of being pushed into following "accepted doctrine," if they honestly do not believe that is what is best for their child.
Please don't tell me how the Hausers are putting their child at risk. We allow our children to experience risk every day. We allow them to play football, baseball, soccer, lacrosse and all manner of violent contact sports. We take them skiing, surfing and skydiving. We put them on bicycles, dirt bikes and quads. We let them snowboard and skateboard while doing flips and tricks. We travel in airplanes, and we allow them to scuba dive — not to mention all the more mundane risks we live with every day, such as driving on America's highways.
I understand Daniel has cancer and many of us feel that he should be receiving certain care. However, before we push too hard for this family to do what we think is best for their son, we should all think long and hard about just how soon we want Big Brother knocking on our door, telling us how to raise our family.
Gary Stewart
I couldn't have said it any better, and it is so refreshing to see a letter-to-the-editor from someone that gets it, as opposed to the Communist-types prevalent nowadays who think the government most certainly should be in everyone's business, and heck should be in it even more than they already are. I mean, after all, parents can't be trusted to know what's best for their children, in the name of "protecting the children" we butt into their business and say that it's a wonderful thing we're doing.
Sigh.
Links
1 Yahoo! Story, Minnesota teen says he's angry about continuing chemo.
2 Letter to the Editor regarding this case, in support of parental rights
Basically, my view is--parents should be able to parent however they choose, even if everyone in society disagrees with their choices. I definitely don't object to, and even appreciate, advice from family members and best friends, but the government butting its nose into a family affair and telling us what to do is not American in the least. Neither is it proper for strangers amongst me to butt their nose in, either.
The case of Daniel Hauser, the 13 year old who has cancer and whom doctors say needs chemotherapy, but doesn't want it1, and whose mother wants alternative medicine treatments instead on his behalf, is a perfect example of the government butting its nose in where it doesn't belong. Here you have the state of Minnesota using the legal system--even to the point of employing international agencies like Interpol--to strong-arm the mother & son into returning home to be forced into a form of treatment neither of them agree with.
Once again, the government tells you how to parent your children. It doesn't suggest or advise, or even strongly advise, it orders.
Who is the parent here anyway?
Granted, this is apparently a serious life/death situation, but as one reader wrote in a letter-to-the-editor2 in the NorthJersey.Com newspaper, this form of government intervention doesn't stop here. Further, as the letter-to-the-editor stated, this is a God thing; God placed these parents in charge of these children's lives, not the state or government. This is nothing less than the government disrespecting God and his principles full-blown.
Except in extreme cases, we're supposed to let parents decide, but we don't. Already, you are not allowed to decide for yourself whether or not to let your children enjoy the back of an open-bed pickup truck due to safety, whether they should be confined to child seats in the car (miserable in the process, often-times) or be allowed some freedom to move about, and some states are doing their best to eliminate the option of home-schooling your children, so tough luck if you don't like what they're teaching your children in school these days about homosexuality, evolution or the like.
Here we go with yet another intrusion--the government can order the parents to provide the type of medical treatment they think is right, and can even force the child to accept it if they don't want it. This sort of thing is actually happening in the USA?
I sure am glad this type of ridiculous oversight didn't exist when I was a child. All those wonderful times riding in the back of my father's open-bed pickup truck--at highway speeds, mind you, all those times my cousins and sister rode in the back of my aunt's camper-shelled Toyota during the summertime on the way to White Lake, all the times I rode my Big Wheel® on a 55 mph rural highway as an 8-year old (with my mother inside, mind you), playing unsupervised at my grandaddy's home with all that junk he had outside there (and in the barns I used to sneak into also), I am so glad there wasn't some busy-body with a cellular phone (or CB radio) calling the government and using them as a tool to impose their parenting views on my family.
What does one have to do now to parent as one sees fit, move to a 3rd world country, or never leave the rural country for the city?
Growing up, I always saw my parents--not my government, not social services, not CPS--as the final authority as to what went down in my life. Heck I didn't even know who CPS was. At times I hated it, sure, but I respected it--and for the most part I wouldn't have had it any other way. Really, the only time I would've had it any other way was when I wanted to be mischievous and get away with it.
Which brings up another aspect--how is anyone supposed to parent if their children know that there's always someone they can go to outside their home that is above their parents? Growing up I always believed that, if I didn't like how my mother parented me, the only option I had was to run away, period. Any family members I went to backed my mother up, and rightly so. No one in school or anywhere else would referee and force my mother to do as I wanted her. And so it should've been.
I understand that parental rights doesn't mean a parent should be able to be deliberately negligent or deliberately harmful, I certainly wouldn't agree with a parent taking their child to one of those "fringe" churches where people let poisonous snakes bite you while you trust in God to heal you. But some examples where I've seen people call for intervention I haven't agreed with it being done--Michael Jackson and the "baby dangling," Britney Spears and her forgetting to buckle her children up, Steve Irwin holding his child in his arm while feeding a crocodile. Granted those were risky behaviors, and I understand that they shocked people, but do we really think it's any of our business to use the government to butt into their affairs and tell them how to do their job as parents? Where does it end? Who gave us the right to judge others, when we're not perfect ourselves?
To be sure, this is why even more mundane adventures such as taking a child to the pool with you in the deep end (even with floaties), letting a child ride in the back of an open-bed pickup and feel the wind in their hair, letting them ride a bicycle without those stifling (if protective) helmets--now parents aren't able to make such decisions about such matters for themselves. Previously, it was left up to US to decide what safety/adventure ratio position we wanted to take. Maybe our choices weren't agreed with by everyone, but our right to choose as we saw fit was respected--even though some deaths occurred. It should still be this way, I strongly feel, even with the occasional death, yet it isn't, and that's wrong.
I will recreate the Letter To The Editor which I linked to above, in case the link has expired:
The Daniel Hauser case should outrage all Americans ("Boy in need of chemo can stay with parents," Page A-8, May 27).
I understand that Daniel's life may or may not be in danger depending on whom you believe: his medical doctors, who feel chemotherapy is necessary to save his life, or his parents, who believe there are other methods of curing cancer without chemo or radiation.
The Hauser case cuts directly to the heart of the American dream and the American promise: freedom and the right to self-determination. For generations, people from around the world have sought to come to America not just because we are such a wealthy nation, but because we are supposed to be a nation that allows people to determine for themselves how to live life and raise families. Here people may live as they choose and worship, or not worship, as they choose. Freedom also includes the right to choose how to care for disease.
Daniel is a minor, and I would agree that he is not capable of self-determination. Further, it's probably true that Daniel does not fully understand his condition. However, I believe Daniel's parents do. The doctors in this case might argue that his parents don't fully understand his condition and therefore are not fit to make decisions about his medical care. But that is a slippery slope. Where does that end?
America was based upon this ideal: "In God we trust." If we, as a nation, still do believe in God and still trust in God, then we should accept that Colleen and Anthony Hauser are exactly the right parents providing exactly the right kind of care for Daniel.
The Hausers were given the task of raising and caring for a child, Daniel, by their creator. It was the Hausers who were assigned the job of Daniel's decision-making until he is an adult, not the government of the United States or the state of Minnesota. The Hausers are not neglecting Daniel. They are providing care they believe in, which is outside commonly accepted medical standards.
When the Hausers disappeared before a court hearing, U.S. marshals were sent to search for them. Is this how our tax dollars should be spent — sending marshals to search for a mother who has determined what she and her husband believe is best for their child?
As a parent, I can tell you that I do not want the government telling me what is best for my child. This should outrage every parent. Cases like this one set a dangerous precedent for government to tell us how we should raise our children. Even worse, this case gives way too much power to medical doctors to dictate, backed by the government, what kind of medical care families choose.
My heart goes out to the Hausers, not only because they are dealing with their son's health challenge, but also because now they must cope with the government dictating to them which course of care is best. Making our children's health decisions is nerve-wracking enough without our government and a group of medical doctors forcing their will upon us.
I believe Colleen and Anthony Hauser should be honored as true, brave Americans who are bold enough to follow their own path and stand up for the right to freedom and self-determination, instead of being pushed into following "accepted doctrine," if they honestly do not believe that is what is best for their child.
Please don't tell me how the Hausers are putting their child at risk. We allow our children to experience risk every day. We allow them to play football, baseball, soccer, lacrosse and all manner of violent contact sports. We take them skiing, surfing and skydiving. We put them on bicycles, dirt bikes and quads. We let them snowboard and skateboard while doing flips and tricks. We travel in airplanes, and we allow them to scuba dive — not to mention all the more mundane risks we live with every day, such as driving on America's highways.
I understand Daniel has cancer and many of us feel that he should be receiving certain care. However, before we push too hard for this family to do what we think is best for their son, we should all think long and hard about just how soon we want Big Brother knocking on our door, telling us how to raise our family.
Gary Stewart
I couldn't have said it any better, and it is so refreshing to see a letter-to-the-editor from someone that gets it, as opposed to the Communist-types prevalent nowadays who think the government most certainly should be in everyone's business, and heck should be in it even more than they already are. I mean, after all, parents can't be trusted to know what's best for their children, in the name of "protecting the children" we butt into their business and say that it's a wonderful thing we're doing.
Sigh.
Links
1 Yahoo! Story, Minnesota teen says he's angry about continuing chemo.
2 Letter to the Editor regarding this case, in support of parental rights
Thursday, June 11, 2009
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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