Thoughts for: Monday 17th April 2006

Stupidity and bad parenting go hand in hand, big shock there. :: [10:41:58]
It amazes me when cases like this come up in the media. They happen pretty frequently these days (especially in America). The problem I have with them is plain and simple. Imagine if you will the mother featured in the article below. "You let my child access inappropriate material" is pretty much what she is saying. So let's think about this. Her child was allowed to access certain materials by the library. I think she just summed this one up for us. It's her child, not theirs. I like this article because for once someone actually points this out. It is a libraries job to gather a large collection of varied books and then assort them into sections. It is not a libraries job to raise your children for you. As far as I am aware a library is incapable of giving birth (how I wish the parents who do things like this were). Now if a library was capable of giving birth I am sure it would make a good parent. As it is, it doesn't produce progeny in any way and the fact that people could actually assume that it is the library's responsibility to monitor their child is amazing. The library features even explains that it is their policy that adults should monitor what their child is taking out of the library from the adult section. Quite frankly then I am amazed that this child was in the library in the first place because clearly it's mother cannot read nor has the necessary cognitive ability to understand that she is supposed to raise her child not everyone else. I mean seriously, what's next? A supermarket getting sued for allowing a child allergic to peanuts to buy some?
These cases pop up a lot about various things, I happen to recall that someone complained there was too much sexual inuendo in Shrek 2 or some such. They call it PG for a reason. Parental Guidance. See that word there? Parental. That's an important word, it means that if you cared so much that you should get off your lard arse get down to the cinema and watch it yourself to make sure it's appropriate for your apparently o' so sensitive child. These cases really do get on my nerves. Do we really need to establish a law which says "It's your child, you look after it"? I would have thought it common sense but I get proven wrong about that consistently. At one point did raising a child become the responsibility of everyone but the parent? I apparently missed that memo.
.Related link.