You’re going to jail. Maybe.
All these laws, in which it is almost impossible to get through a day without breaking one, and all this legal uncertainty is (as Ayn Rand and others have pointed out) a huge threat to liberty.
7 thoughts on “Free-Range Parenting”
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Its articles like these that make me think that the social conservatives are as clueless as the liberal-left. The social conservatives are always exhorting people to have kids (whether they want them or not) without considering that there are good reason for people to avoid having kids. One of them, legal liability, is highlighted in this article. Another is the overall expense. The big 3 (housing, healthcare, and education) having increased in cost at several times the inflation rate over the past 30 years is another.
Until social conservatives start presenting credible proposals to tackle this problems, they have no business exhorting people into having kids.
Funny, I do not recall ever being exhorted into having children. There is a difference between not wanting to abort something considered to be a living human being (not that I share that belief) and wanting to force people into having unwanted children and, what with birth control and, dare I say it, abstinence, people do have the choice not to.
But the point of the article was that we are all in danger of being put in jail due to unclear, unpredictable laws and it doesn’t matter if the laws or policies were created by the left or the right, we are still in danger.
So, Abelard, please reread the article with less partisan eyes.
Abelard, I find your line of reasoning very sad. Can you imagine no reason to have children other than pecuniary self interest? Parents give of themselves expecting nothing in return – and doing so is its own greatest reward.
Surely you mean nothing tangible.
Pretty sure conservatives have been speaking out about the things you want them to; the nanny state (liability), housing, education, and healthcare costs.
The big 3 (housing, healthcare, and education) having increased in cost at several times the inflation rate over the past 30 years is another.
I guess the argument here is that a greater population increases demand? If that’s not the argument, then please come back and provide details beyond “costs are going up”. Because without continued birth of children, we would soon have a reduction in supply of housing, education, and healthcare; and that could drive up costs as well as decrease total economic output.
Anyway, please tells us more about how central planning lowers costs.
I guess I’m really old.
So old in fact, that I don’t ever remember making any ‘plan’ to have our children. Mother Nature took her course on just two occasions out of…many, I’ll let your imagination work it out. We did on one occasion make a conscious decision NOT to abort one of them, as was the near rabid opinion of most of our friends, and at least one Dr / therapist.
(people with so much personal integrity that none of them stayed married and most of their kids…OWS types or worse still, college professors)
The entire concept of ‘deciding’ to have or keep or abort children is liberal construct made of total BS. It came with women’s lib and the pill. And it’s all helped society SO much, right? Everybody has a choice in Liberal Land, except the unborn children. Children by the way who are undoubtedly the ONLY resource of any true value.
Passing a ‘law’ that says a 13, 14 or 40 y/o is ‘old enough’ to babysit is shortsighted at best and intrusive at the usual liberal level, typically. I know 13 y/o’s I’d trust and 40 y/o’s I won’t let my g’kids ride with to the store! And not suspected pedophiles mind you, we trust them in that regard. It’s just that they’re well known stupid people, not quick to thought nor action.
On the legal age front, we decided that our older son was ‘old enough’ to watch himself, watch his little brother, feed the dog, so as to allow us to go out for an evening, after the following conversation.
Me : “…so how’d it go tonight?”
Son : “…it was OK, Elaine (the baby sitter du jour) stayed on the phone most of the time…so we watched TV…oh, and ate chips…and dad, we’re out of chips again…”
Me: “OK…so what’s wrong then…your NOT saying something son…spill it…”
Son: “…dad…if we’ve got to have a babysitter again…can she be cute…like that last one? That Jennifer girl?”
She was 16, he was 13 not quite 14. When ‘boys’ start rating ‘babysitters’ by looks, they’re old enough to stay alone, IMHO. Girls on the other hand are probably old enough to watch younger children a year or even 2 earlier, if there’s a decent phone there for them to call for advice or emergency services.
I gladly, but sadly too in many ways, await the coming collapse so Natural Selection and lack of any common sense leads to those swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool, be consumed by predators, thus thinning the herd so to speak.
Everybody will not be awarded a trophy for simply showing up to the NEXT game. You’ll have to survive it.