One down (a toast)
I point to this case as further proof that the concept of "punishment" is inane and flawed.
Hear! Hear! I'll drink to that!
Still, it's a better outcome than Florida, where people who deliberately murder people with premeditation are considered a good parental role model. Child molesters, too.
I know I bring that one up way too much, but practically speaking, someone has to account for the remaining 12 children, and
it is in society's best influence that this man be allowed to provide for them.
We might compare this death to an actual murder and note that an operational difficulty, a planning oversight, a flaw in the execution of one's parental duties demanded the highest price. When a kid "almost dies" falling off a roof or out of a tree, or, like me, nearly drowning after hitting the water at 70 mph when I hit a piece of wood while water-skiing and destroying my life-jacket, nobody ever thinks about it. My dad and I laugh about that, or the time we capsized a sailboat watching a plume of ash billow across the sky after St. Helens blew on one or another occasion. Don't you think it a little negligent of my father to obey a 14 year-old's call to open the throttle and see how fast the boat can go? I was under the sailboat, with my dad diving repeatedly thinking I was caught in the rigging; what would he have said if he'd hauled my drowned 7 year-old corpse in from the water?
Even my parents' generation tells stories of being the oldest child, having to raise several siblings while Mom and Dad worked. And we pay teenagers to watch young children while parents go out for leisure. Statistically speaking, something like this is bound to happen. Should I never go out again? Well, certainly my mother knows how to tend a child--she has the touch and I find myself envious. But she's a state away. But whom do I get as a babysitter? If I hire a babysitter whose negligence or direct action harms my child, how do I answer for placing my child in inadequate care while seeking leisure, say a night of dinner and a couple drinks?
Which is why I don't know which issue to make. Things happen, even bad things. But this bad thing was most easily preventable by not having 13 children. With an eldest daughter having a nervous breakdown from coping with the demands of familial responsibility--regardless of how justly or otherwise placed upon her--what can we expect to happen if we send the father to prison, remove whatever it is he contributes to the family? It seems to me that the older children will just have to step up to the plate.
Of course, comparatively, this guy makes Woody Allen seem almost decent? I mean, after all, Woody didn't
kill one of his children, just fucked her.
Remember, though, that dying children has, as an issue, sucked a lot of wind from the sails of faith-healing Christian sects that refuse modern medicine. A few more of these lambs and whatever religious preconceptions lead a man to father 13 children will fade from American culture. The habit is already stigmatized comedically; once it gets a brand as dangerous, things will change some. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few; in my day, children drowned in swimming pools, choked to death on camera caps, leapt off roofs to their deaths--things happened. The need to blame the parents for every little thing that goes wrong has arisen from a pointlessly punishment-driven culture. And now we have a very big thing on our hands, but the lessons are the same. Imagine the father goes to prison and the mother remarries. Now, imagine that guy, foolish enough to marry into an obligation to 12 children. Comparatively, Negligent Dad has an advantage over New Dad. Negligent Dad has endured approximately the worst lesson he can learn, and must bear responsibility for the needless death of one of his own children. His honor, it would seeem, recognizes this idea--he's less likely to make this same mistake at all. And, given that boys will be boys, children will be children, and people are inclined to hurt themselves regularly, maybe this guy won't make the same mistake of assuming such habits to be without consequence.
The best way for this man to take responsibility for the damage caused by his actions is to rebuild his parental values and stake himself on the futures of his children. In that sense everybody wins except for the dead, and there's nothing we could do anyway that would change that loss.
:m:,
Tiassa
