Quit Saying, “Where Were the Parents?” When Anything Bad Happens to a Kid

We’ve got a great piece over at Let Grow pointing out that when Baby Jessica fell down a well in 1987, a nation banded together. “But today,” writes Katy Anderson, the mom of 3 boys, “I can’t help but think there would be an immediate collective outcry of, ‘Where were the parents?!?’”

Her piece is JUST GREAT:

When did it become socially acceptable to blame any accident that befalls a child on parental negligence? Have we completely given up on giving parents the benefit of the doubt? Society today demands a kind of hypervigilance with parenting. It feels like it’s deemed unacceptable for children to be unsupervised, even for a moment. Whenever I see a story in the media about a child getting hurt, I scan the comments. I’m looking for how long it takes for someone to blame the parents.