To pick up where the other now deleted thread left off (from what I can remember);
Is society so mindless today that we must set reminders to take care of our children?
Yes, technology has thrown a lot of distractions into our daily life. I don't think anyone can argue that we are also a society "in a hurry".
We are asked to do more with less (and that includes time). As an example, when I was a kid, I got myself to practice and dad got there AFTER he got home from work. Nobody had to rush home to get me there. I don't care if it's youth or high school, the job of transporting your children to/from practice and games falls on the parents, the kids can't walk there and there are no school buses.
In the previous thread I’ve read that “it could happen to anyone”, “it was an accident”, it was a tragic “mistake”. As I’ve stated, actions have consequences and one of the consequences of not paying attention to the important things in life, your children, is injury/death.
"accident" and "consequences" are not mutually exclusive. As a society we put a premium on life, therefore we punish the taking of a life with the most severe sentence. But the law recognizes that there is a difference between the deliberate, intentional, taking of a life and an "accident".
Now people are saying that it must be nice to be a perfect parent since I’ve never had this situation happen to me, well the thing is, I’m not a perfect parent, far from it, but I strive every day to be one. I consciously think about the welfare of my children, just like millions of parents do, every day, and like other parents, I am aware that my actions directly impact the welfare of my children. This parent didn’t and we are now discussing the results of his actions. I’ve heard the excuse “he was on auto-pilot” and other excuses that justify his actions, well; there is no excuse to justify his actions. Just like a drunk driver has an excuse for his actions (their drinking is a disease), this parent does not have a valid excuse for leaving his child in a hot car, even after he went and drove it a meeting in the middle of the day.
There is a significant difference between making a concious decision to leave the child in the car and having a brain fart and forgetting. It does not justify what happened, it explains how it happened. If you can't for a minute put yourself in the other persons place and understand what may have happened, but merely want an eye for an eye because it would never happen to you, well that's when you put yourself on the perfect parent pedistal.
Hard to imagine because it was a child. But I know parents that have driven to work with the car seat in the car (after dropping the child off), when it was habit to leave the seat for the person picking the child up at the end of the day. Have you ever driven to work and realized you left something at home?
This isn’t about being a perfect parent, there is no such thing as a perfect parent (IMO), it’s an unattainable goal but no matter what, it’s still worth striving to achieve. One must think about one’s actions and how they affect other’s, look at the affect this parent’s actions had, a child is dead, a mother has lost not only her child but her marriage and her life will never be the same, she has probably lost the trust she once had for her husband (that trust will never be regained), the man she loved will never be the same, a brother has lost his sibling, his relationship with his father has forever changed and not for the good, the grandparents have lost a grandchild and are now caught up in the middle of this situation. Your actions just don’t just affect you, it affects everyone around you.
Now people say don’t judge, well if we don’t judge a person’s bad behavior and actions as a society are we ever going to make society a better place? Look at society today, it’s a blameless society, when someone does something bad it’s because of some external reason or disease, hardly anyone takes responsibility for their actions anymore. People say we shouldn’t shame this person, that they already have enough guilt, to that, I say BS. This person should have thought about the consequences of his actions before he did them, afterwards is too late. Part of being held accountable for your actions is taking the punishment, as part of the punishment is being judged by your peers (society) and shaming is a way we as a society voice our displeasure of one’s actions.
As I’ve stated, this is not an accident, an accident is something that can’t be avoided, a mistake is something that is just a harmless inconvenience; a mistake is bouncing a check or forgetting to put gas in your car. When a person is injured or killed due to negligence, that is not an accident or mistake, it’s the actions of an irresponsible person and is 100% avoidable. There were several times this incident could have been avoided, but the father ignored every one of them and now we are discussing the end result.
I feel, as a society, we need to stop making excuses for these kinds of actions, for making excuses alleviates the person of their responsibility and partially absolves them of the guilt. The “it wasn’t his fault, his brain was in auto-pilot”, the “it was an honest mistake”, the “it was an accident” only re-enforces to society that this behavior, while tragic, is acceptable to a degree. There is no acceptance for leaving your child in a hot car because you are too absorbed in something else besides that most important thing in your life, that child.
As I said above, the law recognizes degrees of responsibility in many crimes. Nothing excuses the result, what it does is explan the circumstances.
Good people have bad days. Driving drunk is agains the law, therefore being drunk does not make it merely an accident. But you rarely if ever see a DUI involved in a fatal accident being charged with murder in the first degree. If someone falls asleep behind the wheel they are not relieved of responiblity, but based on the circumstance their punishment is less than a DIU. Commercial drivers are held to a higher level of responsinbitliy in accidents because they are regulated.
I've had a LEO tell me he didn't write traffic tickets in certain cases because the punishment the driver would recive via higher insurance rates would be far worse than the ticket (non-fatal collision from failing to yield the right of way at a traffic signal). If the courts and law enforcement exercise a degree of discretion based on circumstances, why don't you?
If you want to be rigid, see everything as black and white, than also accept that people are going to label you as passing judgment from on high.
" over the death of her child that she left to broil in the car. She still drives the car her child died in, saying it didn't make economic sense to get a new one. That's cold and this woman is a frightening creature if she is accurately portrayed in that story.