So it turns out that even very good parents can accidentally leave small children locked in a car:

“The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant,” [Professor David Diamond] said. “The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it’s supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program.” [ Fatal Distraction ]

The article linked above also quotes a comment left on another newspaper website after a specific incident:

After Lyn Balfour’s acquittal, this comment appeared on the Charlottesville News Web site:

“If she had too many things on her mind then she should have kept her legs closed and not had any kids. They should lock her in a car during a hot day and see what happens.” [ Ibid ]

This is a favorite line: if people don’t have the resources, they shouldn’t have children.

It’s stupid.

Do you know the future?

I’ll grant that there are certainly cases where it’s a bad idea to have a child (or another child). Maybe you already have eight. Maybe you’re sixteen. Maybe neither of you have a high school diploma.

But rearing a child takes a couple of decades. A lot can happen from conception to college graduation, and you’re not going to be able to anticipate or plan for all of it. In fact, doing your best to cover one aspect may cause a problem elsewhere. And whatever you do, somewhere someone is sure you’re doing it wrong — that the choice you made is evidence that you’re not responsible enough to have children.

One guy I know claimed that if you weren’t rich enough to buy your child his own BMW, well, you shouldn’t have children.

You can’t know when you have a child whether or not you will still be employed the next year, whether the stock market will tank and your savings evaporate. You can’t know if you’ll have the survival skills necessary in the zombie apocalypse. You can’t know if your company will double the workload and fire half the staff, leaving you working sixty-hour days.  It’s not like there’s a guidebook or a “should I have a child” calculator.

You can’t even necessarily know if you have the right stuff to be a parent when you become a parent.

That is, after all, one of the greatest anxieties of parenting.

Parenting should not be limited to the rich

If everyone waited until they were financially secure enough to quit jobs, uproot careers, and focus on their children exclusively for fifteen to twenty years then no one but the independently wealthy would have children. They are not a luxury or a status possession. They are not a form of entertainment that you “afford” like a dinner or a movie.

And while I admit that it’s foolish to have a thirteenth child when your income consists of a couple of minimum-wage jobs. But to say that any inability to provide, any loss of focus, or any insufficient attention is evidence that someone’s choice to have a child was irresponsible pretty much limits parenthood to the rich and idle.

Hat tip: hilzoy