I‘m sure you’ve read a news story about a mom failing to protect their child somehow and either read a comment that says (or even thought to yourself), “How could she let that happen? Why wasn’t she watching her child?”
I’m rewatching Grey’s Anatomy and in the episode For the Children, two boys are playing with one of the boy’s mother’s guns and inevitably, one of them ends up getting shot. Maggie Pierce, who isn’t a mother herself, approaches the babysitter who had been watching the boys at the time and grills her about why she let this happen.
Or do you remember the man on BBC whose children burst through the door in the middle of his interview, and his wife was completely frantic in trying to pull them both out? Comments there too shamed her for not keeping an eye on the kids, despite the fact she simply needed to go pee.
But even seasoned mothers and non-parents like to blame parents or babysitters for things like this. Why?
Because it’s easier than identifying with them.
On Grey’s, the babysitter, of course, points out 8-year-olds shouldn’t kill each other in the few seconds it takes for her to go to the bathroom or simply heat up their lunch. The babysitter ends up in tears and Maggie realizes she was out-of-line and just struggling with the fact that she’s grown to love her half-sister’s children and it’s scary to love tiny people who are so fragile. So why did she, and we, blame the mom? Is it because if you’d been in their shoes it wouldn’t have happened?
Not really.
If we admit that in the exact same situation, we easily could have been in their exact shoes, it’s terrifying. By painting the people who were in charge of the children as negligent, careless, bad people or otherwise shaming them, you make them into a character you don’t identify with, therefore taking what would be fear and turning it into blame and anger.
A very dangerous example of this mentality is a very controversial one – when children get left alone in cars and die.
Without fail, when this happens, people attack. “They should be charged with murder!” “How could a parent FORGET THEIR CHILD?!” There’s no understanding, no empathizing. Despite the fact that this tragedy CAN happen to anyone, and it happens to doctors, pediatricians, police officers, and other responsible and intelligent people, we often choose to pretend that THEY must be bad and it would NEVER happen to us.
That’s where the danger in this denial comes into play.
When you refuse to face the fear and see yourself in that heart-broken parent, you also refuse to take steps necessary to prevent becoming that heart-broken parent.
We create a fictional representation of this human being that we can’t identify with so we don’t have to face the reality that it could just as easily have been us that suffered this terrible tragedy. When it comes to kids dying in hot cars, it’s usually an accident. When a boy gets shot with his own mother’s gun, it should make you think about how your own gun is stored (if you have one at all), rather than shame the babysitter who went to warm mac-n-cheese. When children burst into a room during an important business call, it’s easiest to blame the mom who had to go pee for two seconds, rather than consider that if you have a similar risk, you could take precautions like a baby gate or a door lock to prevent a similar incident.
We need to get over our fear and face the hard truths that any of these situations could happen to anyone and instead of blaming parents, think about what we could learn from the terrible thing that happens, and make sure we’re not blinded by our desire to never see ourselves in the shoes of someone dealing with a tragedy by making them out to be a monster.
I already included the link above, but I want to add it again, because it’s such a serious issue. More and more children die every year from being left in a hot car – by accident – and it’s a horrifying way to die. WARNING: This is a gut-wrenching, hard read. Steel yourself, go somewhere you can ugly cry, and read “Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car is a Horrifying Mistake. Is it a Crime?” Then take a step back and realize every time you blame an innocent parent or caregiver instead of seeing yourself in their shoes, you’re preventing yourself from seeing the risks of repeating their mistake. Embrace that terrifying fear that it could happen to you, and then take steps so it doesn’t. And stop others from doing the same.
We’re in this together. We can learn from mistakes of others instead of repeating them, but only by acknowledging that sometimes, they’re not a bad person at all.
The Verbose Post 