Responsibility Awareness

Parents seem of late to be somewhat confused about their obligations to their children.  It is, of course, a generational thing.  Older folk may view differently than the current generation what that obligation consists of.  Mostly, to be there with one's children every step of the way.  Not quite possible when both parents are determined to be out in the workforce. 

Not possible when there is just one parent.

A bit of introspective contemplation might come in handy, but in this busy world no one has time for it.  Besides which, life-events seem to overtake life itself.  One does not plan one's life, it simply overtakes the unaware, living within its clasp.  Children require constant care, and before embarking on parenthood an adult should be acutely aware of that simple fact.

Farming out a child to someone else's care means that one is prepared to surrender one's responsibility to someone else.  Very young children, from infancy through childhood require the steady presence of a loving monitor, a caregiver ideally who is the child's parent, to guide the child and to embrace or to chide as the case may be.

There to support and to encourage, to expose and to inspire.  Parenting, raising a child is not a part-time occupation.  It is as full-time as living one's life should be.  Minding a child is difficult work, absorbing and requiring meticulous care and concern.  If it is hard for parents to engage themselves in this vital work, how much harder must it be for someone who is not a parent of the child being looked after?

The parent has an emotional and primeval-genetic-existential investment in taking care of a child of their own.  A paid caregiver has a job to do.  Why does this simple fact, a reflection of human nature, seem to escape the realization of parents before they decide to farm out their tender responsibilities?  Children, it is true, transcend these interruptions in their time with parents, they mostly survive.

"Quality" time spend with children after a day's work, in feeding them, putting them to bed, is not quite the same as being there wherever they are, whenever they are until it is time to send them off to school.  A coroner's inquest into the unfortunate death of a two-year-old child left to the supervision of a caregiver who had in her care five other young charges, along with her own children has reached its conclusion.

The caregiver had responded to an invitation received from a friend, another caregiver, with her own charges, to make a joint playdate.  And so thirty children in the care of five adults congregated in the backyard of the person who had issued the invitations.  The little boy clambered up the stairs leading to an above-ground pool and drowned before his absence was noted.

The child's bereaved father stated his satisfaction with the findings and recommendations of the inquest.  "It comes down to safety.  It comes down to supervision.  And it's clear that this day there was a lack of supervision.  Water is dangerous...   We have to be aware at all times when our kids are in the water to be around the pool or in the pool", he declared.