Police: Couple Abandoned Baby So They Could Party
GLENDALE, Wis. -- A Glendale couple said they couldn't afford a baby sitter, so they strapped their 14-month-old son in his stroller at home while the couple went out, police alleged.
Rachel Anderson and her live-in boyfriend, Mitch Laputka, were ordered to stand trial Thursday on charges they neglected baby Gabriel so badly that his body was covered with diaper rash, his body temperature was 12 degrees below normal and he stopped breathing, requiring 21 minutes of CPR to revive him. Police said the couple admitted to leaving the boy home alone because they wanted to party.
The couple recently got jobs at Pizza Hut, police said Anderson told them, and the couple used the money for drinking parties. Police said Anderson told them that she often left Gabriel strapped in his stroller when the couple went out or to work, and that she changed Gabriel's diaper once per day. Police said Laputka told them that he didn't do diapers, that was Anderson's job.
Read the whole story (WISN.com)
We need a government permit to hunt, fish, drive a car, run a business, return to the country after traveling outside it, build a house, dig a well, camp, boat, and own certain types of animals, but not to create and raise a new human being, perhaps the biggest responsibility there is.
How in the world does that make sense?
I'm sure you're just blowing off steam, Craig, but think for a minute about the ramifications of requiring a permit before getting pregnant. To make sure no baby was conceived without the proper paperwork, you'd have to institute a "Handmaid's Tale" style nightmare of monthly fertility checks for every woman in the country, for the time she started her menstrual cycle until the conclusion of menopause.
And what would happen to the poor girl whose contraception failed and found herself impermissible pregnant? A forced abortion? Jail? Having to surrender the child to foster care?
Lux, no I wasn't thinking anything so invasive as what you're describing. I haven't really thought about it as a realistic/feasible objective, but if you were to do so, I expect such a system would really center more around motivating people through carrots rather than sticks.
For example, once a woman finds herself pregnant, passing some rudimentary parenting class would be required (e.g., why babies need to be changed more than once per day, what they should eat, etc.) in order to be "licensed" to parent. If they are licensed, then they receive perks like child deductions on income taxes or free/reduced-cost access to some governmental service.
If not, they could be required to have a social worker stop by their home once a month for the first two years (an inconvenience if nothing else).
Basically, I think there needs to be some sort of systematized effort to improve the ability of people to parent. We spend billions teaching people how to read, do math, drive cars, speak foreign languages, etc., but nearly zero on how to raise children. I'm not saying that education would fix everything, but it would certainly be a start in the right direction.
Are you suggesting that the abuse in this story was due to the type of ignorance that a class would fix?
You can fix ignorance, but you can't fix stupid.
That said, in my state (NY) you don't need a permit to boat. As a lifelong boater, it's something I wish we had.