Brave Parenting or Child Endangerment
On June 16th Bruce Barcott writes in the LA TIMES about Abby Sunderland’s parents, describing them as applying brave parenting techniques to their daughter, sending her off to traverse the world in a forty foot sailing vessel, ALONE.
I DISAGREE. Bruce is wrong. He may well have been dead wrong. I believe that the purpose of parenting is two-fold. First: It is to teach our children how to survive in the world. Secondly: It is to teach them how to be happy.
The Spartan theory of parenting is exactly what the Sunderland’s theory is. In Sparta the child was to return either carrying his shield or being carried on it. Certainly Sparta taught their children how to survive. Many didn’t; many came back carried on their shields. Today that is child endangerment. The Sunderlands in their parenting style were Spartans. Judging by their actions the life of Abby was of little value to them. What was of value was whether or not she could survive. Think about it: these idiots sent a sixteen year old girl out into the oceans where seasoned sailors with a lifetime of experience would have not dared tread. She went where waves were thirty, forty, fifty feet high. These were the sort of waves that tore the bow of a heavy cruiser in World War II. These parents should sit in jail for a couple of years for needlessly endangering the life of their daughter.
Bruce, bless his heart, speaks of a 13 year old who climbed Mount Everest last month. He forgets that this kid did not climb it alone. There were adults with him. He didn’t do it with a Sears pick axe and a summer jacket. Abby was 16, thirty six months older, and alone in a 40 foot sailing vessel in heavy seas. Her parents endangered her life…for nothing.
In growing up my parents heated the house with a pot bellied stove that stood four feet high and glowed red hot in the winter. Getting close to it was perilous. Proximity brought a whack on the knuckles until each of us learned that the stove was in no man’s land and to stay away from it. Heat was necessary in 40 below weather. Guidance was necessary to insure survival. My parents did not throw me out in a winter storm, shouting “good luck” to my back side to see if I could make it to the corral and back. That’s what Abby’s parents did. This is not brave parenting. This is the absence of parenting. This is child endangerment.