When Parents Aren't Responsible, Let Them Off the Hook: The American Way

Davenport, Iowa has recently enacted a parental responsibility ordinance that holds parents responsible when their children commit various offenses by imposing penalties that begin at a warning letter and escalate to a required parenting skills class and ultimately a fine of up to $750. This ordinance should be a model for the rest of the country so that juvenile justice can get back to its original purpose.

Davenport’s ordinance should be heralded as an example for the entire United States for several reasons:

First, it holds parents responsible for their own failings. Children should not be victims of their parents’ stupidity. Everything we learn comes from others. Most of what young people learn comes from older people, particularly their parents. If your teacher is inept, uninterested, or just ignorant, you won’t learn no matter how old you get. Kids are not responsible for acquiring the knowledge their parents refuse to give them.

Second, it focuses on getting children the help they need. Children deserve to know that adults will not give up on them. Ever. We are telling kids, “I’m going to fail you by ignoring you and not teaching you what you need to know, and then when you’re in big trouble because I failed you, I’m going to fail you again.

The American Civil Liberties Union took up the cause of a woman who had run afoul of the ordinance when her son was in trouble with the law. Grasping at straws, her ACLU attorney, Michael McCarthy, alleged that “the sin of this law is that it can seriously handicap parents who are doing all the right things even though their child has engaged in some misbehavior.” Judge Gary D. McKenrick was persuaded to overturn the ordinance even though McCarthy’s argument was merely speculative.

Even if McCarthy’s contentions made sense, and even if they were based on a desire to help children succeed instead of holding adults responsible for adult behavior, they affect only a tiny percentage of the cases under the ordinance.

Most of the parents whose kids violate the law ARE derelict. Most of the parents whose kids violate the law DO need to take parenting classes. Most of the parents whose kids violate the law DO impose a financial burden on society that ought to be recouped via fines when possible.

As we live in a society that neglects children left and right and is not serious about taking care of them, it is not surprising that the ACLU would challenge, with a judge’s blessing and indulgence, an effort on the part of the community to give children what their parents would not or could not.