Freedom, with common sense and responsibility
If our parents were mature and sensible when we were kids, they almost certainly prevented us from doing things that were just not good for us.
Despite the wailing and whining that surely followed, they curtailed our freedom. No one else would have been hurt if we had eaten a whole pizza at dinner and topped it off with a box of Twinkies, or spent the entire day camped out in front of the television set watching cartoons. But they knew, in the long run, doing these things wouldn’t be good for us.
We needed to eat some fruit once in a while, get outside and play or read a book.
Some people, now that they are older, forgot these lessons. They want to be able to do what they want to do, when they want to do it, all in the name of “freedom.”
Take, for instance, the “free-range parents” in Silver Spring, Md., who got into hot water with the local authorities, and generated plenty of controversy, by allowing their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter to walk almost a mile and play in a municipal park without any kind of adult supervision.
Alexander and Danielle Meitiv argued they are imbuing their children with a sense of confidence and self-reliance by letting them wander and be on their own. One supporter asserted the Meitivs should be allowed to raise their children as they see fit, because, here we go, “It’s sort of beyond the pale and flies in the face of the freedom we enjoy in this country.”
Sure, the Meitivs are, in theory, allowed to raise their children as they see fit as long as they cause them no immediate physical harm.
But letting two children, one of whom is barely beyond the toddler stage, wander off without adults keeping an eye on them seems profoundly unwise. Though some parents are prone to being fretful and hovering over their children to excess, children do need supervision, particularly if they live in urban or suburban areas that are subject to traffic and, yes, people who might not have their best interests at heart. It’s not out of bounds for the powers that be to wonder if the Meitivs are giving their youngsters more latitude than they can handle.
At the same time, in West Virginia, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin sparked protests by vetoing a measure that would have allowed residents to set up herd-sharing agreements so they can guzzle down raw milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized. The way we consume milk is not an issue for the majority of us – we pick it up at the grocery store – but supporters of raw milk say it contains nutrients and vitamins that are removed in the pasteurization process, even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention underscored that raw milk provides no benefits that can’t be derived from the pasteurized variety. These folks are falling prey to the same kind of myths that lead some parents to take a pass on having their children vaccinated, even though multiple studies have shown the manifold benefits and minuscule risks of vaccination.
In fact, people who drink raw milk stand a chance of getting sick because of bacteria that could be contaminating it, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the number of disease outbreaks because of raw milk consumption has increased considerably in the five-year span between 2007 and 2012.
The Washington Post reported last year that a toddler in Oregon suffered a stroke and her kidneys failed in 2013 after she drank raw milk tainted with E.coli. She receives nutrition now through a feeding tube, and cannot walk or talk.
Tomblin was correct to veto this bill, which would have imperiled the health of residents in his state. Yet, one resident who staged a protest of Tomblin’s veto outside West Virginia’s statehouse opined “it’s a freedom issue.”
Freedom is a wonderful concept. We have a great deal of it in this country.
But it needs to be leavened with a degree of common sense and responsibility.
Letting your children wander or guzzling down raw milk just because you can demonstrates neither.