Opinion> Lenore Skenazy

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When in Doubt, Blame the Mom

Here's a story from Australia sure to make any parent shudder. I'm quoting it not to scare us but actually to do the opposite:

"Young mother Elizabeth Cardwell thought she was doing the right thing when she strapped her precious eight-week-old baby, wrapped in a blanket, into a hand-me-down car seat.

"Her daughter, Isabella Rose, was still tucked inside her blanket when her tiny body was found by the road after a horror triple-fatal in December.

"The State Coroner is now considering safety issues surrounding hand-me-down child restraints.

"The infant, who weighed only (about 6 1/2 pounds), died shortly after she was thrown from her baby car seat when the speeding Commodore she was travelling in slammed into a tree. ...

"Ms Cardwell, 19, and her boyfriend Greg Sanderson, 28, who was driving ... also were killed."

If you keep reading for another five paragraphs, you'll see another factor in this tragedy. Oh, yeah, the driver was going almost 50 mph faster than was recommended around a bend.

But heck, that couldn't be the real reason the baby (and those other people) died, could it? It must be that the mom was too cheap to buy a brand-new car seat (the one she bought was a year and a half old) and too stupid to know not to tuck the blanket around her. So go ahead and blame the mom or the child restraints, which apparently stop working the second they become hand-me-downs. That's what the media (and even government) do, because it's so much more striking than: "Ho-hum.

A speeder drove into a tree."

As for the effect this kind of coverage has on our society? It's crazy-making! It's law-changing! Did you know you can't ever sell a used car seat, even if it was never in a crash? It's illegal!

As Ben Miller, a policy analyst at Common Good, points out, "identifying the real, direct cause of an accident (reckless driving) is the first step toward solving it. Failing to do so (and blaming it on the car seat) lies at the root of so much litigation, regulation and legal fear. Just imagine if society and government spent as much time and money addressing legitimate dangers and risks as we do obsessing over red herrings. At the very least, we'd have a lot fewer waivers to sign."

We also would have a lot fewer parents fearing every child care move they make. But instead, we keep making parents second-guess themselves, their purchases, their practices and pretty much their every step. After all, if anything ever goes wrong, their decisions will be scrutinized with the kind of obsession once reserved for Winston Churchill's speeches.

And besides, if we didn't blame parents whenever a child gets hurt, who would ever watch the news — or buy brand-new car seats?

Lenore Skenazy is the author of "Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry)" and "Who's the Blonde That Married What's-His-Name? The Ultimate Tip-of-the-Tongue Test of Everything You Know You Know — But Can't Remember Right Now." To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.