lonelocust: our replies are getting l-o-o-o-oooong.
Yeah, they are.
The Washington Post article was certainly written in a highly editorialized fashion and aimed at being sympathetic to the parents and convincing the reader of the accidental nature of the incidents. I think a lot of the way in which it tries to convince is a pure appeal to emotion, and it is properly resisted as such. I do think, however, that it contained valuable objective information (particularly the commentary by scientists relating to memory) in addition to the emotional appeals. And, while emotional, I think the specific accounts are relevant to evaluating what is going on.
I've tried to not use words like "people who forgot" etc. in an attempt to not beg the question from my point of view. Thus my fun phrases like leavers-of-children-in-cars. The absolute bare fact is that these people did leave children in cars. While I argue that it's possible that this was the most literal and unintentional form of pure forgetfulness, I don't want to push that as a presupposition with the language I use. The Washington Post article certainly made no such attempt.
I'm adding this to my list of things to try to ascertain. I am under the impression that abuse of only one child is not generally observed, but that may not be the case. It will make a considerable difference in my opinion if this is actually reasonably common.
This may also be the case. Culturally I feel the outlook is that people "are" abusers or "are not" abusers, and that refers to patterns of behavior rather than single instances. This is most often visible in discussing relationship abuse (we believe that someone's boyfriend doesn't just hit them that one time because he was angry or having a bad day and really mentally unstable because of a combination of unusual factors, etc.; we believe that he "is an abuser", and that if he hits his SO once then he will do it again) but I think the stereotype applies to child abuse as well. It is possible that this outlook is culturally useful in a utilitarian fashion but not actually factually true. That is, maybe some percentage of people who are usually calm and considerate and peaceful and wouldn't hurt anyone DO flip out a single time and engage in a single, isolated instance of purposeful violence. But it's best if people on the receiving end of abuse assume that they don't and do not give the perpetrator another chance or the benefit of the doubt that it was a one-time thing. However, this being useful doesn't make it actually true, and my supposition that it is true based on its cultural usefulness in one context may be causing me to think incorrectly about another possible situation. "If someone does something once on purpose, assume they are a serial abuser and leave" is becoming "If someone can be reasonably proven to not be a serial abuser, assume that their one-time act could not have been a purposeful act." Clearly that is fallacious. It's probably, due to the cultural overhead, going to be difficult to ascertain objectively whether single-victim or single-act child purposeful child-directed violence is a real phenomenon.
A fairly small percentage of deaths happened when parents knew they were leaving the baby in the car at one point and allegedly forgot about it after the fact. I have been generally not discussing these incidents when making statements, because I agree that this is completely reckless and can be by definition considered a purposeful act - even if the act was not intending to cause damage or death. (Again, analogy of if you get drunk and drive, you might not mean to kill someone, but the drinking and driving was a purposeful act. You meant to drink alcohol, and you meant to drive a car even if you didn't mean to hit someone and kill them. You meant to leave your kid in the car even if you didn't mean to forget them and have them die.)
I'm also not really willing to accept "probably" and "probably not" just as statements to be accepted any more than "always is" and "always is not". I don't feel that the incidents surrounding the details of the many cases available are consistent with the parents thinking they "I don't want to fool with this baby right now."
Was there a specific case involving going out to lunch with a friend? There are about 200 cases that there are details on, but I haven't gotten through all of them. But yeah, I am in my statements NOT talking about the ones where the leaver's claim was "I meant to just leave them for a minute and then forgot" but only the ones where the leavers claim was "I totally forgot that they were with me at all/were completely certain they were somewhere else."
That is a good point. It is because of that that I am pretty much in agreement with all that is why I'm comfortable calling the situations "abuse" or "neglect" whether or not they were on purpose and whether or not they were isolated incidents.
I do think that's what keresm was/is saying. While I could be misreading her as well, I think I had some crossover of arguing against a point that only she made when addressing you.
While I do continue to disagree with that, it is good for me to be clear that you're not specifically arguing for the act being a purposeful commission of infanticide. If you will accept the analogy, you are arguing that it is always like drinking and driving, and not that it is always like shooting someone in the head? Is that a rough equivalent?
Here's my thing: there is most certainly a world of difference morally. The question in my mind is whether there is a world of difference cognitively. If we use the same brain processes to remember children that we use to remember bats, keys, and coffee pots, then we are subject to the same sort of forgetfulness about them even though their moral difference is vast. That is, it is possible that the consequences of the same cognitive functions is VASTLY different even if the actual function was basically identical.
First, do you think that being "purpose-driven" is mutually exclusive with being "routine"? Second, I again will point out that most of the cases don't involve a claim of forgetting the whole process of packing up and taking the baby along - they just involve a claim of forgetting one crucial step AFTER that point, or more accurately of thinking that the leaver HASN'T forgotten that one crucial step.
However, the "I totally forgot the baby was with me at all" is not 100% unrepresented in the cases, and I don't want to be deceptive by implying that it is. There's also an anecdote in the WaPo story by one of the quoted scientists (not anyone who had actually left a child in a car) of driving with his wife and grandchild, and the wife making a comment about the baby and him going "Wait, what, we have the baby with us? Oh yeah, I forgot." So yes, there is some claim of that, but it is the minority. (Also, though I am loathe to bring up personal anecdotes, when I was a young child though not an infant my mother would OFTEN forget that I was there. We would sometimes be driving places and I would be in the back seat and start talking to her and she would get startled and then be like "Oh my! I thought I left you at home!" My mother was incredibly forgetful and "scatterbrained" as she liked to call it, just like I am now. While I totally don't want kids, and find my absent-mindedness to be another good reason for me to not have them, my mother really had the prime goal of motherhood in her life, but she still did it. There, I have done the thing I am loathe to do. I don't consider this anecdote conclusive, but it probably is influencing my ability to emotionally accept "I just forgot.")
Noted.
I actually think it doesn't make more sense to ask a parent than a non-parent. I understand that and why a parent more than a non-parent would find it hard to believe in the possibility of true accident in these cases, and that their lack of forgetfulness implies impossibility. However, we know that people are bad at self-assessment. The more sure a person is of their opinion does not have a correlation to how likely they are to be correct. I apologize if this is offensive. I do not mean to belittle you or any parent with this. I also don't think it makes me more "likely" to be correct.
Again, I'm completely on board that it is not morally equivalent. But that does not rule out it being cognitively equivalent. If it IS cognitively equivalent, we still shouldn't treat it the same way. I leave the coffee pot on or the door unlocked and realize it, I say "oh well" and shrug and it's not a big deal. My house gets robbed because I left the door unlocked, it sucks more, but it's still a matter of shrugging and saying "I was absent-minded, and I got this consequence". And, you know, I report it to my insurance and get reimbursed, and my insurance premium goes up. If I do the same thing - even if because of an identical cognitive function - and I kill a kid, yeah, it's not the same thing. It's MUCH MORE IMPORTANT to make sure that you prevent that totally normal cognitive function (I'm just assuming for the sake of this statement that it is the result of such; I'm not trying to sneak in a begging of the question here) from killing a kid than from leaving a house unlocked. Is it 100% preventable? I really don't know. I don't feel convinced enough to say that it is or it isn't. It may be possible for me to never forget to eat but just not actually important enough. What I DO think is actively dangerous (in addition to thinking that it's objectively wrong) is anyone's opinion that they absolutely cannot forget. I do believe that the cognitive functions that involve remembering a child and remembering your keys are the same, and even people who are not forgetful like me do it sometimes.
It has a bit of an amusing ring to it. Also it succeeds in not linguistically taking a side like "perpetrators" (which seems to imply inent) or "forgetters" (which seems to imply lack of intent).
Yeah, the job that pays me can be a little slow in the hours I work, and the other contracting job that sometimes pays me in the meantime doesn't have anything for me to do right at this minute, so I have time. Though right now I am waiting on accomplices in addition to what is available online on the given topics. Though a new thing I didn't think of before this particular message is whether it's reasonable for us to assume that the cognitive processes involved in remembering children is the same as those involved in remembering other things. I am prone to believing that they are, but I'm not sure if that's completely supported. If it is not, it does make my support from psychology not as firm.
Fair enough.
OK, I get that. And looking back on it, you were pretty much sticking to things directly related to anatomy. A male is not going to have sore boobs and after-birth pain just based on anatomy. I think I unfairly thought you were going to go with a "mother's intuition" sort of line, and then reacted as if you had. Sorry about that.
I'm glad you allow for the possibility (the possibility is the main thesis which I am trying to support, with the more-often-than-not in practice being the secondary thesis).
And yes, I am certainly *suspicious*. I don't advocate anyone - and particularly law enforcement - not being suspicious. I do advocate not assuming or thinking that there's no explanation other than that which you suspect.
Ah, see, here's the thing again where it seems like you're arguing against the claim that they forgot the baby ENTIRELY - that is, forgot about the existence of the baby rather than the location of the baby. In fact, in at least some actual cases, they DEFINITELY were thinking about the baby. There was a mother who was ordering baby-related items while the baby was in the car. There was a mother who got a call from the babysitter, called them back and got voicemail but figure it wasn't a big deal, got another callback later asking "Where's the baby?" and she was all "What do you mean? He's with you!" and then rushed out to find her son dead. It wasn't that she forgot about the existence of the baby; it was that she forgot to do a certain thing and didn't realize she had forgotten. She was absolutely thinking about him and knew (incorrectly) exactly where he was. (That is, that would be her claim. Sorry for the language that implied that this was definitely the objective truth; I tried to put disclaimers about it being her story into the telling itself, but that made it super clunky and unreadable.) There are multiple cases of the caretaker actually driving back to the daycare to pick up their kid (with the dead kid in the back seat) and only then being told that the child was never dropped off and going out to discover them. (Again, according to their story.) So yeah, I would expect a friend to ask about the baby, and if these cases are accurately what the leaver-of-child-in-car and corroborating witnesses say they are, I would expect the answer to be "Oh the baby is great. She's with her grandmother so I can come out to lunch with you."
Morally, most definitely not. Cognitively, I would be inclined to say yes, but this is possibly incorrect. However, anyone feeling emotionally that it is not the same is not going to convince me that the governing cognitive functions are not the same. I will become more tentative in my belief if I can't find anything to suggest that yes, we use the same cognitive memory functions for everything, though I am inclined to believe that such is the case.
That makes sense. I just think it's a reminder of the wrong thing - it's a great reminder that you have a baby. It's not necessarily a reminder that you forgot to put the baby where you thought you put the baby, because the pain would remain the same whether the baby is in the car facing backwards in his carseat or whether the baby is actually at grandma's.
Not taking the child to daycare/babysitter/grandma's house (which I'm lumping all together) is the single most common occurrence. This is true of individual cases that I read, and was stated as a statistic in multiple articles/studies about the matter. But yes, it is not the ONLY occurrence. I do think it is the most easily pictured as being a true cognitive fart and pure accident. Its plentifulness is very suggestive to me of the possibility of such pure accident. And the possibility again is the major thesis that I am trying to support. It may be that other more gut-reaction "suspicious" occurrences are in fact less explainable with the way our brains and memories just work (or just don't work as the case may be).