f13.net

Words. (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2238252.ece) I don't have them.

Something about the whole thing seems planned. "Look, our kids ain't gonna be shit and we want to get rich. Let them fuck and lets create spectacle around the world and become rich and famous".

Just saying.

If that was true, Peru would have hundreds of teenage millionaires.

I work in inner-city library systems, this is not news. 

My friend suggested that the father was actually one of the mother's siblings and the whole thing was a huge coverup.

Did anyone see the pic of the boy's mum? HOLY SHIT that is the stuff of nightmares!

Remember folks; It's only news when it happens to white kids.  There's younger kids having children out there.

I wanted to say it.... but was afraid I'd cause a stir.   :oh_i_see:

(http://img.thesun.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00733/SNN1407B-380_733254a.jpg)

Yeah. Picture says it all really.

Although as sad as this all is.. I'll feel sorry for the guy if what they are saying is true.  I guess like 3-4 other boys have come out saying they were having sex with the girl at around the same time and some are asking for DNA tests.

She looks like that one male British actor...fuck someone must know whom I am talking about. He even has the blonde hair...looks to be about her age as well. Some one find him and post his picture!!!

Rutger Hauer? Umm, but he's Dutch.


Oh wait, Richard Harris? He's dead. Also, probably not polite to call him British.

Richard Harris!!! YES!!!!

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1975000/images/_1976499_harris.jpg)

Dumbledore is a transvestite?

You only have to read the title of the publication to glean that it is not news.

The latest news is two other boys have come forward claiming they are the father, and it's estimated that she had around 8 partners at the time.  So far the age range is from 13 - 16.

You got me there, man.   :awesome_for_real:

Why would you claim you're the father?  Wouldn't you just thank your lucky stars that some sucker took the bullet and not you?  Oh well, no one ever said that white trash were overly logical.

Fame.  Everyone wants to be on TV, this is their ticket in.  Thinking of the consequences like, "Oh shit, you mean I have to actually help support the little fucker now?" doesn't enter into the equation for them.

I can't believe this happened to these kids with stellar parenting like this.

The same type of parents that think their kids have "rights" and they should respect their privacy.

This is why we need to raise the minimum age on age of consent laws, to protect sweet innocent girls like this!

lolwut  :uhrr:

You know, those weirdos that think it's perfectly normal to give their kids all their entertainment options in their room, and never check on them just assuming everything is fine. They don't want to get into their kid's lives, so they always say stupid things like "We had no idea" to the press and expect the rest of the world to understand. They certainly aren't parents, and they are barely better than roommates.

Sorry, but when you kid knocks up at chick at 13, it's your fault. When your kid shoots up a high school, your fault. The list goes on.

And how, pray the fuck tell, since we're already getting this thread moved to politics anyway, do you extrapolate that into "CHILDREN SHOULDN'T HAVE rights"?

Seriously.

Not only that, you're a christian, you should be glad for them, since it's another life.  :oh_i_see:

He said "rights" ...

Please tell us all more Mr. Never Been a Parent.

Sorry, I'm just sick of hearing "We had no idea" in the press from the parents. It's like the standard mantra after something horrible happens. You don't hear, "Yeah sorry, we weren't paying attention and we fucked up." It's a pet peeve of mine, and we all know where it comes from. They didn't know because they either didn't want to know or didn't care.

There's lots of styles to parenting for sure, and many of them work. I don't think "hands off" is a style though. I think parents have great influence on shaping behaviors, educating their kids, and enforcing proper conduct. They have to actually try though.

Do you have kids?  (EDIT: ALREADY COVERED)

Folks who haven't had the pleasure of raising little shits often have a hard time understanding how little control the parents actually have.  Most parents only get 1 or 2 hours of face time a day with their kids.

No, most parents choose to only have 1-2 hours of face time with kids a day.  Suck it up and admit it, you simply have other priorities.

I spend a good 3-4 hours a day with my kids.

^ This.

I fucking spend more than 2 hours day training and running and cuddling my God damn puppy. If you are giving your minor (under 18) HUMAN CHILD less than that you are fucking up. Period. No dont get mad at me, you simply suck as a parent.

Some of you people shouldnt be allowed to breed.

Please tell us more Mr. Also Has No Kids.

Looks like they should have spent more time teaching them about birth control methods.  :grin:

I'm always amazed that people completely forget about the relationship they had with their parents when blaming the children of others. I had a pretty good one, but my parents certainly didn't know what I got up to all of the time.

Also, the other part of the story is the 13 yo standing up and taking responsibility (and it may not be his) - there is the "responsibility for your actions" part that you want, Paelos.

WTF does that have to do with anything?

A) Merusk does have kids.
B) I have a PUPPY who I spend more time with than obviously some of you do your own flesh and blood. Do you think when my wife and I have a kid in the next year Im going to spend LESS time with the kid than I did with the puppy?  :uhrr:

Parents have more influence on their kids than anyone else, from birth. Blame society if you want to because you failed as a parent, but if your 13 year old knocked someone up, YOU FAILED. If your kids shoot up a school, FAIL.

If my 14 year old kid ends up in the press over something illegal, I'm going to blame myself. You don't control your children, but you do educate them not to become the centerpiece of idiotic criticism across the fucking world.

You have a 14 year old kid?

They sure grow up fast.

Do you jack-asses not remember being 13-14 years old?  Or were you momma's boys who never did anything without checking in first?  Because *my* parents considered it a good job that I made it through my teens without getting put in prison, and frankly were glad (once they found out) that they didn't know about most of the shit I got up to, because they couldn't have done a damned thing to stop any of it (not being able to afford a military boarding school I couldn't have broken out of in the first week).

No matter how hard you try to protect them from themselves, the fact remains that you can't.  Now, being so lax with their 13 year old daughter that it's now a matter for DNA tests to resolve which of 6-8 boys is actually the father is a major failure in parenting, but drawing a straight-line equivalency between that and a soft-headed "liberal" recognition of "children's rights" is pure bullshit.

Forget the question of "rights", there's two basic ways to raise children: Through fear, or through mutual respect.  Fear works only as long as it works, and creates adults with..."issues", they generally take out on *their* kids (and the parents, once it's time to arrange their "elder care").  Respect is harder, but more effective at creating functional adults.  *Neither* was at work in this case, the parents weren't parenting at *all*, they were providing food and shelter and otherwise the children were as much on their own as any "Lord of the Flies" scenario, the results are as predictable as they are sad.

--Dave

I was a screwed up 13 year old too. My parents were fairly nice people.. I mean, I had some chips on my shoulder from family, but they definitely weren't dysfunctional. Yet, I smoked weed and cigs, dropped acid, snorted crank, coke, had two assault charges, and sucked on titties that were not my mom's by 14. Personally, I blame gangsta rap.

If you're worried what they're doing at 13-14 you failed years ago.  You spend time with them, talk to them and educate them as children, not teenagers.  From 9-12 is the most important as they're developing their morals and 'oh shit I shouldn't do that" sense.  Yes, you can do this through fear. No it doesn't work anywhere near as well as just fucking talking to them, exposing them to the realities of life and explaining shit.

However, the first thing you have to do is get the fuck over the puritan "omg can't talk to anyone about.. s-e-x"  because that's where most fuck-ups happen.

You can be the best parent in the world, and you'll still worry. You will always worry.
You worry because you care.

 :awesome_for_real:

So you'll let your kid off the hook by accepting the responsibility for their failings?

My kids knock up a girl at whatever age (barring :pedobear:) I'll be, "That's nice. What are you going to do about it?".

I just love people with no kids pontificating from their high horse based on what they do with their dog. Trust me, until you get there and experience it you have no fucking clue.

This. I do not have kids.

But as someone who could have gone one way or the other and yet had great parents, I can tell you that the lessons and discipline they instilled in me before I ever hit puberty are what got me through puberty, college and into adulthood. If your kid doesn't know by the time he's thirteen to wrap the wienerschnitzel, you fucked up. If he doesn't know that killing is wrong, you fucked up.

BUT, and this is most important, if he doesn't know this by 13, the things he CHOOSES TO DO ARE HIS RESPONSIBILITY, you fucked up. Yes, the parents share a large part of the blame for kids like the one in the OP, but the most important one is they have to make sure their kids understand that they own the consequences of their actions. No amount of punishing the parents for the sins of the children will make people better parents without the early life lesson that says your fuckups are your own.

Unless you want to lock your kid into the cellar until it's 42 years old you don't have another option than to talk with them about everything teach them what you know and hope for the best. Even that is no guarantee that your kid might not do something stupid or dangerous.

With the amount of shit I did as a kid or teenager it is sheer luck that I am still alive and haven't screwed up and I was a rather normal kid.

People that overprotect their kids keep them from growing up and taking responsibility of their own life. My cousin was raised in that way and she can't live life on her own even at 30 and needs constant help from daddy or boyfriends that are surrogates.

Do it the Austrian way- keep 'em in the cellar just to make sure the only one screwing with them is you...

So if your underage son (lets say 14) gets a girl pregnant, you're not going to do a thing to help them? That seems pretty damn cold.

As a father of a 1 year old daughter, this whole thread scares the hell out of me. I was pretty much a goody-goody growing up. Didn't get into much trouble, good grades, no drugs, little drinking. A lot of that is due to how my parents raised me. I was lucky that my mom stayed at home to raise me and my sister so we always had a good role model around. While I don't agree with everything my parents did raising me, I hope I can do as good as good a job as they did.

But if they had done that, it would have encouraged them to have sex.  :roll:

Well, Duh.  There's 'crap what if they fall and break their head open jumping around like that' worry and then there's, 'oh, maybe I should start paying attention, I haven't seen jane come out of her room in the last 5 days' worry.


Go read 4chan sometime. You'll get even more freaked out as a dad of a girl.  You've got to educate them early because even as bad as you think you were as a teenage boy, they've gotten worse; internet bravado or no.

4Chan makes me glad I'm not a parent. The thought of finding your child browsing it should send shivers down any parent's spine.

I'll support him and his partner in what they do, but I'm not going to take the choice from them about what to do. Part of being a parent is letting your child fall over (hopefully on carpeted floor) so they learn to pick themselves up. It sounds colder than I really am, but I do believe in letting my kids learn (hopefully as safely as possible).

As for sex ed: they'll start hearing the basics when they hit 10.

You're going to let them hit the first nine in ignorance?

It is impossible to get a girl pregnant until you have had sex together at least nine times.

At least by that point they'll have something to talk to me about.  :grin:

I love people who feel guilty because they dont spend enough time with their kid or less time with their kid than I do with my puppy, getting their panties in a wad and trying to justify their actions.
There are lots of things I havent done yet. I can still tell you how NOT to do them. So your point? Is pointless.

I love it. Believe me, you'll see.  I used to have the same attitude.

My kid is 4. I don't presume to lecture people who have teenagers about how to be a parent because it's impossible until you've been there. It really is. It's like criticizing someone for how they walk on the moon. Sure you can do it. You just sound like an asshole because you really have no frame of reference and your opinion is basically worthless. 

In Broughden's defense, his opinion is worthless on any subject under any circumstances.

 :rimshot:

If only that were true!

Once again someone else in the thread with kids shares my views on lack of time spent parenting. I dont see you attacking his position or regaling us all with why that position is wrong.
Yet somehow Im wrong because I dont have kids...even though it the SAME position.

So basically? You are using a retarded version of an Ad Hominem fallacy.

You arent attacking the position that spending 1-2 hours a day with your child is not enough. You are simply attacking me for holding this position while not having children of my own yet, which has no fucking bearing on the argument.

You still havent even bothered to explain why I can spend 3 hours or more with my puppy per day, but once I have a human child I will magically see the light and choose to spend LESS time with the human child. Please do elaborate for us all why I will magically want to give less face time to my own flesh and blood than I do a fucking dog right now. Is this when Khan puts the worm in my ear and takes control?

I will waiting for your wonderful reply.

I haven't walked on the moon, but I'm pretty sure I'm qualified to say you shouldn't unzip and take a leak there.

You won't know for certain until you've been there and tried it.

First off, you've got a category error here when you think that your dog is approximately similar to a kid. It's like saying, "I spend three hours a day on my World of Warcraft character, and he's levelled up pretty durn well. What makes you think I won't do the same with a kid?" I have one kid and two dogs and let's just say that nurturing and shaping and being with a human child is not the same as taking care of the dogs, not even remotely so. The only people who think so are 80-year old celibates who have a cat named Fluffykins and you.

In part, this is because children, being human, turn out to be awfully complex, capable of independent action, and far less malleable to your whims and wishes than your average non-parent with strong opinions about other people's parenting tends to think. Like, not just when they're 13, but from the very beginning. One of the eye-opening things for me was how much personality and distinctive character my daughter had pretty much even in her first six months of life: likes and dislikes, ways of behaving, patterns and expectations that had nothing to do with anything we were trying to do, or anything that the flotilla of self-help books for parents suggest you should be doing. Children mold you as much as you mold them, and that's one fundamental reason why their lives can turn out in some unexpected ways. They have their own personalities, their own talents, their own will. They're not clay, and they don't all respond to a cookie-cutter list of Things To Do Right in the same fashion. And as they mold you, you also become different than you once were, often. So families that end up with teenagers where everyone is different than they expected to be by the time they arrived at that point? That's life, and only people who haven't lived expect things to be easily managed and directed to particular ends. Children humble you, teach you your limits, expose your weaknesses. That's part of what is annoying about the non-parental assumptions that you can make kids do and be the things they're supposed to be is about: you have no idea.

Yes, parents can fail. Or they can do things you wouldn't do. We look at some of our friends and we say, "Jesus, why are they doing *that*?" I'm sure they say that about me sometimes--our house is infamously well-known among my daughter's friends for its generous availability of video games, for the comic book and SF motifs in my home office, etc. which I'm sure freaks out my stereotypically liberal friends and neighbors. In other cases, you can watch things happening and realize that there's really no answer at all. One of our friends has an eight-year old boy who has been friends with my daughter since they were both really little, but he's suddenly taken a turn into really aggressive boyish play--throwing shit, yelling, pushing kids. They're baffled; I know enough of their home life to say I see nothing in their situation that's causing it. He goes to a really nice private school with considerate teachers. They live in a nice urban neighborhood. They're trying to work with him to control it. I don't think it's hyperactivity or anything like that. It just *is*. Maybe it's just a weird little six-month trend, a kind of kid-experiment. Maybe it's some part of his personality. Maybe it's some mysterious interaction between his environment, his friends, his cultural world, and his personality. I dunno. But this is the kind of thing that people who have no experience try to make easy, categorical judgments about.

Same. Of course even at 14 I was smart enough to wear a toque.

First I read


and I was all  :ye_gods:

Then I read it again and all was right with the world.

I dont know who you are arguing with but it isnt me. NO WHERE have I taken any position any where near to what you are spouting off about. What you are doing is called a Straw Man fallacy. You've simply made up your own position to discuss and assigned it to me as the protagonist. Yes, children are very complex things. Just as all people are. I fully acknowledge that, and havent argued against that anywhere.

Now please do explain to me and everyone else why once I have them I will want to spend LESS TIME with my toddler that I do with my fucking puppy. I'll  be waiting. Thanks.

Exactly. Just ask Abagadro.  :awesome_for_real:

I have two children and would love to comment, but I refuse to get in to an argument with someone that fornicates with a canine for more than three hours per day.

There are just some boundaries that I will not cross.

One of the parts I consider to be good parenting is engaging in activites with your kids that you both enjoy. Example, my father, mother, and I all played golf together on the weekends since I was 13, and my Dad and I had season tickets to the Dallas Cowboys since I was 8. I look back on those times and really realize that while my father was working hard, he was still making sure his weekend free time was about his kids. He also sat down with us together every single night at dinners, even if he had to continue working later on at home.

That kind of face time shaped my life. Without it, I can honestly say I probably would have been completely different in the wrong direction. While he never made personal decisions for me, he showed me the right way to make decisions. I don't think you can boil down parenting into "Spend X amount of time with your children, and they won't turn out to be shitheads." However, I know that the parents who make an effort with their free time to do activites with their children, and actually stay involved in what goes on with their personal lives, school lives, and extracurriculars are doing their job. The chances of those kids ending up in the news is going to be dramatically lower.

I could talk til I'm blue and it won't penetrate.  I'm not talking about a quantitative comparison of time spent. It's a wortless analogy ab initio so I'm just pointing out how stupid it is to equate anything related to a dog to a kid as any means of valid comparison.  You'll understand if you ever get there.  A good attempt was made to explain but you blew it off.  Keep thinking you know everything.  Your eventual rude awakening will just be that much more entertaining.

We got your point a long time ago. It's quite simple and really doesn't say anything. Great, we'll know more when it happens. That's never really been the point, except in your own mind. I also understand that a dog is not a human. Now, do you actually want to talk about people that spend time with their kids or not, and if that has an effect on their lives? That people who spend time with their kids would make them less likely to end up in the news? If they do end up in the news, does that not signify a lack of parental supervision?

If not, you can continue to talk about parenting experience, but I think would help you actually discuss those ideas rather than just pointing out we don't have any.

Yes, it has an effect on their lives.  Is it the right effect?  Who fucking knows, until the kids are there.

I have two children, a 5-year old girl and a 2-month old son.  The boy is already very different from his sister.  What's the right way to raise him?  I dunno yet, other than to play it by ear as it goes along.

Anecdotal bullshit regarding "time spent with kids":  My older brother (firstborn son) and younger sister (the baby of the family) got a *lot* more attention from my parents than I did, and frankly it had a bad effect on them.  My brother is convinced of his infallibility, despite all evidence to the contrary (my wife's older brother is very similar in this regard).  My sister is, well, don't get me started.

My dad recently tried to apologize to me for "ignoring" me too much during my childhood.  I told him not to feel bad at all, because it turned out to have been the best situation for me.  I didn't want or *need* that kind of time and attention.

Can I extrapolate from that and say it's always better to ignore your children, then?  No.  Yes.  Maybe.  I don't freakin' know.  They're all different, and they don't have manufacturer's instruction booklets for each model.

So stuff your blanket theories back in your cakehole.

I'd also like to add that just because people don't have kids of their own doesn't mean they have no experience with raising children. My ex had a 2 and 4 yr old, and she had royally fucked them up. I stepped in and fixed a lot of the problems (in spite of her), killed me having to leave her because I missed the kids so much, but she was something of a mechabitch.

So how about you drop the entire idea that folks without kids have no idea about raising kids, eh?

SRS BZNZ

what the hell i'll jump in.  First off, I AM NOT PICKING A SIDE BETWEEN YOU TWO.  you both have good and bad points.  I have a daughter and i have a unique perspective of being a behavioral scientist.  

1.  it is surprising how similiar dogs are to kids...it freaks me out sometimes.  Main difference i see so far is my daughter has: faster learning, language (i.e. better communication), and slightly more complex paradigms.
2.  It seems to me that actions are more important then how much time you spend. (i.e. when they little and they did something wrong did you just say no, or did you provide them with the information for WHY is was wrong, that type of shit)

You can't protect your children from life, but you can raise them and educate them in such a way that they can be smart about it.

My parents never told me not to have sex, party, etc.  they said "we'd rather you didn't, but we're not dumb.  Be smart about it:  wear condom, don't drink and drive, etc."  It seems to have helped me survive 14-25...

Edit:  from all i've read and exprienced in my job i would bet there is also a direct correlation between how much/quality of attention (read: not time, per se) you give them and how well they function.  Of course there are always exceptions (see Tween80 above), but most of the "dysfunctional kids" that make the news all seem to have parents that just don't give a fuck about what they do.

Obviously you just got off lucky. Because you dont have kids so you dont know what its like man!!!!

This thread has been seriously fagged.

My SRS BZNZ line was in place of a deleted paragraph of how dumb this thread got :)

Time spent is a single variable in a multi-variate system.

I have no problem with people without kids offering opinions on parenting.  What is irritating is high-horse condescension by people who have no basis to do so.

Well, yeah, this is pretty much it. People without kids see many things that are quite true about other people's parenting. We were all kids ourselves at some point, after all. It's also not as if having a kid is indescribable, or that there is nothing about my experience that I can tell anyone else. If so, this would be true about all experience.

The simple take-away is: don't be so fucking sure you know why a 13-year old screws up. Or what you'd do about it if it happened. Or even that the way you act with a dog is precisely the way you'll act with a kid. It doesn't hurt to tone the dials down a little and to concede that when we're talking about other people, some things are mysterious.

It probably also needs to be said that, on average, extremely undersized 12 year old males are a very horny lot, and would in general be very intrigued with the prospect of having sex with even an fairly unattractive, large breasted person of the opposite persuasion.  It's basically what they think about all day long.  It's entirely plausible that, when presented with such a scenario, all good parental influences fly right out the window and the main determining factor is whether or not he is too scared to go through with it.

All condescension aside this thread seems to have been derailed by Paelos saying people who are shit parents stand back afterwards and go, "We didn't know!" which is a fair condemnation. People who don't try and interact with their kids are shit parents.

That's the point where people generally could have nodded, sighed about the state of the world and we could have moved on with making immature jokes. Instead we've got some bizarre slap fight about whether Broughden's qualified to judge parents, the importance of quality vs. quantity of time and a host of other bickering that will, at best, result in a denning. This thread could end up in politics and then it doesn't matter how many genes you've failed to pass on. You'll have done a bad thing so please someone find some amusing shops or make a semi-amusing remark or at least derail it somewhere nice.

Hell, even average 12 year old boys are like that, not just the 'undersized' ones.  I'd have been all over anthing willing to touch my willie, although I wouldn't have had any idea what to do.  Kids these days know more than I did about sex at their age, however, and it's no surprise to me he knew what went where.

No, In this story it's more a question of wtf where were the girl's parents. Alarmingly so as the reported number of partners she's been with seems to increase daily.

I could expound on the rest of the argument but it's just  :uhrr:'s ville. I can't even begin to figure out wtf happened in here.

I beg to differ:

Oh wow, Haynes automobile manuals.  What an awful memory.

Loads of online resources (http://www.abortionclinic.org/) too.

OMFG!  that was so wrong i about crapped myself laughing at work.  I'll be damned if tell anyone why...

So let's pretend for a moment that this is what Abagadro actually said. I'll attempt to stick to small words and short sentences.

I have a baby at home. He wakes up around 6:30, and goes to sleep around 7:30.

I leave for work at 8:00, and get home around 5:30. I also come home for lunch for an hour. So I get about an hour with him in the morning, an hour at lunch, and a couple of hours in the evening. 4 hours a day. Obviously more on weekends.

But...

I can only do this because I live about 10 minutes from my work. If were like the average American who commutes an hour each way, here's how my day would shake out:

No time in the morning. No coming home for lunch. Around an hour in the evening before he goes to bed.

So believe it or not, it isn't because we love our kids less than you love your puppy.

I hope this answer was wonderful enough for you.

A) Wake up earlier. I dont have to be in to the office until 9:30am most days. But I wake up at 6:30am in order to walk the puppy and spend some time playing games and training her.
B) Move closer to town. There are other benefits as well. Urban renewal. Burning less fossil fuels. Smaller condos are more efficient than large suburban homes.
C) Choose NOT to have a puppy or kid unless you are willing to sacrifice certain things in your own life to make time for them. Hell its been two years since Ive played a computer game. Between getting married, moving, buying a house, fixing a house and getting a puppy and kitty on the same night...I have to spend my time on other priorities. If I hadnt had the time to devote to properly raising the dog and teaching it to behave and taking it to training classes...I wouldnt have gotten it. Same goes for having a kid.

Now in Abagadro's last post he made a reasonable point-  that time is one of only a number of factors in properly raising a child. On that I completely agree with him.
However what I cant abide are parents who complain and say..."Its hard" or "I cant find the time."  Well  A) no shit Sherlock, it is hard but you should have thought of that before you had the kid, and B) You can find the time, you just arent willing to.

a) A sleep deprived... a more sleep deprived parent will make poor decisions in life.
b) It's not possible to get anything cheap near the centers of many cities which work for a family.  I'm trying for just me and it's not working out so well.
c) Unplanned pregnancy.

There's nuggets of wisdom in what you say, but you're so absolutist about it that it's hard to take any of it seriously.

If looking after a dog properly is an epic of organization and considerable thought for you, don't (just don't) have kids.

Certainly don't have kids and a puppy at the same time!

What's funny is that it is entirely possible to spend too much time with your kid thereby stunt their emotional growth and ability to act autonomously.  But I guess we should all sell our houses in the burb (hey, what about a lawn for them to play on, huh, huh!?!?) so that we can all make some arbitrarily defined dog-time/kid-time ratio.

3 hours with a dog is not the same type of commitment as 3 hours with a kid (plus I don't actually think you spend that amount of time actively engaging with your dog, him sitting there on the floor while you do something else doesn't count, and if you actually do, you need to get a life).  Dogs don't push you every second to test the limits, throw food at you, kick you in the balls, throw tantrums, etc.  Dogs also generally want to be with you and like it when you discipline them because it energizes their pack brain. Kids not so much as you spent 90% of your time telling them what they can't do and they chafe really bad (depending upon the personality). It's also great most of the time but it's really a whole different ball game.

The comparison is just so ludicrous. I spend basically all my free time with my kid while he's awake so it's not like it is some personal insult to me. I restructured my schedule so I would have regular 3 day week-ends so I could spent longer chunks with him.  It's just really silly to equate the two in any sort of meaningful way. Kids are emotionally exhausting on multiple levels, are fully autonomous individuals that have their own ideas about how things are going to go, and take you to higher highs and lower lows than any mutt ever will (and I love my mutt). You just have to try to manage it the best you can and blaze, ham-fisted pontificating by those who haven't even tried to give it is a shot is pretty transparently ridiculous.


No one actually takes him seriously.

Seriously, stop talking now. You've got no fucking idea and no fucking right to judge people based on some unrealistic ideals you've got in your head based on taking on the responsibility of owning a puppy.

Jesus wept guys, why do some of you have to turn every single discussion into a personal slanging match? Stop extrapolating from your own experience alone and try looking at the bigger picture! Separate personal and political for 5 minutes. I know some of you are professionals - lawyers, police, engineers, whatever. If you're able to separate personal and professional at work (which you must be able to do or else you'd be the people at work everyone else hates and I hope that isn't the case) then do the same in political discussions.

First point: this story is from The Sun. Chances that it's true are <50%. This publication (it doesn't deserve to be called a newspaper, it's closer to a comic) is the print equivalent of Fox News in the UK, only less conscientious and respectable.

Bigger picture: yeah, teenage pregnancies happen. Always have happened, probably always will happen. What doesn't work - blaming the parents. We've had decades of media and politicians just blaming the parents. You Americans have had the farce of abstinence campaigns and, ffs, actual government sanctioned pro-abstinence programs! Worked really well hasn't it? What does work - better sex education, better education overall, better availability of free and confidential sexual health provision including free contraception. For starters.

Teenage pregnancies are tied to poverty, they're tied to self-esteem and atomisation. You want less kids to have kids? Make them feel part of society instead of alienating them from it. Make them feel they have a future beyond having kids and claiming benefits. We've got a long-running media campaign here demonising young people - hoodie-wearing, drug-taking, underage-drinking, car-stealing, graffiti-scrawling, teenage pregnancies etc. And all the blame is put on parents and teachers and it doesn't work in the slightest. It just compounds the problem and makes kids (especially poor kids, kids living on shitty estates with 80% adult unemployment) think that there's fuck all else in life.

Yeah, it's easy, VERY easy to criticise any given individual's parenting methods (and looks. Yeah let's criticise that parent because of the way she LOOKS ffs, what retarted fucking kind of argument is that?) but that does nothing to address the wider issues nor widen the debate about how to improve society. Publications like The Sun capitalise on personalising these issues and presenting them in a way that reduces them to reactionary, emotive responses, and it's useless bullshit designed to manipulate people.

edit: politics now eh?  :awesome_for_real:

Well you took it there. I'm not in the education = bad department myself, as a Christian. In fact, I'm quite the reverse.

Still, personal issues do seem to have taken over at this point, so it will be denned or sent to politics (at which point I'll never see it again). Before it goes, I'll say again that dogs are not people. Parents who actually have kids raise valid opinions about raising children, and yet they are not an absolute authority. The media does blow things completely out of proportion intentionally. The "we didn't know" defense is bullshit. It will always be bullshit. You know it as well as I do.

Yes, that's what I meant. When I re-read what I'd said I thought that was the case, sorry.

And I do think that it's important that people who don't have direct experience on any given issue are able to comment on the issue. Opinions are valid without personal involvement, they have to be or else the discussions are that much weaker. For example, when the opinions of only non-whites were considered valid when fighting racism then you get nowhere. The strongest anti-racist movements are the ones that bring blacks and whites together.

I don't have kids, nor do I intend to, but I am totally happy paying tax to fund education and childcare for other people's children. Everyone has a right to contribute to a debate unless their aim is to stifle that debate, imo.

EDITED: Because unnecessarily personal.


This. Even as a parent with 3 years experience, I can safely say that I'm still winging it. I have no idea how I'm going to deal with the sex issue in ~7 years time (although I'm hedging in favour of "ask your mother") and my wife and I have different views on religion (she sort of believes, I definitely don't.)

Back on topic:

Apocrypha is right - there are all sorts of factors about not only this case but about teen pregnancy in general. It's all over the news in England at the moment beecause of this case. Last night I found that the city I'm currently working in, Nottingham, has the highest rate of teen pregnancies in the country and it's not just a recent thing, it's been like that for years. Studies have shown that the usual suspects of lack of sex education and information about contraception is not necessarily to blame (University of Nottingham, 2000) but that teenagers don't act on it. There have been huge government sponsored schemes and incentives to help reduce teen pregnancy here but none of them, so far, have been that effective.

Last night there was a woman interviewed who had just become a grandmother - at 33.  I'm older than her and my youngest isn't even a year old yet and she's already a grandmother. It would be nice to sit back in my comfortable middle-class smugness and say "Aha! Bad parenting is the problem here" but, in another lifetime, having worked in Liverpool with deprived kids from poor backgrounds, while it's sometimes part of the problem, it definitely isn't all there is to it.

This is a very good point.  Early on we let our daughter have lots of alone time.  it helps them to develop imaginations and boy does she have one...

I have every right to judge my fellow member of society. When they fail at their jobs as parents and it effects society as a whole I have every right to judge them.

When the neighbors of the boy responsible for the attack at Columbine High School say that the sound of machinery was so loud they were thinking of calling the police for a noise complaint, the garage is filled with the tools and remnants of bomb making....and yet the parents supposedly had no clue what was happening. I blame them.

When two boys, ten and thirteen years old, are able to obtain firearms for a school attack because their grandfather locks them in a glass cabinet which can be easily broken into. I blame them.

When I arrest a 15 year old boy for felony crack cocaine possession, and felony intent to sell.....because the mom's boyfriend thought it would be cute to use this honor high school student as a dealer. I blame the parent.

When I am called as an officer to a school because a boy was caught smoking marijuana on school property. And in the principal's office he breaks down in tears and tells us he is trying anything he can to get the sound of his mom having sex with random guys in her room right next to his in their small apartment out of his head.....and the mother then starts assaulting him in front of me for confessing this....I blame the parent.

In my few short years as a cop in NYC I saw a LOT of screwed up kids. I arrested way to many. Were some from good hard working homes with parents who were doing all they could? Yes. But the majority? Maybe 3 out of 4 or 9 out of 10...the parents were scum, selfish self-absorbed scum who never should have been allowed to procreate.

So yes having dealt with the fall out of their bad parenting and life skills I stand in judgment of them. I think Ive earned that right.

Bear in mind no parent, especially ones who work hard and try their best, will think you've earned the right to criticise parents if you've never had a child.

Most of the time even if they agree with you :uhrr:

HAHAHAHAHA, you got sold a line.

Re-read what I wrote. How does it help if you get up before your kid does?
True. That's what I did, which is why I can get to work in 10 minutes. But there just aren't that many downtown houses in quiet, safe areas that are big enough for a family. Therefore, most people can't live in such places.
Better hope not too many people take your advice. That puppy of yours ain't going to be paying your social security when you're old and crotchety.
Again, you seem to be suffering from poor reading comprehension. Nobody's talking about ignoring their kids to play video games. People with young kids who play games (at least the ones I know) do so after the kids have gone to bed.

(http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/img/commute2.jpg)

Den this fucking steaming pile already.

Yeah, you're right... I just googled, and it looks like average commute is an hour per day, not an hour each way. My bad.

But that doesn't really change the substance of my argument significantly.

Last night my video gaming after the kid went to bed consisted of grinding on Club Penguin for an hour to get enough coins to secretly replace my kid's puffles that ran off because of a bug.

That's dedication, and i commend you.

You're not the boss of me.  :why_so_serious:

:heart:

IBTL

What? How's your kid meant to learn the hard facts of life if you're going to make things easy for him/her/it? You should have got rid of all his/her/its puffles and made him/her/it grind them all from scratch because that's how life works and if you were any good as a parent you'd enforce rigid discipline in him/her/it and demand that they grind it all back - plus extra - before supper.

Shame on you.

 :why_so_serious:

Aw!

Exactly. When your son comes looking for a Federal Bailout, we'll know who to blame!

Buy your child Darkfall.  Its the only way to educate him/her about this cold, cold world  :awesome_for_real:

My child is too carebear for Darkfall! He only wants to play Wizard101! If only I'd raised him the Broughden way!  :why_so_serious:

Going back to the OP: 13 yo dad a possible scam (http://www.smh.com.au/world/13yearold-father-alfie-the-victim-of-cash-scam-girlfriends-family-friend-says-20090219-8bq0.html). Everything posted in this thread is suddenly invalidated.  :why_so_serious:

EDIT: fixed the link.

I'm thinking about becoming a cop so I can 'earn' the 'right' to be a bit of a dickhead all the time (and sometimes just go in to full on raging fuckwit mode).

Also: OMG YOU LET YOU CHILDREN PLAY VIDEO GAMES? NOW THEY WILL BE FAT LOSERS FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIFE.

Whew! Capslock, ain't nothing like it.

It's good to know that you are an ass on all the forums here, not just politics.

What happend to "what happens in Retardville stays in Retardville" ?

That'll be useful when she's shagging underage then.

What ?  I was trying to be relevant !

(Seriously, I know exactly what you mean.  The funnest times being a parent is watching your kid figure stuff out when they don't know you're watching.)

Are you still talking about the shagging?

(http://www.clisham.com-a.googlepages.com/Stock3Bear.jpg)

(http://www.newlaunches.com/entry_images/1006/05/sweetycam_small.jpg)

Please explain to me the USB Puppy.

It's a Web cam.

Here I saw the nose right off and thought "That'll never fool anyone."

Ok then, I was wrong.

Yeah I don't think you would really use it as a "nanny cam" since it's not wireless though I suppose if the nanny was totally clueless about computers it might work.

 :oh_i_see:

So, in short, it would work brilliantly if Ironwood was your nanny.  And truth be told, you need to be monitoring that motherfucker.

My son is addicted to Braid.  He's only 2 and a half but he constantly asks to watch it.  I wonder what he'll think about it if he gets to see it when he's older?

and in a new development that surprises nobody at all, he is not the father of the child as DNA tests have shown.

Looks like Richard Burton to me.

or Richard Harris. My first thought was "dumbledore's looking pretty boozy today."

She reminds me of Bill Nighy

(http://www.channel4.com/film/media/images/Channel4/film/U/underworld_rise_of_the_lycans_xl_01--film-A.jpg)

Link?

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/03/26/exclusive-dna-tests-show-boy-dad-alfie-patten-is-not-the-daddy-115875-21227974/ (http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/03/26/exclusive-dna-tests-show-boy-dad-alfie-patten-is-not-the-daddy-115875-21227974/)

Wow, I can't even laugh at that.  Poor kid.

My daughter the cum dumpster, next Oprah.

That link is broken for me - here's one that works (http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/793968/dna-test-proves-alfie-13-is-not-a-dad).

Ultimately it is the parents who scored the money for this who need a good bollacking. The whole "it'll get us some cash" idea failed to think what would happen past that point, like Chantelle Steadman being now known as the town bike to the entire world and Alfie Patten having his dreams crushed.

This story is really reaching a whole new level of horrible. Springer-type horrible.

I kind of felt sorry for Alfie at first. But now I think that in a few years he might look back and go "damn did I dodge a bullet!"