Accountability for negligent parenting

Should parents be held responsible for their children’s conduct?

Originally published in the Moultrie News.

What do you think about the mother who was held liable for her son’s school shooting?

The son, Ethan Crumbley, 17, is serving life in prison for killing four classmates at his Michigan high school in 2021. His mother, Jennifer, 45, was recently found guilty of manslaughter for the same shooting. A jury determined that she should have foreseen and prevented Ethan’s mass killing, but she ignored warning signs of his mental deterioration and gave him a gun which she did not secure. She could now spend 15 years in prison. Ethan’s father faces a separate trial on the same charges. Some legal experts suggest that the case could open the door to holding more parents legally responsible for their children’s shootings.

There was no attempt to hold the school criminally liable because Ethan apparently had not shown aggressive tendencies. However, if this case is indeed a precedent for parents, schools should consider themselves on notice: many past school shooters have broadcast their violent inclinations while schools brushed aside the warning signs, offered privileges, and failed to protect innocent students. Those are habits courts could certainly consider in future cases.

But since that was not the case here, let’s focus on the parents. Is it good to hold parents accountable for the crimes of kids?

People I talk to say yes, when it can be proven parents were negligent. Children certainly can “go rogue” and behave in abhorrent ways despite parents’ best efforts, but when parents’ actions are responsible for their children’s conduct, they should be held accountable. Perhaps doing so might help prevent future disasters.

But what about disasters farther down the scale that take place in schools every day — tragedies that damage lives in less violent ways? I’m referring to students sabotaging the education of themselves and others. Parental accountability could help that, too, and might possibly even curtail worse behavior from taking root.

Let’s start with children attending school. Prior to the pandemic, about 7 million students were labeled “chronically absent,” meaning they missed three or more weeks of school in an academic year. Post-pandemic, the number has doubled to over 14 million. Kids can’t learn if they aren’t regularly in school. Some worry that missing school can lead to crime and prison for the 3 million students suspended every year, but chronic absenteeism completely dwarfs those concerns. Parents have the power to get their kids up and to school, but no one holds them responsible for doing so.

Parents also have the power to make sure kids study and do their homework. In conferences for failing students, I regularly see teachers show parents how to ensure their kids properly prepare for school. Afterward, however, many parents do nothing, the student continues to do nothing, the student fails, and the teacher gets blamed. A key word in “homework” is “home”; shouldn’t parents be held responsible for ensuring that it’s done?

And what about school conduct, including the aggressiveness that’s frequently manifested long before a child brings a weapon to school? Schools play a vital role in disciplining students, but nothing they do will help without parental support. It wasn’t teachers who primarily induced me to behave well in school; it was my father. Had the school called home to report the kind of misbehavior we see today’s students exhibit — disrespect, disruptiveness, bullying — I shudder to think of the consequences. If parents don’t ensure kids behave, no one will. Many kids, in fact, learn their worst traits directly from their parents, so if anyone should be held accountable for a child’s deportment, it’s mom and dad.

What would accountability look like? It should be supportive, not punitive. We must remember that parents can only draw on their own experiences, so if their childhoods were spent under the thumb of negligent parenting, they’ll need plenty of help. Mandatory parent classes, therefore, might be a good idea.

If holding parents accountable for their role in a full-blown catastrophe potentially saves lives, holding them accountable for planting the seeds might save even more.

Read the original column here.