Is she pleading ignorance though? She's saying "I have never done this, and to the best of my knowledge my children have never done this either". I'm not exactly rooting for her though, it's totaly irresponsible to claim that Kazaa would be at fault here if the kids have. If they have it is her fault.
If her kids had bullied/blackmailed/stalked someone online, would she be guilty then? Just at what point do the actions of the children become their responsibility?
The actions of a child are their parents responsibility right up untill that kid is legally termed an adult. Simple.
So it's easy for you to say "oh. that child murdered his grandmother.. must have been his parents fault" Children are responsible for their own actions as soon as they develop reasoning and morality, which is pretty early on. Parents should not have to take the fall if their child has done something they know is wrong. Especially since one is 20 and the other is 16. Their actions can hardly be the parents responsibilty anymore. The parents probably don't even know where they are 70% of the time.. i know my parents didn't, at least not until the following evening. My dad always told me that i alone am resposible for everything i do and i can see he was right. If i decide to go and download 1000 tracks from kazaa and i'm caught, it's my problem, as i know stealing is illegal and wrong. I would be responsible for downloading these tracks, and i am the one who should face the punishment.
Nope, parents shape the kids, parents raise the kids, and parents are responsibile for the kids. A child is not 20 when they are 20, they are an adult. Whether someone who is 16 is an adult is up to the state, although our states confused systems seem to resolve legal adulthood to 18 IIRC. A parent is responsible for everything their child does up untill that child is a legal adult. They can't say "Oh, I didn't know where my kid was" - that's their problem. Maybe they should try out performing some actual parenting. Yes, a parent should try to instill a sense of responsibility in their child, I am definately in favour of that - but you cannot say to someone who is neither mentally nor physically mature that something is entirely their fault. It is also their guardians fault. You may not like it, but to do otherwise is totaly unfair on the children. Parents have to be the responsible ones, not kids.
But this is stealing.. And if they didn't learn this from their parents at an early age then they were taught it at school. I find blaming the parents really invalid. Children know they're stealing when they download music and deny it. If children don't know that stealing is wrong by say age 12, then it's not a problem with the parents nor the school they came from. The child themselves have a problem understanding the concept and need to be punished in order to understand it.
I disagree. If a child doesn't know that it's stealing by age 12 they've been raised wrong. Children start off as blank slates, if parents fail to raise them properly then that's on them. Parents can obviously punish their children, I'm not saying otherwise. What I am saying though is that final, and legal responsibility lies with parents, not kids. It is a parents job to punish their children yes, but if the crime or misdeed is beyond mere parental punishment, then it is the parents who should be punished, not the children. Oh and btw, downloading music is not stealing. There's a difference, whether you choose to ignore it or not I don't care, there is a difference.
Unless you believe that people are just born murderers, yes. Although children develop a sense of what is considered right and wrong early on, and even a sense of altruism as early as at age 2, they are not really able to fully appreciate the consequences of "wrong" actions. At a very young age, they mostly think in terms of approval/disapproval, reward/punishment. They certainly do not consider the longer-term consequences of their actions in terms of how they will affect other people. Before age 12 a child struggles to think about abstract hypotheticals and principles, and ethics and morals are a big chunk of that. We don't let people drive before they are 17, or drink, or smoke, or vote; before 16 we don't let them have sex, or get married without parental consent. It's all to do with being able to self-regulate one's behaviour and make considered and informed judgements that can have far-reaching consequences. The cognitive functioning of children is NOT comparable to that of adults. I agree that a person of 20 is not a child anymore, and therefore fully responsible for their own actions. A 16 year old is a bit trickier --they are still prone to doing stupid things (hence: not allowed to drive, drink or smoke). I do not consider parents who don't know where their under-age children are helpless, but irresponsible. They should know. Moreover, if they raised the child right, they would know. This does not mean that a child should escape all punishment. But it should be age-appropriate, and the parents carry their share of the responsibility and blame.
Bah. You are saying that if a person is 20 then they are not a child, but if they are 16 they are partly a child because they are "still prone to doing stupid things" - I'm 31 and I spent all of my 20s doing stupid things. If someone knows that what they are doing is "wrong" or "illegal" (very different concepts in my mind, but that's another conversation,) but they choose to do it anyway then that person should be subject to the consequences. A parents job is to provide a moral framework. By the time a person is 16, this moral framework should be established. When someone is young, the consequences of violating a moral framework are provided by a persons parents or by a persons school. By the time a person is 16 these consequences are provided not just by a persons parents, but by the rest of society also; including the courts. -my take. (There I go disagreeing with you Nexxo - for the record, that's a very rare occurrence.)
You may be prone to doing stupid things, but you generally know (or at least realise soon thereafter) that you are --there's a difference. And I will be the last person to argue that adults never function at the level of a 16-year old. (In fact, research suggests that both intellectually and emotionally, many people indeed do not function much beyond the level of a 16 year old...). You are right that as we approach the somewhat arbitrary boundary between a "minor" (age 16) and a "young adult" (age 17 and up), we will find some people more mature than others, and we can expect reasonably sensible and moral behaviour. However a practical line has to be drawn somewhere, and for many legal it is at age 17 or 18. But in reality, it is a matter of degrees, not cut-offs. Therefore although the parent should be held responsible for their children's actions, the children should be held responsible for their own at an age-appropriate level. Moreover, if a 16-year-old does not have a moral framework, you have to sort of ask yourself why not, and who was responsible for installing it. Given that most 16-year-olds are still (or at least were until very recently) under parental supervision, you would have to sort of ask why corrective action was not taken by the, well, parental supervisors. I do not think that a parent can simply abdicate all responsibility and claim ignorance.
I had a reply all typed up to you - but firefox crashed. I really need to go back down to firefox 1.5....
Legally, I'm not an adult. If I do something stupid, it's my fault, and I'll know why it's my fault and not to do it again. The only time the parent is to blame is when they've brought up a child so badly that it is prone to do bad things (steal, kill, etc.).
