The Onus Is On Parents To Control Their Children

Jun 6, 1995

John Leo

IN a burst of mostly patronizing publicity from the national media, the small town of Silverton, Ore., and the Oregon state legislature have moved to hold parents responsible for offenses committed by their children.

"Both stigmatize parents with their assumption that a child's misbehavior results from a failure of parental supervision," clucked a Page One New York Times report. And the reporter for public TV's "MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour" explained that Silverton's belief that parents are responsible for children up to age 18 is "a homespun philosophy from a homespun town." (Translation: We are dealing here with a town full of rubes.)

What the reporter seemed to think was some sort of rural aberration is actually part of a fast-growing national trend. Hundreds of exasperated communities, large and small, are holding parents responsible for curfew violations, graffiti damage and crimes by their children. Often they impose fines or community service, and sometimes require attendance at basic classes on how to parent.

Many changes in welfare plans also make parents responsible for their children's attendance record at school, and in some public housing, a parent can be evicted if a child is found to be dealing drugs out of the family apartment.

In some cases, these laws are popping up in basically stable but apprehensive communities. By big-city standards, the level of vandalism and youth crime in Silverton seems quite low. And in the

dozens of Chicago-area communities that now have parental responsibility laws, the targets seem to be illegal teen drinking parties and drunken driving. In these cases, the tactic is chiefly to embarrass well-off parents into taking charge.

In devastated urban areas, however, the practical and ethical problems are very different. It can look as though poor mothers are being punished for the sins of children they can't control. Patricia Holdaway, the first parent charged under the curfew law of Roanoke, Vir., said: "I went through so much with these kids. I'm just ready to call it quits." Her 16-year-old son, arrested at 5 a.m. for his fifth curfew violation and for driving without a license, said "I just left. It's not her fault. She shouldn't be held responsible. I know right from wrong."

Roanoke's policy is a reasonable one - it wants to work with at-risk youngsters and keep things out of court, if possible. It wants to establish the principle that a mother is responsible to supervise a youngster in trouble. But in this case, the policy led to a $100 fine and a 10-day jail sentence for a woman who already agreed with the principle of parental responsibility but couldn't enforce it. She is appealing the conviction.

Very few parental responsibility laws allow jail terms. But given the stresses on the poor, many of them single mothers, even mandatory community service or $100 fines can be very punitive. That's why parental responsibility laws catch so many of us leaning both ways, pro and con. Are these laws attempts to reassert reasonable civic expectations about basic parenting, or are they desperate attempts to use the coercive force of the state to solve a cultural problem?

"When a culture is in free fall, as ours is, and our non-legal institutions are falling apart, there's a temptation to move in with laws and government," said David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values. And the laws work best with parents who are already in control and merely need a wake-up call; they work poorly, or not at all, when the no-parenting ethic is deeply ingrained or passed on from one generation to the next.

Still, many communities are so besieged that something must be tried. It's hard to keep youngsters off the streets during the early morning hours when gangs are roaming if parents don't cooperate. And the detachment of many parents from the fate of their young is a crucial problem - many don't even bother to go down to a police station to collect an arrested son or daughter.

"These laws are signs that the antibodies are starting to kick in," said Roger Connor, head of the American Alliance for Rights and Responsibilities. "But they have to be regarded as experiments. We have to find out what works, what encourages responsibility without resorting to draconian penalties."

Connor thinks the Silverton ordinance is too strong - it allows a fine for offense, requires parental responsibility to age 18, and has been applied to cover teens caught smoking.

The statewide Oregon measure, which has passed the legislature and has to be signed into law by the governor, is more carefully constructed. The law covers responsibility for children up to age 15 - a way of recognizing that older teens are much harder to deal with and sometimes beyond parental control. The first offense draws only a warning; the second can require attendance at a parenting class. Only after a third offense can a fine be imposed, and not if the parent can show reasonable efforts to control the child. The offense is civil, not criminal, and the parents cannot be jailed.

With feedback from the community, these laws can be adjusted depending on results and a changing social consensus. Let the experiments continue.

John Leo's column appears Tuesday on editorial pages of The Times.