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Comment by xvxvx | Hacker News Reader

In before someone says ‘blame the parents’ and not the multi-billion dollar companies who’ve spent decades targeting children for lifelong addiction, ignoring the negative effects on their mental health.

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It need not be either-or.

The guy who made the drugs is guilty. The guy who sold the drugs to kids is guilty. But parents who failed to warn kids about drugs and to oversee them properly are also guilty...

So is the judicial system that is not making this illegal or don't enforce laws to prevent people targeting kids to create early dependence on drugs.

That is a fair point, I did not attempt to make a complete list, of course, but you are right, there are more layers that could be named. All valid. The point I was making is that parents are also responsible.

eg: I grew up in a very nasty place. My neighborhood had a few pregnant 13 year old girls and a lot of drunks and smokers, including kids in their early teens. My parents kept me away from it all, while also both having full-time jobs. They put a lot of work into filtering whom I could be friends with and where I was allowed to be. THAT is the job of a parent.

I agree it's the job of a parent, but two parents (and with only a single job each) is sadly not the norm in many challenging environments.

Sure, sounds like that's great parents you got.

But at systemic level, we must consider the effect of social dynamics globally, not only how the most virtuous citizen deal with the direct situation. Pauperisation of the masses will mechanically lead to more social problem on the overall, even if they will always be brilliant heroes to point to as possible through exceptional behavior. And society that are structurally helping everyone to fall in distress or weak situation also help the exceptional people go further as they are freed from many cognitive loads they would have to deal with otherwise.

Generally in an article about arresting or sentencing a drug dealer, people don't bring up that the drug users are actually to blame.

Now if we're in a discussion around the cartels, plenty of people do bring up (and there's also those that get annoyed by it) that the drug users are actually the ones funding the cartels via their drug use.

Along these lines, I think another fun comparison might be opioid use and Purdue.

I think that that is actually an oversight. One needs to consider the entire chain. For example, with proper parenting, there would be a lot less youth demand for drugs. It doesn’t make what a drug dealer does any less bad, nor does it make the efforts of the police to arrest the drug dealer any less important. But it’s suboptimal to consider a small piece of a system, without thinking of the whole.

It's also suboptimal to jail parents for not convincing their child that drugs are bad.

> It's also suboptimal to jail parents for not convincing their child that drugs are bad.

I never suggested that

The thing is, it should be both. Parents often give too little fucks for long term welfare of their children, often also guilty of same vices. Issue is, these addictions are way more destructive to young forming mind than to adults. Nobody having small kids now had fb or instagram access when they were 5, did they.

Maybe you don't do this. Certainly I don't. But when looking around, its much less rosy and... lets say in blue collar families its too common to drug kids with screens so parents have off time. Heck, some are even proud how modern parents they are. Any good advice is successfully ignored, and ideas of passing some proper time with kids instead are skillfully avoided. People got lazy and generally expect miracles from life without putting in any miracle-worth efforts.

Companies just maximize their profits till laws allows them (and then some more), and expecting nice moral behavior by default is dangerously naive and never true.

Consider that the insane growth in the cost of living - especially childcare - combined with wage stagnation means that now the vast majority of families have 2 parents with full-time jobs, keeping them away for their families for much longer than before. Consider that childcare is much, much harder to even get into now than in decades past. Consider also that "EdTech" means that nearly every child needs to be on an internet equipped-device at all times.

But sure, "Parents often give too little fucks for long term welfare of their children", that's definitely it. Parents just hate their kids! What a useful perspective you've brought to the discussion.

Look, I am in this category too, and all that high cost and parents far applies for me too. I live in Switzerland, country of many wonderful things in society but state helping young parents ain't one of the strong points, in contrary. Both me (cca senior banking position in IT) and my wife (doctor) have intense time consuming jobs. All family is very far and can rarely help.

Still, given all that, I don't do cheap excuses like that. Its pathetic and weak and simply untrue. Things are harder but thats it, not impossible like your side of argument wants to conveniently claim. Quality time well spent with kids is highly proportional to outcome of raising efforts. No way to hide from that simple fact, and nowhere to hide from results of parenting, everybody can see them in plain sight.

But if you setup your life so that pathetic things like career are your upmost importance and you have no time nor energy for anything else, those are your choices and thats fine. Just not getting why folks then have kids, just to skip on actually raising them and then whine how unruly they are, raised by toxic groups with no role models. Having and raising kids is not some fucking checkbox to tick and move on, its 20+ years full commitment and biggest achievement in one's life, or biggest failure. Worth some proper effort, no?

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