Goal: Holding Parents Accountable

In a burst of mostly patronizing publicity from the national media, the Oregon Legislature and the small town of Silverton, Ore., 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 the New York Times. A reporter for the “MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour” said 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.)

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

Many changes in welfare plans also make parents responsible for their children’s attendance 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.

Some of these laws are popping up in stable but apprehensive communities. By big-city standards, the level of vandalism and youth crime in Silverton seems quite low. In dozens of Chicago area communities that have parental responsibility laws, the targets seem to be illegal teen drinking parties and drunken driving. The tactic is intended chiefly to embarrass well-off parents into taking charge.

In devastated urban areas, however, the problems are 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, Va., 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 - its purpose is to work with at-risk youngsters and keep things out of court if possible. Its intent is to establish the principle that a mother is responsible to supervise a youngster in trouble.

But 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. Holdaway is appealing the conviction.

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. 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. These laws work best with parents who already are in control and merely need a wake-up call; they work poorly, or not at all, when the no-parenting ethic is deeply ingrained.

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 the 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 says Silverton’s ordinance is too strong - it allows a fine, requires parental responsibility to age 18 and has been applied to include teens caught smoking.

The statewide Oregon measure, which has passed the Legislature but still must be signed into law by the governor, is constructed more carefully. The law covers responsibility for children up to age 15 only. A 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. An offense is civil, not criminal, and the parents cannot be jailed.

These laws can be adjusted depending on results and a changing social consensus. But let the experiments continue.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Leo Universal Press Syndicate