What is happening to parental responsibility?

Indeed, what is happening to taking responsibility for one’s own actions?

A mother found her 19-month-old daughter ripping open a packet of Ibuprofen tablets while they were waiting in a queue in a branch of WH Smith.

Does she upbraid the child – teach her that such behaviour is not on?  Of course she doesn’t?

Does she censure herself for not properly supervising a child that is of an age when she will have her fingers into everything? Of course she doesn’t.

Her course of action is, in the words of the local media, to accuse WH Smith of endangering her toddler’s life.

Not only does she accuse the retailer of a  “crime” for her own lack of supervision, but she also runs to the media with her story of this supposed heinous misdemeanour.

Maybe, as WH Smith later agreed, such products should be placed where no tiny hands can reach them.

But surely the first responsibility lies with the mother, not the shop.

A glaring example of how it has become the norm to blame everyone but oneself when things go wrong – and often at a huge cost to the community at large in terms of excessive legislation, additional expense and even more prohibitions.

Mothers, they are your children. They are your responsibility.  God knows what the next generation will be like if these are the standards of the present one.