Judgment call

Two people have been ordered to stand trial on child endangerment charges for not seeking medical treatment for a 20-month-old after he was scalded in a bathtub at a Cambridge Springs residence, reported Tim Hahn a few days ago in the Erie Times-News. You'll see from reading the article that this was clearly a case of poor judgment—the mother leaving the kid with the boyfriend, the boyfriend leaving the kid in the bathtub unattended, and both failing to err on the side of caution by taking the kid to the hospital.

I guess it's hard to determine at what point bad parenting becomes criminal, but it's equally hard to argue that two people who apparently displayed such poor judgment shouldn't be punished in some way for their actions. Parents all screw up sometimes—but you always hope the screw-ups aren't so monumental that a significant injury to a child results. Nobody is perfect, but there are some things society just won't give someone a free pass on.