Posted On: July 12, 2006, 11:00 pm CDT

Posted By: Incred

On July 11, 2006, 3:03 pm CDT, MUD wrote:

> If you think it is more important to answer a phone than to watch over your children you should not be a parent.

I have to confess that I laughed out loud when I read this. No parent I know has the following internal debate: "Phone is ringing...I'm watching my toddler...phone, my child's safety...phone, my child's safety..." Parents, like teachers and construction workers and management consultants and everyone else living, make decisions every minute based on assessments of risk. You can answer the phone AND watch your toddler. Otherwise parents, nannies, childcare professionals and others would be incommunicado eight to ten hours a day. (Or, more accurately, parents would be permanently barred from answering a phone until their children had moved out. Appealing some days but impractical in the long run.)

Most sensible people would agree that the pool-fence law is a stupid law.

What if the law instead required that all water-filled inflatable pools had to be supervised at all times?

Two benefits of a law like this:

* "Sorry, honey, I can't come back in. I'm hard at work out here with a gin and tonic supervising the pool."

* When people weren't using their pools, THEY WOULD DRAIN THEM. No water, no drownings. (As well as no mosquitos breeding, another major benefit.)

But yes...a fence around each child might also work.