Choosing Brains over Assholes

Piss poor parenting has been around for quite some time, but it seems to be on the upswing of late.  Not that anybody is a perfect parent.  A child does not need a 100% perfect parent, only a suitable parent.  Indeed, individuals with significant character flaws have been found to be quite suitable parents.  The example that comes immediately to mind is Mia Farrow, who, for all of her many flaky quirks, was found, hands down, to be quite suitable as a parent of nine children at the time (she subsequently adopted six more).

Some people are not suitable as parents.  Like Melody M.  Melody's son has various mental health issues, which are not helped by Melody's refusal to participate in his therapy.  Melody "does not participate in the child's counseling because she does not like the therapist or agree with the recommendation that the child needs structure and should follow the same routine in both households." Melody "utilized Facebook to insult and demean the child, who was then 10 years old, by, among other things, calling him an 'asshole.' She testified without remorse that she did so because that is what '[h]e is,' and she thought it was important for her Facebook friends to know this."

Res ipsa loquitur!

On the other hand, the kid's behavior and scholastic performance have improved since Robert, Melody's ex, attained sole custody.

This isn't just another dispute between spiteful exes, but rather, the stacking up of a totally clueless and irresponsible airhead against a rational, stable and competent parent. 

But multiply Melody by the number of totally clueless and irresponsible airhead parents (term used advisedly) in this country, hazard a guess as to the percentage of such cases which never even come before the courts (and therefore never get rectified), project the career paths of the kids whose situations are never judicially scrutinized, and it then becomes somewhat easier to explain why we live in a country where the population elects and re-elects public officials who are so inimical to the public interest.