personal responsibility

Earlier this week, a woman from one of my mothers' groups posted a triumphant notice - that the Coalition for a Commercial-Free Childhood had succeeded in making Disney not only remove any claims that their Baby Einstein videos make children smarter, but also offer refunds to those parents who bought those videos! My fellow parent and her coalition seem to think they've achieved a victory. Personally, I thought it just indicated how completely unwilling we as Americans are to take responsibility for our own mistakes.

The reasoning, as I understood it, is that Disney's marketing of these videos made these people, who ordinarily would be completely opposed to introducing their children to anything on a screen, violate their own principles in the name of making their children smarter. Then, somehow, they decided that their children hadn't become any smarter and may actually have been damaged in some way by having viewed something on a screen ... so clearly, it must all have been Disney's fault. (Here is where I have to say that I feel tremendously sorry for these children: their parents are clearly somewhat obsessed with intelligence, and the poor kids have obviously fallen short of their parents' high standards, since the parents could tell that they weren't made any smarter by Baby Einstein. How insulting to your child, to demand a refund over their lack of brains.)

I understand Disney's capitulation: after all, it probably wasn't that much money, and if it retains goodwill and paints Disney as a caring corporation, it was probably worth it.

But I do not understand this idea that it's someone else's fault when a mistake is made. I'm sure I bought any number of toys that didn't do what I expected them to do ... and then I either tossed them or passed them on to someone who liked them better. In no case did I ask for my money back, unless the toy was actually defective. (In the sense of not working or being broken, not in the sense of not entertaining my child.)

In the same sense that it is not Victoria's Secrets responsibility that I don't look like one of their models when I buy their lingerie, it is not Disney's fault that these parents were willing to sacrifice their principles to move their kids' IQs up a couple of points. Nor is it Disney's fault that looking at some puppets dance to classical music failed to move said kids' IQs.

I think it's a real shame that we as a society are so completely unable to handle mistakes and disappointment on our own.