...what convenient minds people who are irresponsible in their parenting have.

eanjay, from the tender age of seven-and-threequarters I was subjected to the same kind of what you so offhandedly choose to call "irresponsible parenting" as Ylenia was. I was allowed to wander around on my own - from home to school, from there to the recreation centre and from there back home. Sometimes the route was home > recreation centre > school > recreation centre > home. The school was about half a mile from my home, the recreation centre about 2/3 of a mile the other side of the school. Later I got a bike and made the daily treks using that. Unlike Ylenia I was lucky, I never ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, so I'm still alive today.

And where, then, were my "irresponsible parents" while all this was going on? Well, my father had the audacity to die on us when I was a toddler of 3, and ever since that time my mother struggled to make ends meet for her and me. So, while I wandered the streets unsuperwised, she was off to work, earning a meagre living for her and me.

She did what she had to do, and I did what I had to do. It wasn't what she'd have liked to do, but it was what could be done in the circumstances. And that's just it. Sometimes it's not about what ought to be done but about what can actually be done in the situation. For my part, I'd resent it strongly, were anybody to call what my mother did all those years ago "irresponsible"..

At present this 10-year-old girl is recovering in hospital after being set upon by a maniac on Tuesday of last week. A totally random attack. The attacker left her for dead with triple skull fracture. He is still at large. She's another child of a single mother, and by your standards I suppose she's the victim of "irresponsible parenting" - her mother was at work when the attack took place, in plain day light around 1.30 in the afternoon. Unlike me she was not so lucky. She *did* end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, but to blame her mother for not being at her side at the time of the attack would be adding insult to injury, methinks.

What would it help, for crying out loud, if Katrine's mother or Ylenia's mother was to blame herself from now and till kingdom come? And - disregarding what some journalist quotes Ylena's mother as saying - what do you and I know about what goes on in the recesses of this mother's mind?

Rant over.

Bente