For 38 years, around a million children a year have walked through the gates of the Cincinnati Zoo — a million children with their parents and siblings, with their grandparents and friends.
Most of those children would have walked to the gorillas’ enclosure. Most of those children would have walked right up close to see the giant beasts in action, to laugh at them sleeping, to copy them grunting, to coo over the baby gorillas and remark on just how much like us they are.
Of these million and millions of children, one small boy did something different though.
This small boy didn’t just laugh and coo, he slipped under a rail, through wires and over a moat wall.
We all then know what happened don’t we?
This was a tragedy. It could have been a worse tragedy, it could have been the life of the little boy but it still was a sickening event, and whenever a tragedy occurs, what we want to do is to make sense of it.
To lay blame, to find fault. To work out why and how.
In this case, the world has laid blame in three different areas.
It was the zoo’s fault, the mother’s fault, the boy himself.
The mother of the boy, Michelle Gregg, has been blamed most of all because she wasn’t “watching her damn kid”.
It has been suggested by some that she was committing the great parenting sin of BEING ON HER PHONE and by others that she was committing the great parenting sin of NOT HOLDING THE BOY’S HAND the entire time they were there.
This morning, the boy’s mother took to social media, briefly — before being hounded out through death threats and pure vitriol — to make a statement saying “accidents happen”.
“As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kid,” Michelle Gregg said.
Read more of the mother’s statement here.
She obviously felt she had to justify why she was not gripping tightly onto the hand of her small child, that she had to assure the world she wasn’t negligent. To explain the “accident”.
Have you ever taken your eyes off your child? Looked at the shelves in the supermarket for a product you needed for tonight’s stir-fry while your pre-schooler runs to another aisle?
Turned to your baby to wipe a drool of snot oozing from their nose leaving your other children out of direct line of sight for a minute or two? Stepped away a few feet to chat to a neighbour? Or glanced at your phone to take a photo or send a text message?
I know I have.
Shauna nearly left her daughter at the Eiffel Tower. Image supplied.
Have you let your six-year-old push his baby sister’s pram for a minute, letting him feel like a big boy and been shocked when he has, distracted, causing his baby sister to be injured as the pram rolled down the hill?
Has your four-year-old pushed his two-year-old brother off a couch onto the carpet somehow, causing his wrist to snap and break?
Have you left your daughter in a lift on the Eiffel Tower stepping out without her only to have a French woman wrench you back and cry: “Don’t forget ze babe.”
Or is that just me? Should I have gripped the pram tighter? Not let my two-year-old on the couch? Held my daughter in my arms in that crowded lift rather than putting her down for a moment?
Michelle Gregg has now shut down her social media accounts. Image via Facebook.
Should Michelle Gregg have held her cheeky four-year-old’s hand every single second of that glorious day at the Cincinnati Zoo just in case he could have been the one in tens of millions of children who might crawl under a rail and into a moat?
This one statistically rare event has launched us into a frenzy of judgement and shaming of, even crowing for the life of Michelle Gregg.
We judge her and shame her and want her blamed and yet want our own children to grow up carefree and learn independence.
But what we can’t have is the best of both worlds.
We can't on one hand ache for a time when parents were more laid back, before “helicopter mums” gripped their children tight and never let them out of their sight, we can’t scream that parents are smothering their children in bubble wrap leaving them entitled and needy and then raise all hell when a mother doesn’t hold the hand of a spirited four-year-old.
We can't on one hand ache for a time when parents were more laid back and then raise all hell when a mother doesn’t hold the hand of a spirited four-year-old. Image via iStock.
Parenting writer Bunmi Laditan took to Facebook today to express similar sentiments.
"Has anyone else noticed that the need to criticize parents has reached fever pitch? At this point it's almost pure hatred. It feels like there's a very real sentiment of disdain for people with children. The joy people take in tearing down parents is palpable. Where does it stem from?" she said.
But what we've stepped past is the fact that despite our longing for answers, in some situations, there isn’t actually anyone to blame.
This morning, the staff at Cincinnati Zoo have spoken out in a lengthy press conference where zoo director Thayne Maynard rightly refused to accept that it was the fault of the enclosure.
He said the zoo is confident their enclosures are safe and adhere to the very same standards our zoos here in Australia have.
“People, kids and others can climb over barriers. We work really hard to make sure this is safe,” he said.
“That said people can climb over barriers and that’s what happened. We stand by our decision and we would make the same call today.”
What we need to accept is that in some situations, accidents simply do happen.
Parents take their eyes off children. Wayward four-year-olds test the limits of their sheltered world. Gorillas do what gorillas do and investigate a stranger in their midst.
Those entrusted with the care of a million visitors a day had to make a decision that broke hearts.
Top Comments
How do we - and why do we get to - determine what would be the worst tragedy?
Between the life of the little boy, and the life of an animal that is critically endangered, i.e. a species which has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing a very high risk of extinction in the wild.
Can humans impartially decide this? We're the ones hunting and diseasing them, and controlling every other species on this planet, not to mention ruining their habitats.
Poaching and disease have reportedly caused the subspecies' population to decline by more than 60 percent in the last generation. According to National Geographic, deforestation, as a result of human activity, is also a significant threat to the remaining populations of western lowland gorillas.
The hunting and killing of gorillas is illegal but still the animals are killed for bushmeat or during the capture of baby gorillas for pets. In Northeast Congo, about 5% of western lowland gorillas in that region are killed each year. Timber and other companies have opened areas of once remote forest, facilitating poaching and the bushmeat trade. Poaching also carries dangers for humans as it is thought that Ebola may be spread through the butchering and handling of gorilla and other primate meat.
Central Africa is home to not only gorillas, but also the deadly Ebola virus. Ebola has caused a number of massive gorilla and chimpanzee die-offs in the remote forests at the heart of the primates’ ranges. Some scientists estimate that it has killed about one third of the wild gorilla population, mostly western lowland gorillas. The toll has been even greater in some areas, such as the Minkébé Forest—once considered one of the most important populations—where the virus may have killed more than 90% of the region’s gorillas and chimpanzees.
I guess humans have the guns and the bullets though, so we get to decide whose life is worth more.
Well said
This reflects what I have been thinking. On one hand, you have all those stupid Facebook memes about "when I was a child, we played in the streets until dark blablabla" but as soon as a parent slips up and isn't totally perfect for three seconds, everyone piles on the abuse for not watching their child every single second.
Recently, we went on holiday to Tokyo. I was incredibly paranoid about my primary school aged children getting lost in the massive crowds and I kept a close eye (and hand where possible) on them every step of the way. That is, until we were about to board a train when I noticed a woman disembarking had dropped her handbag. I grabbed it and went after her and when I turned around found my children had already boarded the train and the doors were closing. Thankfully I managed to get on in time, but nothing can describe the fear and adrenalin that rushed through me when I realised my kids could be lost on a massive train network in a foreign city where we didn't speak the language.
A distraction lasting literally less than five seconds. That's how fast things can go wrong. The vast majority of the time, we don't even notice that five second distraction, because nothing happens. I have no doubt that despite all my care there were many more of those five second distractions, but I only remember that one. No matter how perfect the parent, these distractions happen on a daily basis. Maybe that poor child's mother should have been paying better attention, but she made a mistake and that doesn't make her a bad mother. Let's save our hate for those who are starving their kids, or beating them black and blue, or pimping them out to their boyfriends. There are much worse parents out there than this woman