Why I Won’t Be Signing The Harambe Petition

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand over the last few days you’ve probably heard about Harambe – the Gorilla that was sadly killed to save a boy’s life in Cincinnati Zoo on Saturday. A Justice for Harambe petition has been set up with almost 400,000 signatures (and counting). The petition states, ” [T]he situation was caused by parental negligence and the zoo is not responsible for the child’s injuries and possible trauma. We the undersigned want the parents to be held accountable for the lack of supervision and negligence that caused Harambe to lose his life… We believe that this negligence may be reflective of the child’s home situation.” These claims have been backed up by the angle within the mainstream media and numerous videos, like the one on the Harambe facebook page which essentially blames parents for using their cell phones too much.

I get that everyone is upset about Harambe losing his life. It’s sad, it truly is, and if this incident ignited a public debate about the appropriateness of keeping animals in captivity then I wouldn’t be commenting here now. But it hasn’t. No, instead it’s become just another opportunity to bash parents and judge their parenting abilities. And this is the point at which my views diverge from the hatred being portrayed throughout mainstream media and social media (aka the general public). Why are we so quick to judge other parents? It happens all the time, people not knowing even a 10th of the actual story jumping in to say how neglectful the parents were, and if you dig deeper it’s usually the mothers who get the blame – but that’s another post entirely.

This time the judging is about us not controlling our children enough. Other times the focus is that we are controlling them too much. It seems that we can never get it right. And perhaps that’s the point – there is no right, but God forbid anyone actually acknowledges that. As parents we make split second judgement calls, day in, day out. Thankfully on the whole they don’t have quite such dramatic consequences, or perhaps they do but parents are generally making good decisions, so relatively few reach the media’s radar. Rest assured though that where things do go wrong, like with this incident, everyone is there with the benefit of hindsight to tell us parents exactly where we went wrong. Parents don’t have the benefit of hindsight though, we have to parent in real-time.

As a parent, my child is not constantly within arm’s reach and I am not always able to stop him doing something that puts him, or others, at risk of being hurt. Sure, I assess the situation and if, say, we are approaching a busy road I hold my son’s hand and remind him of the dangers. However, I am human – I am not infallible. Sometimes I will miss a danger, sometimes I will not be able to control my son, sometimes shit will happen and I will have no idea where it came from. Does this make me a bad parent? What does it say that as a society we have decided that, following an horrific ordeal, the most appropriate collective action we can take, is to set up a petition to question the parents’ parenting skills in the most public and humiliating way possible. Are we all so sure we are, or would be, perfect parents? I for one am not.

On Saturday, as this incident with this little boy, his parents and Harambe unfolded, I was with my own son in a public garden when he suddenly disappeared. To say, in that moment, that I felt sick to the bottom of my stomach would be an understatement. I alerted my friend to go up to the top where the gate leads to a very busy road, whilst I searched where he’d last been playing. Yes, I admit I took my eyes off him for a second; I had looked at him, seen he was engaged with a game and I took the decision that it was safe to take my eyes off him for three seconds whilst I looked at something my niece was showing me. When I looked up he was gone. I had made the wrong call. He had chosen that exact second (presumably, I didn’t see) to run as fast as possible, and as far as possible, away from me. Was I being a bad parent? I don’t think so. Was I being human? I believe yes. My friend found my son at the top of the garden, he had come to no harm. I spoke to my son about the dangers of doing this, like I always do when he runs off, and I hope one day it will sink in. Until that day arrives, although I will try to minimise the dangers he encounters, I will never claim to remove them entirely. That is not humanly possible, despite what the Daily Mail would have you believe.

That moment my son disappeared was towards the end of a long day. A long day where I had been watching my son’s movements every second, on high alert ready to intervene at a second’s notice if necessary. Essentially I could say I had spent the day being an average, and dare I say it, great parent (the two do generally go hand in hand). Had my son’s disappearing act ended up a little differently though, that is not how society would have treated me. Society would not have seen what a long and mentally exhausting day it was. They would not have known that in the evening as we headed home I had a panic attack. A panic attack not from anything in specific, just from the toll of the pressure of watching my child (alone) none-stop all day.  If society was judging me that day they wouldn’t have appreciated how unbelievably hard that kind of unseen parenting work is, work parents do every second of every day. No, they would have just seen a parent – a single mum to boot – failing at her job of keeping her child in check.

To the Harambe petitioners I ask you to reflect on what you are saying. Do you realise that sometimes, with the best of intentions the worst things can befall our children? Do you realise that often when we look like we are doing nothing we are actually doing everything in our power to be the best parent – a parent that allows our child space, gives them experiences and is there to step in should the need arise. Sometimes things happen which we don’t foresee, sometimes that can end in the most extreme results like the sad fate that befell Harambe. That does not mean we as a society should attack so-called ‘neglectful’ parents, parents who are just trying to do a good job like you or I, and who are, nine times out of ten, succeeding. There are lessons to learn from the incident, no doubt about it – for the boy, for his parents and for the zoo. There are also lessons for society; lessons about what our collective reaction to the incident shows about our (mis-)understanding of what parenting is and how, if we truly care about others – humans and animals alike – we might be better off assisting parents rather than jumping in after the event with an arrogant and aggressive attack of hindsight.

For those who really care about humanity, all of humanity, you might be interested to know that Harambe’s name translates from Swahili as ‘pulling together’. Perhaps the real justice for Harambe would be if his death could result in people pulling together, instead of the current senseless parenting bashing we are witnessing.

*N.B. This post isn’t about the best approach to dealing with animals in confined spaces during an emergency. You may have guessed I’m not an expert in that area, so I won’t give a detailed analysis of whether an agitated Gorilla that weights 400lbs who is dragging a four year old around a moat is posing a a health and safety risk to said child. I also won’t comment on whether a tranquillizer, a drug which takes time to administer and often leads to increased agitation in the animal, would have been a more appropriate course of action. I’ll let you be the judge of that one.

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