The 20 Worst Parenting Fails: Uhhh FAIL! Doesn't Even Begin To Cover These

I'm sure we all have moments where we fear we've made some mistakes and bad choices as parents. But WOW, I think it's pretty safe to say NOTHING you've done has anything on these people.

DISCLAIMER: Some of the article referenced here -- okay, who am I kidding, ALL OF IT -- is genuinely freaking disturbing, so beware the faint of heart and read on at your own risk.

Heavy.com has blessed the world with their list of The 20 Worst Parenting Fails -- which sounds funny, right? I thought so too, until I actually went over and looked at the list and saw photos like this:

 

With captions like this: "'Oh, I'm just keeping her warm for Daddy.'"

HA. FUNNY. RIGHT?

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Maybe I'm a humorless almost-fortysomething, but JESUS, really? Is this supposed to be comedy?

Really?

And listen, I get that the folks over at Heavy.com are, in fact, trying to point out just how messed up these images are. But there's also something distinctly exploitative at work here in the presentation that's messing with my head... in that it's pretty clear these images (and attendant captions) are also supposed to be *humorous.* And yeah, I'm having a hard time with that.

What do you guys think?

. . . . .
Sweetney is a writer, single mom, and professional smartass from beautiful Baltimore, MD.

Comments

[momsmith]

I'm sorry but I honestly do not find any of those images humorous...I especially don't find anything funny about a baby chewing on a rifle. I get that they (Heavy.com) are trying to be funny...but really? Some of these parents should be reported to CPS!

[rebecca]

amen, girl. NOT funny.

[Katie]

Eeegads, SO not funny. Sick-to-my-stomach NOT funny.

[funda62]

Well maybe the Mike Tyson one, just a little bit. The rest not funny at all. Especially the snakes ones!

[Bree]

Um, because letting your kids play with GUNS is always a good idea? Doesn't this just give kids the go ahead to find said guns and play with them when you AREN'T around. Dummies.

[Mrs. D]

This is horrifying. NOT funny. I mean, I guess I am not quite as horrified by the stripper pole or the mermaid costume... But the guns? The microwave? The LION? OMG. What is WRONG with these parents?

[Suzy Q]

I guess my mama was bad. I have a picture of me at about 3 years of age, just randomly and loosely holding a (toy) gun by the barrel. Hey, it was the '60s! And, we're from Miami! I thought it was so funny, I had my friend use it on the invite for my 40th b-day party.

[beerab]

These are scary- you need a license to drive, degrees to be a professional, yet anyone can have a kid...

[DianaCLT]

Considering that there are some inhuman asshole parents out there, who actually HAVE microwaved their babies...NOT funny. At. All. Am sick to my stomach.

[chatty cricket]

Holy shit, my head actually just exploded. I've threatened before, but now it's actually happened.

Holy. Shit. WHERE IS DSS?!

[Cristin]

Whoa. No.
Just.....NO.
A sleeping baby with a beer can is ok.
A baby with a gun??
No. No thanks.

[Tuckson]

Heavy isn't exactly a reputable source of internet information or humor. And, certainly, for a site that caters to a specific crowd (read, not the MamaPop readership), it's pretty tame. God help us if the eyes of MamaPop are ever scalded by the garbage that makes this look tame.

[K. Thor Jensen]

Hey, all - K. Thor Jensen, Editorial Director of Heavy.com (and parent of a 2 year old boy). I think that there's a fertile ground between humor and horror, and I was trying to plumb that with this piece. From my perspective, it's that these parents not only took these pictures, but they of their own free will uploaded them to the Internet for the whole world to see - what kind of idiot thinks that posing their terrified kid next to a lioness is something to brag about? And yes, I would forcibly sterilize every single parent responsible for these photos. Anyways, thanks for the discussion and I hope to make Heavy.com a more reputable source of comedy, if not information, in the future.

[Katya]

I can get with that. Before I saw the above comment, I was gonna post something about black comedy and laughing to avoid crying or screaming... You know, god help our politics when all we have left is satire — that sort of thing. Or perhaps humor that the poor kids' parents could be so stupid. But yeah... the fact that these parents thought POSTING this stuff was a good idea... outrageous! And we all know outrageous and funny go hand in hand pretty often.

[becks]

I feel sick now. Like, I just want to curl up with my kids and a blanket and read Robert Muncsh books and eat organic appple slices or some other wholesome activity like that. (And I was feeling guilty for putting Go Diego Go on for my daughter so I could use the computer for 25 minutes.

[linka72]

wow..those were crazy..but my friend has a picture of her two year old self with a BUDWEISER baby tee on..sigh, it was the 70's.

[Fairly Odd Mother]

If anyone saw The Hangover, you'll remember a few "baby" scenes that were gasp-out-loud funny. Or offensive. Or offensively funny. I lean toward the latter. I think the photo of the baby with a seatbelt in a car is just one of those, "heh, funny", but I don't really think a parent drove around town like that. The rest of them really border on insane---it really, really bums me out to think what kind of homes in which these kids live.

[[mark]]

ok, let's maintain some perspective here.

i have two parents' corroborating testimony that, circa 1977, my dad used to drive around town with my playpen bungee'd down in the back of his conversion van. he'd hit the brakes, and i'd roll around like a beach ball and laugh my chubby little ass off.

unsafe? absolutely. stupid? debatable. (for the record, aside from mild brain damage and not completing a college degree, i turned out ok.)

do i think my parents are in ANY WAY "bad parents" based on this one anecdote? ABSOLUTELY NOT. just because we (being of similar ideological viewpoint) find guns fairly "icky" doesn't AUTOMATICALLY mean that a pic with three kids holding unloaded guns makes the pic owner a "BAD PARENT ©".

let's work on a little less knee-jerk reactionism, i think. some of us are starting to sound like the daily "i'm outraged by..." right wingers here...

[[mark]]

ok, let's maintain some perspective here.

i have two parents' corroborating testimony that, circa 1977, my dad used to drive around town with my playpen bungee'd down in the back of his conversion van. he'd hit the brakes, and i'd roll around like a beach ball and laugh my chubby little ass off.

unsafe? absolutely. stupid? debatable. (for the record, aside from mild brain damage and not completing a college degree, i turned out ok.)

do i think my parents are in ANY WAY "bad parents" based on this one anecdote? ABSOLUTELY NOT. just because we (being of similar ideological viewpoint) find guns fairly "icky" doesn't AUTOMATICALLY mean that a pic with three kids holding unloaded guns makes the pic owner a "BAD PARENT ©".

let's work on a little less knee-jerk reactionism, i think. some of us are starting to sound like the daily "i'm outraged by..." right wingers here...

[Sweetney]

Mark: Right-wingers? REALLY? Aren't those the people that LIKE guns?

I'm about as "Left" in every way as they come, and I wrote this post.

So yeah. Just for the record n'at.

[Karen]

Um...I found some of them funny in a "poor taste" kind of way. Most of them, nope, not funny, just horrifying.

I live in a town where we actually did have the case of the mom who microwaved her baby, so that one was particularly horrifying.

[Sara]

Mark: I agree wholeheartedly that everyone (left, right, center and every political persuasion in between) needs to try and avoid "knee-jerk reactionism" as you say.

However, the reactions that you reference involve completely inane things like why we've not seen a copy of our President's birth certificate, NOT children (one of whom appears to be twoish? maybe three?) holding guns. Apples and oranges, dude.

[ljpock]

I will have to agree that most of them are WTF pics.

The kid with the seat-belt on though - I could see where someone would take that as a gag photo. Heck, I've put my dog in a frying pan on the kitchen stove - doesn't mean I cooked and ate him.

The Tyson pic - how is that really different than a pic of a crying kid on santa's lap?

But again agreed - most are just stupid. You can't fix stupid unfortunately.

[Paulita]

ok..now I feel bad haha

One day while I was in college, I babysat my 2 year old cousin at my house. We had a blow up doll (for what, I couldn't tell you know), and I totally took pictures of my cousin playing with it. My cousin is now a teenager and I have never shown him nor his parents this photo.

There I feel better, its out

haha

[Paulita]

*now*...shoot

[Rachel]

I do think that the two you picked for the MamaPop post are somewhat funny. I would hope that all 3 girls are old enough to know the difference between a funny picture with a gun and taking out said gun and shooting it (this is said under the impression that the guns are NOT loaded in the picture). On the article, some of the pictures are a little over the top, but (mostly) humorous.

Granted, I'm child-less and I'm married to a man who thinks it would be funny to put our future baby son in a "i love boobies" shirt, and I actually kinda agree, so maybe I'm somewhat demented.