A Spirited Defense of Kids on Leashes

This week’s prompt is #collaboration, which pairs up two writers for one piece. This is one part of a two-part series, written by Kelaine Conochan and Zach Straus.

At first glance, it’s a backpack that looks like a stuffed teddy bear. But then you notice something extending from the teddy’s right hindquarters, something you would have previously called a telephone cord (when such a thing existed in every household.) Your eyes train along the cord, extending two feet from little man’s backpack across open space, pulling taut, until it reaches—what’s that?—a wrist. His dad’s wrist.

“Tsk, tsk,” you think. “Kids on leashes? Some people should never be parents.”

Look, I partially agree with you. Way too many people are allowed to be parents. Billions of idiots across the globe are reproducing at alarming rates, without ever thinking about what the world will look like in 60 years when they’re dead and their poor kids will be scrapping over water in a global Mad Max dystopia. Without thinking beyond how having kids today will validate them socially or personally. Just multiplying, romanced by the “miracle of life” or the narcissism of progeny growing up in their own likeness. Yeah, I said it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that everyone should stop having kids.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to have a desire for spawn. I’m not saying you’re an idiot (though you might be) for having children (who may one day die of a preventable famine.)

But I am saying at least three things:

(1) Becoming a parent doesn’t make you some kind of a selfless, wingless angel, bringing only light, joy, and beauty into the world. It’s a pretty banal act. From a sentimental perspective, it’s special for you and yours, but largely insignificant in the history of time and space. How’s that for a participation trophy?

(2) From a global population perspective, reproduction is selfish, unnecessary, and hugely problematic. But you do you.

(3) In light of that, using a leash is pretty fucking innocuous. Nah mean?

As someone with zero kids and zero desire to yell at yours, I am openly pro-leash.

But parents prefer to issue a value judgment that using a leash means you can’t control, trust, or watch your kid, which—ipso facto—makes you a negligent parent. And that as a result, you are willing to restrain your child like you would an animal, which—ipso facto—makes you a terrible person.

But let’s be real. Until they blow out the candles on their ninth birthday, kids are pretty much just pets, aren’t they?

You make them sleep in crates.

You celebrate when they poop in the right place at the right time.

You cancel your plans because you have to go home and care for them.

You give them the dumb haircut that you like.

You lament how much cleaner the house was before they showed up.

You get annoyed when they’re loud.

You post an obnoxious number of pictures of them.

You drag them on long car rides even if they make them puke.

I don’t need to get into some Philistine debate about the relative value of living beings. What I’m saying is that with regard to their behavior, needs, and impact on our lives, kids and pets are basically the same thing.

So why cross your arms and get all tut-tut righteous when we use the same tool to keep our dumb dogs and dumb kids from running away from us in public places?

I mean, you saw Home Alone 2, right? Imagine how much plane fare and hotel expenses the McCallisters would have saved if Kevin, who had already fucked up an entire extended family vacation, had just been on a goddamn leash. Sure, it’d be great if that little rapscallion could just pay attention. And it’d be better if his parents weren’t so frenetic all the time, but they already made the mistake of having nine fucking kids to take on vacation. Life is hard. That’s literally why we invent tools.

We don’t shame parents whose infant spawn wear diapers, do we? No, because we understand that until they’re a certain age, they lack the faculties to control their butts and bits. Same with little kids – they can’t help it that their brains aren’t fully developed yet. They’re curious. They want to see the world. They want to walk around a bit. Why not use the tool specifically designed to deal with that whole situation?

If we’re cool with full-grown adults wearing Croakies so they don’t lose their sunglasses, why not secure more valuable things? You know, like children with their own legs and free will who won’t just get left on the bleachers at an Auburn game but instead roam into section 302 while hunting for churros.

It seems pretty simple to me, folks. While you’re busy scoffing at the mom whose kid is physically restrained from bothering anyone beyond a three-foot radius, your dumb little angel is a ticking time bomb, waiting to wander off into unchartered territory of this amusement park without her cell phone. Are you so proud that you’d rather endure two hours of paternal hysteria and the embarrassment of an overhead announcement than just put your kid in a cool shark backpack?

You’re not a failure or a bad parent if you keep your beloved small creatures on a leash.

You can’t trust five-year-olds to act rationally and maturely. And give yourself a break; your brain is preoccupied with the 86 other things you have to do to maintain a small living animal’s life.

It’s not that big of a deal. Nothing is. You’re already a terrible person, so you might as well minimize your impact zone.

Want to check out Zach’s take? Read on, you extraordinarily beautiful, highly literate creature.