It Takes A Village, Too Bad The Village Is Just A Bunch Of Judgy A**holes Now

Parents leave their baby in a restaurant booth to grab food from the buffet, all hell breaks loose

Remember that old saying, It takes a village to raise a child? Well the village is more concerned about taking video of your perceived “parenting flaws” instead of helping out in any way, so be warned. Bet that whole “village” thing was a better idea before people started fiending to go viral on Facebook.

An Ohio man enjoying his meal in a restaurant became distraught when a couple left their infant in its carrier in a booth to go grab some food from the buffet line. The man was in full view of the booth, did he keep a watchful eye and give the parents an “I got you” wink when they returned? Of course not, silly! We don’t do that kind of thing anymore! Why look out for each other when we can video an unsuspecting family and generate outrage on Facebook? Duh.

“Morons,” you hear the man behind the camera mumbling under his breath. According to Fox 8, the clip generated almost four million views after being posted to Facebook. It’s since been removed, but the news station reports that by his estimation the baby sat alone for four minutes. The mother took to Facebook to defend herself, and let the rabid commenters know that the baby was never out of her site.

No kidding. The man doesn’t ever move the camera to show the size of the room, but one can assume that parents are going to keep their infant in full view while they take a quick trip to the buffet. Is this a big deal? The Perkins Township Police Department launched an investigation into whether the video is evidence of child endangerment after a Facebook user shared it with them.

Let’s repeat that. An investigation has been launched to determine whether walking away from your immobile infant strapped in a carrier, in full view, for four minutes is child endangerment. Good grief.

“Can we say because the parent walked out of the screen shot of this video and left the child unattended in the booth that there was a significant risk of injury to that child? I’m not sure we can,” Chief Ken Klamar said, probably wondering why he needs to use police resources for this nonsense. “Investigators said they would have a much better idea if the child was in danger if the man had used his cell phone to call 911, instead of recording the video,” reported Fox 8.

Seriously. If this hero thought the baby was in imminent danger, why didn’t he call the police? Because he knew the baby was in no danger at all, that’s why. These parents now have a case open against them by Eerie County Child Services. That is infuriating. They will likely be dealing with this for who knows how long because some bystander who clearly didn’t think this baby was in any real danger decided to reach for some momentary viral fame by shaming some parents for doing absolutely nothing wrong.

If this is “The Village” now, no thanks. We’ll do it on our own.