The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has decided that they can raise my kids better than I can.  They’ve decided that toys lure kids into McDonald’s, the food is making the kids fat, and parents are powerless; the toys must be banned. 

Never mind that my son is underweight and could probably stand a few more hamburgers in his diet.  Forget the fact that we don’t go to McDonald’s that often anyway.  But the thing that really gets me here is the way they have completely removed the responsibility for childhood obesity off of the parents and moved it squarely to the food vendors.  We, the parents, are at fault here.  We need to be challenged to think about our kids’ diets, improve their athletic options, and take responsibility for our own problems.

If our kids are fat, it’s our fault.  Although I don’t buy for a minute that these crappy toys are making parents helpless to say ‘no’ to their children, if this is the case, don’t take away the toy, teach the parents how to be better parents.  If parents can’t say no to a 50-cent plastic bobble, when will they say no?  One thing I do know, is that shifting responsibility to McDonald’s is never going to get these parents to wake up.

Childhood obesity is a huge problem, and our society does need to address it, but let’s be smarter than this.  We need action that will force parents to take more responsibility, not less.  I hope the board will reconsider this move and think through the terrible message they’re sending.

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I decided to try my hand at a cartoon to go with this post.  I’ll have to thank @guhmshoo for the inspiration.