Kids...

The Bolton news reports that a distraught couple, whose 13-year-old son has been missing for almost two weeks, have made an emotional plea for him to return home.

Jack Pearson was last seen in the North Wales holiday resort of Llandudno.

His parents Roy and Maria Pearson, of Lonsdale Grove, Farnworth, fear he may have run away with a group of fairground workers.

Initially, we might feel sorry for this couple, but the mother then revealed that "since March, Jack has been missing for around four weeks in total. But this is by far the longest time he’s been gone. He’s been going to work on different fairgrounds in the North West but in the past has been brought home by police."

This is a thirteen year old, isn't it? Not twenty-three or thirty-three? Maybe I'm alone in this, but shouldn't parents be parents? How can this boy 'go missing'? How can these parents not know where he is when he's thirteen, for goodness sake?

When did we, as a society, start to abdicate our responibility as parents? When did we start to expect schools, social workers, the council - in short, everyone else to do our job for us? Perhaps it's time to start pregnancy licensing. Having a child isn't a right; it's a privilege, a wonderful, demanding, life-long commitment to another human being, enforced by nothing more than love. Maybe that needs to change...