I Broke My Parenting Rule

This guy should be judged for what he did to his daughter

Cara Harbstreet (She/Her)
9 min readJan 3, 2021

As a general rule, I do not judge parents or parenting styles.

That’s because I’m not a parent.

I’m child-free by choice — the reasons for which aren’t relevant to this story — so I don’t see it as my place to pass judgment or criticism onto those who do have children. With few exceptions, it’s a pretty easy rule to follow.

One of those exceptions showed up today.

I woke up and checked the news on my phone. I was perusing various apps in my typical order when I happened to see that “SIX HOURS” was trending on Twitter. “Huh?” I wondered, “What’s this about?”

The curiosity got the best of me. I should have resisted the urge, but on a snowy Sunday morning, I had little else on my agenda so I figured, why not?

I soon found myself enraptured by a 23-tweet thread by John Roderick. You know, the Harvey Danger “Flagpole Sitta” dude? It’s OK if you didn’t know that, I didn’t either but we have Google to thank for these factoids that orient us to the wild world we live in.

But when I say “enraptured” I don’t mean that in a good way. With each tweet that maxed out the 280-character limit, this guy wove a story about power dynamics…

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Cara Harbstreet (She/Her)

Lover of carbs and puns, call me Cara Carbstreet | Anxious Millennial | Coffee Enthusiast | Non-diet Dietitian