Less Gentle Parenting 18: Why You Can Never Trust Anyone Who Trusts a Pit Bull

I understand how wading into the pit bull discourse may seem like a stretch for a parenting column. But it’s not, really.

See, pitbull apologists’ insistence that their pit bulls are delightful (that “it’s not the breed,” but the owners, who are responsible for these dogs’ wildly disproportionate shares of dog attacks and fatal dog attacks) is inextricable from the pervasive misunderstanding that undergirds gentle parenting.

In other words, the weak-minded, credulous insistence that no one should habituate two-year-olds for obedience is on horrifying display in the weak-minded, credulous insistence that anyone can habituate pit bulls for obedience. Because, as the stats on dog attacks well establish to anyone willing to acknowledge reality, no one can.

Vegas performers Siegfried and Roy spent 40 years training and on stage with tigers. Eventually, a tiger attacked one of them, causing enormous, life-ruining damage. The thing is: You can’t actually reliably train a tiger. So, you can never actually trust a tiger. Pit bulls are like that.

And anyone who says otherwise is someone you can never trust either.

Gentle parenting teaches that whenever a two-year-old throws a tantrum or smacks his brother, the thing that needs to be modified is not the child, but the environment. The grocery store was too overstimulating (or whatever).

Pit bull apologists extend this misguided illogic to the most unpredictable and lethal of domestic animals. Because they do not want to admit that there is no environment in which pit bulls will behave en masse like Beagles.

The common thread here is an unwillingness to acknowledge that untutored nature is not all benevolent, but often violent to the point of being dangerous. This is true of toddlers and it’s true of pit bulls.

But there are two key differences: First, preschoolers (as well as many other breeds of dogs) can typically be trained not to perpetrate acts of violence, whereas pit bulls (due to their breeding for and ancestry of dog fighting) cannot. Second, when preschoolers do perpetrate acts of violence, they’re highly unlikely to be all that damaging.

Pit bulls, given their lock jaws and their unpredictable tempers, are like tantrummy three-year-olds armed with loaded guns.

Progressive white women, in particular (the same types who tend to be disproportionately “all in” on gentle parenting), are apt to apologize for pit bulls who are impossible to adequately socialize, and blame “the environment” for their erratic and dangerous behavior.

Why?