It's rare that a parenting disagreement actually escalates to police involvement in the investigation of theft. At least, I would hope and assume that this is the case, but maybe it happens with a higher degree of frequency than you'd anticipate.
There are a lot of working pieces and ethics to consider when it comes to the inter-workings of this story. First of all, this husband is not the son's biological father, and we are led to believe that he came into the son's life fairly recently considering the fact that the biological father passed away when the boy was 12. Had the husband been involved in the boy's life for longer, by either being the boy's biological father or step-father from a young age, this would be an open and shut case. I would say, undoubtedly, that the father had a point and a role to play in protecting his son from what he deemed to be a dangerous activity and I would probably say that the wife/mother was the a-hole for buying the motorcycle without the two parents reaching some agreement on the subject. But, since he is not a more prominent father figure in the boy's life, the argument becomes open to the fact that he might be controlling and overstepping here.
It might be an unpopular opinion among you motorcycle enthusiasts out there, but I'd still hold the opinion that the step-father is doing this family a service by refusing to let the son ride a motorcycle. He has gone around it in completely the wrong way, but I will hold that there is an argument to be made that he has done an ethical net benefit by possibly saving the son's life.
I was raised by a motorcycle enthusiast who was lucky to walk away from and still be alive after, a collision with a distracted driver. He insisted that despite his love for them, I was never to go near one. I used to resent this, but after my own collision with a distracted driver, I can see that he was completely justified in this position.
The statistics are startling when it comes to the comparative risk of motorcycles and other road vehicles.
This graph shows the comparative occupant fatality per billion vehicle miles traveled in 2015 and 2016. Before you say that these statistics are outdated, the fatality rate of motorcycle occupants has only increased since this data set.
So, honestly, despite everything he has done wrong here I'm going to go against the Reddit hivemind and say that the mother is the A-Holehere. Both for blindly enabling her son to take up a statistically condemned hobby, for not listening to the person she selected to help raise her children, and then for escalating things to another level by getting the police involved.
We've seen far worse instances of parents stealing from their children. What's your take?
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