Date: Saturday, May 30th 2015
Participants (from 8 countries):
China: Bradi | Tunisia: Marwa | USA: Jeff, Rick | Iran: Ami | India: Sunita, Yusuf | Hong Kong: Selly | Vietnam: Kelly
Team A: (Yes) Bradi, Marwa
Team B: (No) Jeff, Ami
Team C: (On the fence) Sunita, Yusuf, Selly, Kelly
Host & Moderator: Rick
Team A summary:
- In case of emergency, minors are less likely to be able to handle the situation.
- At the age of 13, most children are not yet mature enough to even look after themselves; thus, they are not ready to look after others.
- A babysitter should be aware of the physical condition of the baby and know what to do to keep the child healthy and safe at all times and most children of 13 do not even have the basic knowledge about health, biology and babies’ common conditions.
- If a child or baby has a medical emergency, the babysitter must be prepared to confront such situations and minors are less likely to be so.
Team B summary:
- Older Siblings can babysit their younger siblings for a short period of time while the mother or father needs to do something but always under their supervision.
- If the babysitter have sufficient preparation or is well taught, it won’t matter if it’s a minor as long as s/he can be taught to be ready to confront even babies’ medical emergency.
- Some parents do not have adult relatives to relay on when they need and neither can trust strangers to look after their kids so they count on their older children to make them look after their younger siblings.
- Some children can prove to be more responsible than their own fathers, in that scenario, the mother can rely on her oldest child to look after the younger ones.
Team C summary:
- Selly: A
- Yusuf: N/A.
- Kelly: remained undecided.
- Sunita: remained undecided.
Since there was only one vote for a team (Selly voted for team A) team A won the debate; although, we congratulate Jeff for being the first time he joins our debates and he represented the whole team by himself and he did the best he could. We named him as “honorary winner”.
Below is the link to listen to our chat:
There was two bonus chat after the debate and this will be posted in a separate blog.
For people who did not join the live discussion, feel free to contribute the ideas in the comment blanks below.