Some say it’s madness.

Some say it’s fondness—for friends, families, co-workers, baby sitters, mail carriers, teachers, hairdressers, newspaper delivery people and everyone else we want—or feel compelled—to remember with a present.

And some say it’s time to rethink a more responsible approach to holiday giving, especially in this year’s brutal economy.

Newspaper columnist Ron Lieber thought he had the solution—“a grand alternative that would allow everyone to start the next year with at least one great present and a sense of spiritual uplift”—but he was surprised at just how reluctant we are to change our gift-giving patterns.

Lieber based his extreme makeover on the alternative gift-giving model of ECHOage.com, a web company started last year by two mothers trying to “stop the madness around children’s birthday parties.”

Gift-givers send the amount of money they would have spent on a birthday present to ECHOage. The company takes a service fee and then splits the rest of the money—one half goes to a charity chosen by the birthday child; the other half goes to the child, who can buy something he or she really wants.

But when Lieber suggested using the same model for the holidays, the discussion of giving was met with many a misgiving. There were outright objections from people unwilling to change the way they’ve exchanged gifts for decades. Others chafed at the imposition of a blanket plan, and some at the “relentless practicality” of the approach.

The trick, Lieber concluded, “is to ask carefully, so as not to make others feel greedy if they still want a big pile of gifts.” But there was one particular idea that repeatedly stood out for him: “I was touched by the number of people who suggested extending the Thanksgiving spirit through the end of the holiday season this year. Their recommended gift? A thank-you note.”

Tell us what you think: What’s your idea of responsible holiday gift giving?

Parent’s reality: leave your unruly child with someone at a hospital in Nebraska, and walk away forever, with no legal consequence.

Every state in America has a so-called “safe haven” law, under which a troubled parent can safely surrender a newborn baby, usually at a hospital or fire station, no questions asked.

But Nebraska’s safe haven law is different. Intended to protect only infants, it was written with the word “child” left undefined and without an age limit, opening a gaping legal loophole for an unprecedented human bailout.

Since the law took effect in July, at least 30 children—almost all between the ages 8 and 18—have been dumped in Nebraska hospitals by parents or guardians who say they can no longer cope with their kids. “According to the law, the abandonments are legal, and the parents cannot be held criminally responsible.”

One desperate widower dropped off nine of his children at a local hospital, then left. Other parents traveled long distances to legally ditch their kids in Nebraska, including the mother of a delinquent 12-year-old boy, who drove 1,000 miles from their home in Georgia. “I ran out of fight,” she said, after abandoning her son. “I ran out of hope.”

Authorities were stunned. “I think they’re just irresponsible people who are not very caring for their kids,” pronounced one state senator. But others saw the situation as a serious wakeup call about the increasing needs of struggling families. “They are desperate people, in a spot,” said another senator, “and don’t know where to turn.”

Tell us what you think: Should parents have the legal right to abandon a child—and their own responsibility—because of behavioral or other problems? Is abandonment a better option than abuse? Does Nebraska’s safe haven law protect children or contribute to their neglect?

It used to be one of the dominant decisions for consumers.

But as more and more supermarkets and other stores have phased out the use of so-called disposable plastic bags, a different environmental question still lingers: Paper or electronic? Bills, that is.

For many people, paying bills online is a no-brainer way to save time and resources. But millions of Americans continue to receive all their bills by mail, which they pay with paper checks, send with postage, and add to the handling of even more paper mail moving around the country.

It’s estimated that if every American household went paper-free for bill-paying the environmental impact would include

• Reducing solid waste in U.S. landfills by more than 800,000 tons a year
• Saving an estimated 18.5 million trees every year
• Curbing the release of greenhouse gases by 2.1 million tons a year

Some hard-copy holdouts cite security concerns in not going paperless. But others are unable or unwilling to cross a psychological barrier. “I choose to get and pay my bills by mail because it feels more substantial to me,” says a 30 year-old colleague who otherwise recycles and reduces elsewhere in her life. “I just don’t think it’s my responsibility to go paperless if it makes me feel insecure.”

Tell us what you think: Should you be responsible for reducing your carbon footprint by putting away the checkbook and paying bills electronically? When the environmentally responsible route makes you feel uneasy, is it personally responsible to override it?

Including your vote.

As stock markets around the world continue to nose-dive, an unusual futures market called Intrade is heating up, with global investors focused on one bet: the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.

Unlike typical financial markets where profits are tied to a company’s growth, Intrade’s profits rise and fall on the results of political, cultural, and geological events—including weather. Traders buy and sell “contracts” that function like stocks.

But it’s not just investors who are keen on Intrade. Pundits and politicians routinely analyze it as they follow the McCain and Obama campaigns, trying to determine the probable winner before the actual vote. According to Congressional Quarterly Today, “experts have found that the Intrade market is generally more accurate in predicting the outcome of major events than other leading indicators, including public opinion polls.”

However, scholars of so-called predictive markets issued a caveat about Intrade: “The relatively small scale of the market and its lack of outside regulation could leave the system vulnerable to unscrupulous investors.”

Sure enough, a rogue trader on Intrade seems to have been responsible for mimicking Wall Street maneuvers by buying suspiciously large purchases of McCain futures to boost his standing in the race, while selling off blocks of Obama futures to lower the market’s predictions of his chances of winning. The manipulation left pollsters uncertain.

Tell us what you think: Does betting on political races irresponsibly sway votes? Is it more responsible to put your money where your mouth is and vote?

Actor Tate Donovan stars as Michael, a relentlessly responsible father. But the Tony at issue isn’t his son. It’s his son’s teddy bear. Or more vexingly, his 6-year-old son’s lost teddy bear.

And therein lies the crisis, the challenge, and the question: Can you ever be too responsible?

Certainly parents who make the ultimate sacrifice of taking a family trip to Disneyland can already claim to have done the right thing for the kids. So when Tony is lost on that trip, shouldn’t a replacement bear be good enough?

Watch Tony and see how one man’s dedication and determination to track a child’s inanimate toy takes on a life of its own and buoys the spirits of a most unlikely search party along the way, struggling to find a bear—and their own surprising new depths of personal responsibility.

When it comes to defining personal responsibility, many people say taking care of themselves and their family is at the very top of their list. Knowing their neighbors is at the bottom.

Those are some of the findings from our Responsibility Project Index, a poll of Americans across the country, undertaken to better understand your views about all things responsibility.

The vast majority of those polled—more than 70%—believe they’re more responsible today than in the past five years, with teachers, young Americans, married people, and African Americans giving themselves the highest rankings for personal responsibility.

And while we value personal responsibility, we don’t necessarily recognize it in others. An overwhelming number of Americans—74%—believe that many people have become less responsible. Could it be that we don’t really know those beyond our families and close friends? A whopping 85% of those polled believe we’re less connected with our neighbors today than 20 years ago.

It’s clear that we form communities differently now than in the past. Less talking over the backyard fence. More coming together online. That’s what hundreds of thousands of you have done by logging onto the ResponsibilityProject.com, to watch the films, read the blog, and take part in the ever-changing conversation about responsibility.

And while the Index tells us a little more about how we view responsibility from a statistical standpoint, the most valuable things we learn about responsibility are from each other. So thanks for your continued involvement in the Responsibility Project.

Tell us what you think: Do you think you’re more responsible now than you were five years ago? Do you believe most of the people around you are less responsible? Does knowing your neighbors matter any more?

Twenty year-old Felicia Salazar admitted to a court that she failed to provide protection and medical treatment for her 19-month-old daughter. The baby was beaten by her father and suffered broken bones and other injuries. She recovered and is in foster care. The father was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

But when Salazar—who had no previous criminal record—appeared for sentencing, Judge Charlie Baird gave her a suspended prison sentence and 10 years probation with what he called the “reasonable condition” not to conceive or bear any more children during that time.

“She has a fundamental right to reproduce,” said the judge, “so I couldn’t order her to be sterilized. But she can be forced to forfeit certain fundamental rights.” The judge added that he is “not even preventing her from having intimate sexual relations. I’m only preventing her from becoming pregnant.”

Legal experts questioned the constitutionality of the sentence, while others debated its enforceability. “If Salazar becomes pregnant,” asked a law writer, “must she choose among concealing the pregnancy, abortion, or incarceration? Alternately, could Judge Baird order her to carry a pregnancy to term but then give the child up for adoption?”

The prosecutor, who had not sought the sentence, was surprised. “I think when the average person hears a story of a mom who failed to protect a child,” she said, “their instinct is that she doesn’t deserve to have a child. But we don’t get to decide that for her.”

Tell us what you think: In an effort to prevent future child abuse, should the court be responsible for deciding if a mother can have more children? What about the father in this case—should he be under court order not to father more children?

We’re truly busy, and mentoring a kid, teaching an adult to read, or lifting someone’s spirits at a nursing home takes time.

We don’t know how to use a hammer.

We’re not experts.

It’s not our responsibility.

Now, after years of quietly gathering speed, there’s a growing movement to elevate public service to national service and in the process, set up incentives and opportunities that make it easier for each person to help another in need. The goal is to make volunteering as fundamental as voting.

The concept of relying on all able citizens to give back has even garnered the support of both John McCain and Barack Obama. Each has promised, if elected president, to make national service a priority and to promote it as a unifying force for 21st century America.

The frustration expressed by many Americans—wanting to volunteer for something, but not knowing where to start—is now beginning to be addressed more widely, from corporations offering paid leave for employee volunteer service, to universities integrating a “service” year into students’ studies.

Even the federal government is trying to make it easier for Americans to roll up their sleeves and volunteer, with a proposed piece of federal legislation called the Serve America Act. Among other things, the Act proposes to establish five new national volunteer “corps” such as international service, disaster relief, green energy, education, and poverty, then train and link volunteers to the projects that suit them best.

One of the toughest obstacles to volunteering is finding the time, but it may be as easy as turning off the TV. Experts note that the biggest statistical distinction between volunteers and non-volunteers, is how much television they watch—15 hours a week for volunteers; 23 hours for non-volunteers. That mathematical difference—more than 400 hours a year—could make a world of difference from a volunteer.

Tell us what you think: Is volunteering a civic responsibility? Should government be involved in public service?

But are we also a nation that needs to pull up its pants?

A 17-year-old Florida boy was recently jailed overnight for violating a local “sagging pants” law after a police officer spotted him riding his bike with his pants slung low enough to reveal four or five inches of boxer shorts.

“Your Honor,” the boy’s public defender told the court, “We now have the fashion police.”

A Florida judge later declared the law unconstitutional, but that hasn’t deterred authorities in California, New Jersey, Illinois, Michigan, Texas and other jurisdictions from proposing or enacting similar measures, arguing that the sagging fashion is akin to indecent exposure.

The style of wearing over-sized pants that sag to reveal large expanses of underwear started in prisons, where big pants were issued with no belts. In the 1990’s, the look seeped into the popular culture—and under the skin of politicians and police.

“We’re not going to sit here and let that happen in Flint,” declared the police chief of Flint, Michigan, where wearers of saggy pants can be arrested “if the pants are at the knees and your underwear is exposed.” He calls the look “disorderly” and “immoral self-expression.”

The south Chicago suburb of Lynwood, which also bans the buns look, claims the fad has gone so far as to effect economic growth and discourage businesses from investing in Lynwood.

ACLU attorneys counter, calling the laws “idiotic” and arguing that “You can’t arrest people because of their style of dress.”

Tell us what you think: Should government be responsible for dictating what citizens can wear? Is publically exposing your underwear freedom of expression, indecent exposure, or your personal responsibility?

Not if you’re using Slydial.

As its name suggests, Slydial subverts the process of calling someone on their cell phone by routing the caller directly to the recipient’s voicemail. The service bypasses the usual ringing that alerts an incoming call, and thereby negates the chance—or risk—of having a conversation. A new message appears, but only after the fact.

Slydial describes the feat as “the illusion of communication without the hassle of engaging in a time-consuming conversation.” The company’s suggested uses for the service include these for college students: “breaking up with a significant other…juggling a hectic dating life…or calling home for cash.”

While there are other uses for Slydial—it’s good for shy people, someone pointed out, and for legitimately not interrupting the recipient—many question whether a tool that encourages users to avoid direct communication is a responsible use of technology.

“Talk, that most valuable human asset, is shunned,” explained a communications professor. “If these are the technology’s primary uses, it brings with it a world where conversation and community take a back seat to one’s immediate wants—a world where ‘me’ trumps ‘we.’”

A 26-year-old woman who used Slydial to break up with a man she’d been dating explained, “Text messaging someone ‘I would prefer not to see you again’ is really not my style. But at the same time, I wanted to avoid an awkward conversation.”

Some say a new trend has emerged: We are constantly just missing one another—on purpose, and are more interested in “broadcasting” information than in true conversational give-and-take.

“When I was growing up,” lamented one critic, “when the phone rang in the house, it was a big deal. You would have to get up to go answer the phone. And then you would have to stand next to the phone, because the phone was attached to the wall. You didn’t know who it was before you answered it. That was the exciting part. Who was calling? Will it be for me? Will it be a boy? Will it be Grandma calling long distance?

“Now the phone rings and you think, ‘Shoot, more talking. I’ve had enough talking. Can’t they just email?’”

Tell us what you think: Is it irresponsible to make a technological end-run around someone to avoid a difficult conversation? Where does our responsibility to talk to someone begin and end? Are we becoming a society more interested in “me” than “we”?

The kid, in this case, was 9-year-old Jericho Scott, who played summer baseball on a youth team in New Haven, Connecticut.

Jericho’s “crime” is his talent. He’s a pitching sensation who throws an awesome 40 mile-an-hour fastball that’s never hit a batter and rarely misses the plate. But the prodigy pitcher himself was struck out—by adults.

Parents of opposing team members first objected that their kids were unable to hit any of Jericho’s pitches. Strike one.

Then youth league officials wanted to move Jericho up to an older team, but his parents refused. Strike two.

League officials asked Jericho to play any position other than pitcher, but his parents said no again. Strike three.

Game over.

The league disbanded Jericho’s entire undefeated team, and the second place team was declared the season’s winner.

But the post-game show of who’s responsible for the collective benching of so many kids continues to play out across the country, with headlines that sound like…well…more lessons in parenting, like this one from Jericho’s hometown newspaper: Sometimes parent involvement can be way off-base, experts say.

Other adults were criticized, too. “The league obviously felt batters would suffer irreversible shame and humiliation if they had to face Jericho again,” wrote an Ohio sports reporter. “Tell me, how does that prepare kids for the real world? Haven’t we all encountered someone more skilled in our field, and haven’t we all survived?”

Ironically, the only person who stepped up to the plate to accept responsibility was perhaps the least culpable of all: Jericho, now 10 years old. “I feel sad,” he said. “I feel like it’s all my fault that nobody could play.”

Tell us what you think: Can a child be “too good” to play a game, and if so, does he or she have the responsibility to step aside? In the case of Jericho Scott, who’s more responsible for baseball’s abrupt ending—parents…league officials…Jericho?

The study is about children and chores.

University of Maryland Professor Sandra Hofferth—who is an expert on how children use their time—reports that 6 to 12 year-olds now spend an average of only 24 minutes a day doing household chores. That’s a 12% drop from 1997, and a 25% skid since 1981.

The chore-defying dive reflects “important behavioral and values shifts that will affect lives for years to come,” says Dr. Hofferth.

Doing household chores as a child turns out to be a major predictor of whether an individual does volunteer or community work as an adult, according to sociologists, who note that housework is an important teaching tool. And when it comes to domestic bliss, the distribution of domestic duties—grounded in childhood chores—can make or break a marriage.

According to experts, children’s chores are declining in part because they’re spending more time on reading, studying, and other activities. But even their parental role models are doing less work around the house, hiring help instead or simply letting chores chill.

Within days of the news that chore times had dropped like the Dow, a new website called NannysCircle.com began promoting itself as a novel solution to motivating kids by making a “virtual” game of chores. Instead of nagging Junior to feed the dog, parents log on and send a virtual note, which their child retrieves from his virtual room. In real life, the child supposedly feeds the dog, then emails his parents that the task has been completed.

But success may come at the expense of another domestic chore: parent-child communication. “You see the appeal,” wrote a reporter about the website. “Parenting, a messy series of weary battles that never seem to lead anywhere, becomes something that can be checked off and filed. No back talk. Just hit ‘send.’”

Tell us what you think: Should children be responsible for doing more chores? Are chore-less children really responsible for failed marriages and fewer volunteers? As a responsible parent, would you turn over chore supervision to a computer?

But if you only want a temporary friend, should you rent a dog?

Jackpot, Pirate, and Tango are among the pooches available to lease by the hour or the day from Flexpetz, a dog rental company with offices in Los Angeles, New York and London.

While some upscale hotels have lent dogs to guests over the years, Flexpetz is making a business out of it. For a $99 administration charge, a $99 monthly membership fee, and a $150 mandatory training and orientation session, a customer can rent as many dog day afternoons as desired, for an additional $45 each.

Who rents a dog? People who travel a lot, people who live in places that don’t allow pets, and people like 26 year-old Sarah Stevenson, who moved to New York from Scotland. “It’s been difficult for me to meet people because everyone in New York just kind of goes about their business,” Stevenson lamented. But when she’s out walking a rented cockapoo named Oliver, “It becomes a nice way to meet people.”

Flexpetz says all of their dogs—some of which were rescued from animal shelters—wear GPS tracking collars and are fed “holistic dog food.” But that’s not enough to stop some critics from howling fowl over what they say is the unacceptable promotion of dogs as accessories.

The company was banned in Boston after the City Council unanimously passed an ordinance making dog letting illegal. “To rent a dog just seems wrong,” said one legislator. “I’m not for legislating morality, but it just seems like cruel and unusual treatment of a poor, defenseless animal.” A Boston newspaper editorial took issue with what it saw as people who “want the comfort of a pet, but not the full-time responsibility.”

“Pets are not like cars or furniture,” the Humane Society says. “Moving them from person to person, home to home, can induce problems such as anxiety and depression.”

But a psychologist counters that people who want to borrow a dog usually just want some companionship. “It may be a short bond,” he said, “but it’s a real bond.”

Tell us what you think: Is it irresponsible to rent a dog?

At issue are the increasing number of hurricane “hold-outs” who refuse to leave their homes, even in the face of mandatory evacuation orders and National Weather Service warnings of “certain death.”

Some stay because they are elderly, infirm, or have no place to go. Others say evacuating is too “expensive”—they can’t afford to fix a broken car and don’t have money for gas anyway.

“You need to be scared,” implored New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, as Hurricane Gustav bore down on the city. But even his Category 5 language—“You need to get your butts out of New Orleans now”—had little bearing on people determined to stay.

The most defiant group of hold-outs includes those who hunker down to protect their property from forces other than nature. “I am staying here because of what happened to my pub when Katrina rolled in—looting and mindless destruction,” explained a New Orleans bar owner who ignored Gustav’s mandatory evacuation order. “I will probably stay until someone with a rifle and uniform shows up.”

And that’s what worries authorities—when someone’s personal decision to ride out a hurricane goes awry, other lives are put on the line, most notably, rescue workers. As Hurricane Ike hit its Texas bulls-eye, thousands of bold hold-outs who had stubbornly stayed suddenly swamped emergency dispatchers with frightened pleas for help.

Galveston’s city manager described the situation as “very frustrating,” while a newspaper editorial plunged right into the swelling question of personal responsibility and hurricanes “It is usually thought of as a strong and noble character trait identifying one’s ability to manage his or her own affairs responsibly. But in the wake of Hurricane Ike, it has proven to ally with sheer stupidity.”

Tell us what you think: Is your greater responsibility to the law, or to personally protecting your home and possessions? Whose responsibility is it if someone dies in defiance of a government order to evacuate from a storm?

Then Google came along and flipped the format, allowing so much information to be amassed before meeting someone that the encounter itself was sometimes obsolete.

Now there’s CriminalSearches.com, a new online service that invites users to type in the name of any adult, anywhere in the U.S., and search to see if the person has a criminal record. For free.

“Do you really know who people are?” CriminalSearches asks, urging users to run criminal background checks on nannies, neighbors, teachers, acquaintances, locksmiths and even “hedge fund managers.”

Besides searching by name, users can also type their addresses into the “Sex Offender Finder” and the “Neighborhood Watch” feature, both of which produce maps that reveal crimes and identities of people in the neighborhood—the burglar down the block, the drug dealer around the corner, and the sex offender on the route to school.

But the site “contains some mistakes,” reports The New York Times. “Some records are incomplete, and there is often no way to distinguish between people with the same names if you don’t know their birthdays (and even that date is often missing).”

When a Times reporter ran the name of a colleague through CriminalSearches, the system reported a “criminal offense.” It turned out to be a speeding ticket. “I went to traffic school so this wouldn’t appear on my record,” the stunned colleague explained. “I’m in shock.”

Tell us what you think: How do you balance the right to know with the responsibility to be accurate when it comes to criminal background checks? Do you have a responsibility for how you use personal information you find online? Should everyone be allowed to access anyone’s personal legal history, whether or not it’s criminal?

It’s teacher’s pistol.

In an effort to deter a Columbine-like school massacre, the local school board recently decreed that teachers could carry concealed weapons at school and in the classrooms, the first school in the U.S. to do so.

“Country people are take-care-of-yourself-people,” explained school superintendent David Thweatt. “They’re not under the illusion that the police are there to protect them.”

The nearest police are based 17 miles away. Lacking funds to hire security guards, the school board decided that letting teachers carry guns would result in better security anyway, since an attacker wouldn’t know who might shoot him.

Harrold’s school—which houses about one hundred students from kindergarten to high school—has a card-swipe security entry system as well as screening for visitors. But Mr. Thweatt, who calls himself as “a contingency planner,” says gun-free schools are simply targets for attack. “That’s like saying sic ’em to a dog,” he said.

The armed teachers have received mandatory firearms training and will use special bullets designed to reduce ricocheting—in this case, off chalk boards and desks.

Though “Don’t Mess With Texas” has long been a state mantra, making gun-toting teachers responsible for school security has some critics up in arms. “They are not trained to make life and death decisions,” said one Harrold resident. “There are too many things that could happen.”

“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” said a Houston teacher’s association official. “It’s up there with the worst ideas in the history of education.”

Tell us what you think: Should teachers be responsible for providing school security by carrying guns? Schools are expected to protect their students, but where does a teacher’s responsibility end?

But when a political pollster or survey taker asks, do you have a responsibility to tell the truth about who you’re voting for?

Approximately 10% of Americans admit they’ve lied to pollsters. In a close election, a 10% false answer rate is more than enough to confuse pundits, confound candidates, and contradict a predicted outcome, especially in the current presidential race.

“This election is exceptionally tricky,” says one pollster.

Perhaps the only thing that is predictable is what people lie about. “They’re not candid on questions about sex, violence in the house, a whole range of things that are tough to talk about,” says Andy Kohut, Director of the Pew Research Center. They’re also not candid about race and age. “People don’t want to be stigmatized,” Kohut explains.

But researchers found that when people answer survey questions privately online, they’re less likely to lie than when they’re questioned by an interviewer, because they tend to say what they think the interviewer wants to hear.

In an experiment, 58% of those surveyed told a phone interviewer they exercise regularly. But when the same question was asked privately online, only 35% made the same claim. The oscillating honesty factor continued across a range of personal topics. 56% told an interviewer they regularly attend religious services, but when they answered privately online, that number dropped to only 25%. And when asked about drinking, 39% told an interviewer they had alcohol in the last week, but online, 53% ’fessed up.

Many political pollsters say they’re taking precautions and adding questions about age and race to current surveys in an effort to better predict the outcome of the November elections. But one expert has a reminder of why we shouldn’t be so surprised when the predictions don’t match the vote, saying, “That’s what anonymous voting allows.”

Tell us what you think: Do you have a responsibility to tell the truth to pollsters? Have you ever mislead a survey taker with inaccurate information? How and why?

The city of Los Angeles recently sank its teeth into the issue by banning any new fast food restaurants from opening in a 32-square-mile area of low-income South Central LA for at least one year.

South Central has the city’s highest concentration of fast food outlets—and the highest rates of diabetes and obesity. 30% of adults in the area are overweight. Saturated by food that experts link to health problems, and with few supermarkets or green grocers offering healthier food and fresh produce, the area has been labeled a ‘food desert.”

The goal of the moratorium is to stop the fast food clock while the city tries to attract grocery stores, sit-down restaurants and other fresh food sources to set up shop in the neighborhood.

But do the new regulations serve up food for thought, or food police?

The intent is not to crush food choices, says the city councilwoman who sponsored the initiative, but to encourage variety and more nutritious options. Supporters of the ban say making healthy decisions about food is difficult when low income residents must choose between the nearest grocery store five miles away or a cheap cheeseburger from around the corner.

Critics of the measure say legislating eating habits won’t work. “Limiting people’s food options is not really the way to go,” says a prominent community leader. “Nor is the role of government to tell people what they should or should not be eating. French fries aren’t contraband.” Opponents also scoff at the suggestion that residents are “intellectually incapable” of deciding what to eat.

The fast food industry says the moratorium is misguided. “What’s next?” asked a spokesperson. “Security guards at the door saying ‘You’re overweight, you can’t have a cheeseburger’?”

The food-and-government debate is being played out far beyond South Central LA as states and cities across the country seek to limit other food choices by banning trans fats in restaurants and bakeries and mandating that calorie counts and nutritional information be publically posted.

“But let’s face it,” said a West Virginia newspaper editorial, “until egg-white omelets are cheaper and tastier than doughnuts, it will remain a gargantuan challenge.”

Tell us what you think: Are food choices a personal responsibility or a matter of public health? Should government ever have the right to dictate what you should or shouldn’t eat?

A parent.

Worse than poison ivy, today’s camp parents are itching to control every aspect of their children’s daily lives at camp very place meant to teach independence and responsibility away from Mom and Dad.

“It kills them not to know that Johnny’s on the basketball court right now, or in the bathroom, or changing his shirt,” says a camp association executive. “Parents expect a totally different kind of communication than they did years ago.”

And at so-called “high end” sleep-away camps—which charge $10,000 summer “tuition”—parents get special treatment from a “parent coordinator,” one of whom describes her job as “almost like a hotel concierge listening to a client’s needs.”

Those needs often include parents’ demands for instant access to their kids, through webcams, cell phones, texting and email. Some parents try to bypass camp directors entirely by smuggling cell phones to their children in hollowed-out books or sewn into stuffed animals. Camp counselors and administrators—in addition to their primary job of looking after their young charges—spend hours each day taking and posting pictures of kids for their high-maintenance parents.

“I have parents calling and saying they saw their child in the background of a picture of other children and he didn’t look happy, or his face looked red, has he been putting on enough suntan lotion, or I haven’t seen my child and I have seen a lot of other children, is my child so depressed he doesn’t want to be in a picture?” says a long-time camp director.

Why the increase in parents-gone-wild? “Nobody goes to school for how to send your child away from you,” explains a parent liaison, noting that in a post-9/11 world, parents need help to “become independent.” In fact, says another camp director, homesick campers aren’t nearly as big a problem as “kid-sick” parents.

Tell us what you think: Should summer camps return to the days of no cameras, no cell phones, no parents? Do parents have a right to know how their kids are spending their time away from home?

But should sportsmanship be more important than winning, even at the Olympics?

Yes, says the International Fair Play Committee, a little-known organization dedicated to rewarding altruistic athletes who believe that fairness is “more important than winning at all costs.”

As an affiliate of the International Olympic Committee, Fair Play hands out awards each year to self-sacrificing athletes, in addition to athletically responsible kids and coaches. Any organization or individual can nominate someone for a prize.

But Fair Play has a problem. They get very few nominations. And though the Olympic Committee made a special public plea for more, recommendations haven’t exactly been pole-vaulting in, even during the Olympic Games.

Fair Play’s president thinks there’s a reason why fairness can’t compete “Victory is a huge motivation,” he explained. “A great number of people make money off athletes. Sports federations, commercial sponsors—everyone pressures them to get to the top. Athletes live under threat.”

Olympic-sized questions of poor sportsmanship aren’t difficult to find.

• The angry Swedish wrestler who disdained and discarded his bronze medal on the floor during the awards ceremony was disqualified for “violating the spirit of fair play at the Games.”

• Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt was criticized by the president of the Olympic Committee for showing a lack of respect to his competitors with his chest-thumping, show-boating gold medal wins.

• When U.S. tennis player James Blake lost to Chile’s Fernando Gonzalez after a match that included a questionable call, Blake accused his opponent of being flat-out dishonorable. “Maybe I shouldn’t expect people to hold themselves to high standards [of] sportsmanship,” he said. “Maybe I did expect a little more out of the Olympics.”

But behind the disappointing headlines, acts of responsible sportsmanship have also played out, albeit more quietly. Dara Torres failed to get the gold, but she didn’t fail to help a Swedish competitor whose swimsuit tore just before her competition. Wildly waiving her arms to get the officials’ attention, Torres delayed the start of the race so her opponent could have a fair chance.

And when aquatic superhero Michael Phelps earned his seventh gold medal by a breathtaking hundredth of a second over second-place Serb swimmer Milorad Cavic, the win was immediately protested by Serbia. But in an unusual gesture of sportsmanship, silver medalist Cavic said, “If it was up to me right now, I would just stop the protest. “I’m not angry. I’m stoked. I’m happy. You’ve got to understand I came into this competition with a goal to win a bronze medal.”

Tell us what you think: Do Olympic athletes have a responsibility beyond winning or doing their best for their country? Should the priority be sportsmanship first, winning second? Which Olympic athletes do you think should be awarded for upholding the standards of fair play?

The slacker.

The loud-mouth in the adjacent cubicle.

The person who leaves the paper jam in the photo copier.

And then there are the rest of us, who like to think of ourselves as responsible.

Except when it comes to a certain chair.

Hot Seat takes us on a hilarious comic roll with the wobbly, broken, reject chair that seems to inhabit every office, clandestinely dumped from the last annoyed worker onto the next unsuspecting colleague, in an endless orbit of not-my-responsibility.

The animated office in Hot Seat is populated by whimsical, bustling rabbits, working away in a warren of cubicles. All is well until the dreaded wobbler chair—lopsided and tipping because of a missing wheel—starts lurking like a land shark, unloaded by one sneaky rabbit onto another and then another.

As the chair gets passed, so too does the buck. Is it no one’s responsibility? Is it everyone’s? Switched and ditched throughout the office, the broken chair logs more miles than a frequent flier, until the situation reaches crisis proportions.

Only when the fur flies do the rabbits realize how far off track the broken chair has taken them, and what they must do to glide back to their tranquil four-wheeling environment.

Pull up a chair—if you dare—for Hot Seat and see how true office chair-ity begins in every cubicle.

The director of Hot Seat came back from a break one day to find that her perfectly decent office chair had been replaced with an imperfectly indecent one.

Broken. Alarmingly fuchsia-colored.

So low to the ground it wouldn’t roll.

But where some people find irritation, Janet found inspiration. In this case, the chair switch-a-roo was the genius genesis for Hot Seat industrious rabbits, who must come to terms with their own carrot-and-chair calamity.

Don’t worry about Janet, though. She traded in her broken seat for one with a better fit—the director’s chair.

Responsibility Project: This film clearly focuses around the notion of office etiquette – why did you choose this topic?

Janet: The office is an environment that everyone can identify with, and a good setting for animation. Rows of cubicles with unrelated people (or rabbits) who have to interact can lead to interesting conflicts.

Responsibility Project: How long did it take to make this film, from start to finish?

Janet: Development of the idea, and working out the story kinks took about six weeks. The animation, coloring and backgrounds took about six months.

Responsibility Project: Can you walk us through the process?

Janet: I started with rough sketches of characters and the environment, and a written story treatment. I then developed the story, along with the central characters, and from there drew up a storyboard. The frames were scanned into the computer to create an animatic, which had each scene timed out, and a few sound effects. From there all the animation was drawn right in the computer using a program called “Toon Boom”. Backgrounds were created in Photoshop, and the scenes were colored and combined with the backgrounds in Toon Boom. I edited as I went along, retiming and reworking the scenes as needed.

Responsibility Project: How many different people were involved in the making of this film?

Janet: Four other people helped with coloring, animation and backgrounds. Everything was done over the internet, with the work being done in Los Angeles and Montréal. There were several others involved in digital compositing and sound.

Responsibility Project: Why did you decide to use bunnies as the main characters?

Janet: I guess I was just in a rabbity mood. I think the rabbits fit nicely into the office environment.

Responsibility Project: What do you hope people will think or feel after watching this?

Janet: I hope that people will have fun with the silliness of the story, but also recognize that the situation is not so different from real life. Maybe they will wonder what they would do in a similar situation, or think about being considerate to their neighbors. Maybe one of them is the one that took my chair and will feel remorse.

Responsibility Project: What project are you working on next?

Janet: I am finishing a children’s book called “The Delicious Bug”, which is based on the film Dinner For Two also being shown as part of The Responsibility Project.

I have been developing an adult animated series called “Penguins Behind Bars”– a dark and funny prison series featuring a cast of vixen she-penguins. Hopefully it will be picked up by broadcasters and we will produce it.

But do you have the right to bare underwear—or sheets, shirts, socks, and the rest of your laundry—on an outdoor clothesline on your private property?

Perhaps not, if you’re one of tens of millions of Americans who live in houses and condos governed by local homeowners associations, many of which ban outdoor clotheslines for aesthetic reasons.

There’s more on the line than laundry, which the associations contend is responsible for lower property values.

“When realtors show a home, as a buyer do you want to see clothes hanging in the backyard of the neighboring home?” asks a supporter of the ban. “Or if clotheslines are allowed, what if a homeowner chooses to leave the same clothes hanging for weeks on end?”

But where some see an eyesore flapping in the breeze, others see an answer blowing in the wind. According to the Right to Dry movement, clothes dryers account for five to ten per cent of residential electricity use, second only to refrigerators. Line drying allows environmentally responsible consumers to reduce their energy use and save money.

“Everybody has to do their laundry,” says a proponent of the movement. “The clothesline is beautiful, gorgeous, sentimental and nostalgic for many.”

And the clothesline has become the focus of protective legislation. Florida, Utah, and Colorado have enacted laws upholding their citizens’ right to dry. Seven other states are considering similar safeguards.

That the clothesline would be hung out to dry as an unsightly endangered species has left many people scratching their heads and putting their thoughts on the line. “We see clothes, including underwear, in stores all the time, and no one I heard was offended,” said one. “What’s the worst that can happen hanging laundry?” asked another. “Heaven forbid you might actually have to talk to a neighbor hanging theirs.” And this: “I believe that we all have to take some responsibility in ‘cutting back’ and ‘going green.’ It just seems that a ban on clotheslines is a step backward and shows irresponsibility on the part of the homeowner’s associations.”

Tell us what you think: Should outdoor clotheslines be banned as irresponsible, view-ruining relics of the past? Should you show greater responsibility to a homeowner’s association or to what you think is best for your family and the environment? Where do we draw the line—if clotheslines can be banned for aesthetic reasons, what about pink flamingos, holiday decorations, and other personal public displays?

It’s the current mantra of environmental responsibility.

Many consumers have reduced their primary footprint by making changes in their daily lives, like shrinking electricity use, switching to more energy efficient light bulbs at home, and cutting back—or cutting out—driving a car.

Consumers who want to reduce their so-called secondary footprint have to make tougher decisions about products and services beyond their daily control, weighing the whole lifecycle of the things they consume, as well as the environmental practices of the businesses they deal with.

But in many cases, going green costs green—and raises a question about whether consumers should be responsible for paying the price of reducing a business’s carbon hoof marks.

Some small businesses are now asking their customers to pay extra to help them, the Wall Street Journal reports
, citing a San Francisco engineering firm that tacks a modest surcharge on to every bill to help pay for the company’s own renewable energy credits as a way of reducing its carbon footprint.

So far, no customer has refused to pay the extra fee. “I think they would feel too guilty,” said the CEO.

But the answers were very different when the Journal posed this question to its readers: “Would you mind paying extra to help a business reduce its carbon footprint?”

“Yes, I would mind,” one person wrote. “I do not ask you to pay for my charity work. It is pretty arrogant and self-righteous to ‘slip’ that into the bill.” Another reader was also opposed: “I would not pay something to someone to do something they should morally be doing anyway.” And there was this more business-like response: “Couldn’t they just bill more and not charge a separate fee?

Tell us what you think: Should consumers be financially responsible for helping businesses go green? Where does personal responsibility end and business responsibility begin when it comes to the cost of helping the environment?

That’s the most common response law professor David Cole gets when he calls on disengaged students during class at Georgetown University. The question, Cole says, “is usually asked while the student glances up from the laptop screen that otherwise occupies his or her field of vision.”

The laptop—the favorite in-class tool for college and university students across the country—is coming unplugged.

When used responsibly—for taking notes or quickly accessing research—a laptop provides valuable educational support. But when used irresponsibly—for watching YouTube, surfing the web, emailing, IM-ing, playing games, checking sports scores, and shopping for shoes instead of engaging in class — laptops become the scourge of professors, some of whom are now banning them, especially in law schools.

“I was happy to compete with Minesweeper and solitaire,” said University of Michigan law professor Don Herzog, but not “the entire internet.” Herzog banned all laptops from his classes for a day, and was so “stunned by how much better the class was,” that he has vowed to make the embargo permanent in the fall.

Professor Herzog is not alone in his class action.

At Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, professors have nixed classroom laptops as well. At the University of Chicago Law School, classroom Wi-Fi was recently cut in response to an “epidemic” of web browsing. And at UCLA School of Law, when the meandering minds of the country’s future lawyers need to be jolted back from cyberspace to the Socratic method, professors can activate a “kill switch” to disable classroom Wi-Fi.

Many students disdain their professors’ attempts at online mind control, saying if classes weren’t so boring, they wouldn’t look for so many distractions. Ann Althouse, a professor from the University of Wisconsin Law School agrees with the students. “The idea that we’re going to somehow save these students from being distracted is a bit absurd,” she said. “Especially in law school, I’m on the side of individual responsibility and freedom.”

Tell us what you think: Should students be busted down for booting up in class? Should professors be responsible for making lectures and classes interesting enough to hold students’ attention? Do students have a responsibility to pay attention?

When a student or professor uses brain enhancement drugs, he or she is likely to be called smart and focused.

Is chemically boosting your brain for an unfair advantage over competitors the same as chemically boosting your body for an edge to beat others? That’s the question at the center of a new debate about drugs and cheating.

Originally prescribed for people with medical conditions like attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and narcolepsy, brain enhancement drugs such as Ritalin and Provigil are increasingly being used by students preparing for a test and academics and other professionals gearing up for that big presentation.

Users of the drugs say they are able to focus more intensely, work faster, and be more creative.

So what’s the matter with grey matter boosting? Plenty, say critics of the practice. “The original purpose of medicine is to heal the sick, not turn healthy people into gods,” says biotech author Francis Fukuyama, cautioning that the increasing use of brain-boosting drugs could unfairly create a new category of haves and have-nots. He and other critics question whether the continued use of the drugs for the purpose of mental advantage will change the connection between human struggle and human character-building.

Others see less profound implications, as well as a distinction between brain doping and body doping. “I think the analogy with sports doping is really misleading,” says neuro-psychologist Martha Farah, “because in sports it’s all about competition…who’s the best runner or home run hitter.” For students or academics, Dr. Farah says, “there is an element of competition, but it’s secondary. The main purpose is to try to learn things, to get experience, to write papers, to do experiments. So in that case if you can do it better because you’ve got some drug on board, that would on the face of things seem like a plus.”

Doctors note that the drugs can be addictive and can produce side effects including restlessness and irritability.

But a participant in a radio talk show questioned all the hubbub “Who hasn’t had coffee or cola before an exam or important meeting? The main issue should be whether the substance is safe. If people can do a better job by eating a good breakfast or taking a drug, who should complain?”

Tell us what you think: Should chemical brain doping be considered unethical, just as body doping is? Is it fair for some students to gain an advantage over others by taking brain-boosters before a test like the SAT?

Dogs on downers.

Pets on Prozac.

Fido has a new medicine chest. And though it’s still stocked with worm and flea treatments, it increasingly includes medications that were originally developed for humans. On the front shelf: behavior modification and “lifestyle” drugs, now for pets.

Is your dog overweight? The first canine obesity drug is available to help him slim down. Is your dog lonely? “Reconcile” was developed to help man’s best friend deal with separation anxiety when man has to leave his best friend alone all day. The drug works like Prozac, though the doggie version is chewable and tastes like beef. Is your pooch having “senior moments?” There’s a pill for that too—the same medication used to treat Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases in humans.

Are pets mimicking their owners’ behavioral and lifestyle problems?

“All of the behavioral issues that we have created in ourselves, we are now creating in our pets,” says Dr. Nicholas Dodman, founder of the Tufts University Animal Behavior Clinic, “because they live in the same unhealthy environments that we do.”

According to a New York Times article titled “Pill-Popping Pets,” Dr. Dodman’s theory suggests that humans and their pets share similar causes for what ails them. “Whether cubicle or cage-bound, we get too little exercise; we don’t hunt, run or play enough to produce naturally mood-elevating neurochemicals.”

And the new prescription treatments, The Times says, are sometimes more for the convenience of owners than they are for the health of the pets.

Modern owners are increasingly trying to “sterilize” pet ownership, says veterinarian and animal behavior specialist Ian Dunbar. “What people want is a pet that is on par with a TiVo, that its activity, play and affection are on demand,” Dr. Dunbar says. “Then, when they’re done, they want to turn it off.”

“In the wild, the dog’s major activity is looking for food,” Dr. Dunbar explains. “What most owners do is they feed the dog in the bowl, and within two minutes you’ve stolen his raison d’etre. So now the dog is looking for activity, which we label ‘trouble’ and diagnose as all sorts of things like compulsion and separation anxiety.”

Tell us what you think: Are we responsible for making our pets fat…driving them to despair…making them lose their minds? Could it be that when we look at our pets, we see a bit too much of ourselves?

But a recent public admission from former tennis great Andrea Jaeger was startling for very different reasons. Jaeger said she purposely allowed Martina Navratilova to beat her in the 1983 Wimbledon final. And her rationale for doing so involved an ethical decision virtually unheard of in the competitive arena of pro sports.

“I went on the court in complete peace,” said Jaeger, “knowing that giving the match away was the right thing to do.”

Jaeger was 18 at the time, and unbeknownst to many people, she harbored a strong dislike for the ruthlessness of pro tennis. She also had a deep devotion to God and an overwhelming desire to help kids in need. She prayed secretly and played competitively. “I really didn’t want to be world number one,” she said, “but who do you have that conversation with when you’re young and number two in the world? It’s not something people want to hear.”

The day before the Wimbledon match, Jaeger had a fight with her father/manager over—among other things—a bag of potato chips she ate. She ran to the apartment next door to call a taxi to escape the paternal wrath. The apartment was occupied by Navratilova, whose trainer let the distraught Jaeger in. Navratilova looked at Jaeger, who was visibly upset, then turned away without saying a word or offering help.

The indifference hurt Jaeger. But she also believed she had unfairly jeopardized Navratilova’s concentration in preparation for the match. “I had to make it right,” Jaeger said, not wanting her off-court actions to trigger an opponent’s loss.

So Jaeger decided that intentionally losing the match to Navratilova was the right thing to do. “During the match, I missed balls on purpose,” Jaeger said. “I hit right to Martina.” Winning at Wimbledon, she said, “meant more to Martina anyway.”

Two years later, she suffered a career-ending shoulder injury.

Today, Andrea Jaeger is no longer a tennis player. She is Sister Andrea, a Dominican nun in the Episcopal Church. Her days are dedicated to helping kids suffering from cancer, neglect, and poverty through the Little Star Foundation, a charity she founded with her tennis winnings.

“I’ve always been called to help those in need,” she said. “It’s just been in my soul since I was a child. I think that’s why I struggled so much on the tennis circuit, because you have to be selfish to succeed in an individual sport.”

Tell us what you think: Is there a place for extreme ethics in the extreme world of pro sports? Is deliberately losing the right thing to do? Instead of throwing the match, do you think Andrea Jaeger should have dropped out and told the world why?

When role models fall in the field of sports, what do you tell the kids?

The story of Josh Hamilton, says a chorus of sports reporters. “Maybe you’ve heard it before,” wrote one. “Some stories are worth hearing again.”

Hamilton is the comeback story of the year, a baseball center fielder for the Texas Rangers who hit an amazing 28 home runs in the first round of the recent Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium. But more amazing is the fact that Hamilton had previously been banned from baseball because he was addicted to crack cocaine.

For three years, Hamilton fed his habit and starved his career. Then one day he showed up at his grandmother’s door and experienced the kind of epiphany that fans love. “He saw something in her eyes that made him choose life over drugs and alcohol,” said a reporter. “Baseball is a game of second chances.” And eight attempts at rehab, in Hamilton’s case.

But it was Hamilton’s love of baseball that ultimately saved him, the crack of a bat stronger than crack cocaine. “Addiction is such a big thing,” Hamilton said. “Any time somebody comes up and tells me that my story has inspired them, it lets me know that’s what it’s about.”

On the night of the 28 homers, four teenagers chosen by a national children’s charity happily retrieved the balls that didn’t sail out of the park. “I think the highlight for everyone was cheering on Josh Hamilton,” said a representative of the charity, who noted that the kids were inspired by the power hitter because he overcame adversity.

Tell us what you think: Does every fallen sports hero deserve a second chance? Who does? Who doesn’t?

But does a responsible mom also pack a gun?

The question was recently raised on the website BabyCenter, which chronicles all things motherhood, from conception to inconceivably picky eaters and back-talking three year olds.

On the site, a mom blogger described the terrifying experience of a mother who was attacked at home in a safe neighborhood by a rapist with a gun. The woman fought, the attacker fled, and the blogger posed a question: “Do you think that every mother should own a gun?”

The point-blank debate about point-blank defense revealed that some moms are packing heat.

“I carry a Keltec 380 (small pistol) on my hip everyday,” revealed a mother of a one year old and a two year old. “I feel comfortable knowing that I will be able to defend my kids and I if we are in a life-threatening situation.”

Another mother—eight months pregnant and with a toddler—wrote that her husband works the night shift, and “our gun is the only way I could defend myself and my children should someone intend to do us harm.”

And there was this disclosure from a police officer mom: “I keep a loaded 9mm in my Coach diaper bag.”

Suddenly, it seems, mothers with guns are everywhere—movie star moms included. Recent news reports quote actress Angelina Jolie as saying she keeps a gun at home for security, and that “if anybody comes into my home and tries to hurt my kids, I’ve no problem shooting them.”

Tell us what you think: Should a mother’s responsibility to protect her children include having a gun?

Especially in summer.

‘Tis the season for cranking up the air conditioning, as shops and stores across the country blast arctic air out their front doors, wide open, non stop.

But if you embrace the door-busting chill, are you a cool customer or an unwitting accomplice to an irresponsible environmental crime?

“It’s about as wasteful an energy practice as one can imagine,” says an environmental attorney about running ACs full throttle with exterior doors open. “It’s like leaving the gasoline station pumps gushing fuel whether the vehicles are filling up or not.”

In New York City, where the mega-consumption of electricity in hot weather can lead to blackouts, brownouts, and assorted other meltdowns, some citizens are aghast at doors agape, with cold air “pouring wastefully, senselessly—outrageously—onto the sidewalk”, as one newspaper columnist described it.

Consumers who confront store clerks about squandering energy are invariably dismissed with the most frigid of responses: “It’s company policy.” A city councilwoman introduced legislation to stop the practice, saying businesses won’t do the right thing unless the law forces them. Her proposal includes fines of $200 for each open door or window. But the initiative lacks the support of the mayor, who believes it’s not the city’s responsibility to force cold change.

That has left residents who see red to act green on their own, going to offending establishments and closing the doors. The super-heated debate could lead to a slippery slope, cautions a University of Toronto psychologist. People waste energy in all sorts of ways, he said. “Should there be a law against leaving the lights on unnecessarily?”

Tell us what you think: Should wasting energy be illegal? If it’s not cool to crank out cold air, who’s responsible for shutting the door?

“I was 14 the first time I got falling down drunk”, Time Magazine reporter John Cloud admits in a recent article examining underage drinking. Back then, Cloud says, such antics were viewed as a “right of passage.” Today, however, an increase in the number of young hard-core drinkers has heightened concern. So is it time for parents to take a different approach toward kids and alcohol?

“At first it sounds a little nutty,” Cloud says, “but you might consider drinking with your kids.”

Drinking with your kids at home, Cloud writes—which he cautions is not the same as buying them alcohol for a party—is “a good way to teach responsible drinking behavior.”

The idea is to present alcohol not as an “alluring risk,” but as part of ordinary family life.

Addiction expert and psychologist Stanton Peele says he started giving his daughter “a few sips” of alcohol as a child at family meals. The key, Peele says, is not to make “a big deal about it.” When the girl turned 16, she was allowed to have a full glass of whatever the adults were drinking. “A second glass probably doesn’t make sense,” Peele explained, “but making hard-and-fast rules creates the sense that alcohol is some magical potion.”

But for many families, “demystifying” alcohol by consuming it with their teenagers may produce a parenting hang-over. And there is additional concern that alcohol could hurt teens’ developing brains.

Tell us what you think: Can parents teach responsibility by drinking with their kids?

Chase, Siearra, Jenna, and Carlos are all students. And all wise beyond their years. Of various ages and disparate backgrounds, these kids nevertheless share a common denominator: each has taken on a measure of personal responsibility. Some small, some big.

No one demanded their actions. No one told them how to proceed. They simply saw a challenge and stepped up to the plate. With matter-of-fact eloquence, the four students deliver a profound lesson for the rest of us: There is no age requirement for doing the right thing.

Many people who face adversity see an insurmountable dead-end. These kids saw a garden and made responsibility grow.

Growing Up was created by Geoffrey O’Connor, Paul Speaker & Ken Yagoda.

For a discussion guide with questions, please click here.

Yes, say three men in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The men—all city-employed water department workers—were on the job when they discovered an abandoned safe at the side of a road. The safe had been stolen by robbers who broke through the wall of a local bank during a winter ice storm.

Inside was $11,000, credit cards, several bags of blank traveler’s checks, some presumably valuable watches, and bank records.

The three workers notified authorities of their find, and the stolen safe was returned to the bank.

But the story didn’t end there. Two of the three workers told the local newspaper they felt they hadn’t been properly thanked—by the city or the bank—and suggested that virtue might not be its own reward.

“We did the right thing,” said the 62-year-old supervisor of the group. “No one even knew that we were out there, and we (still) kept the money secure.”

Another of the men said, “We did the right thing, but are the other people doing the right thing? That’s my question to the bank.”

In response, the bank manager and the mayor offered thanks, but newspaper readers offered criticism. In a letter to the editor, one wondered, “Would they have not done it if they had known they wouldn’t get the proper praise or reward?” Another reader wrote, “They did the right thing. But do we have to be rewarded for doing the right thing?”

Tell us what you think: Should the men have been financially rewarded by the bank? If you found valuable property belonging to a bank or other company, but you knew in advance you wouldn’t be rewarded for its return, would that change the way you dealt with your find?

This is one of the best family movies of the summer, a refreshingly wholesome story with a winning heroine, an absorbing story, and a touching conclusion. The details of the era, including the harsh financial circumstances, are vivid but gently conveyed. And like all good stories, it creates an excellent opportunity for family conversation about the factors to consider in making responsible choices. Some of the questions families might want to consider are:

Who in the movie best demonstrated responsibility? Which characters did the most to help others?

Why were some of the characters in the movie ashamed of being poor? Why were others not ashamed?

Will made an unusual choice to help Countee. Do you think it was the right one?

Why did Miss Bond change her mind?

Why did Kit trust Will? Why did she trust Miss Bond?

Kit has to do some things that are very hard for her. Which were less hard than she expected and what did she learn from them?

If you were going to write a story about your experiences for a newspaper, what would it be about and why?

For more reviews from Movie Mom, visit her blog.

But is there also an age when people are no longer expected to be responsible?

How about 73? That’s the age a California widower named Robert Pyle was when he made a series of decisions that triggered a financial freefall, resulting in the loss of his $650,000 home and $500,000 life savings.

Now 81, Mr. Pyle is suing the financial institutions and various people he trusted with his money, claiming he should be compensated because he is too old to bear full responsibility for his actions.

“I still make pretty good decisions about most things,” said Mr. Pyle, a retired aerospace engineer. “But for others, I guess I’m not as sharp as I was before, and people take advantage of that.”

Mr. Pyle is part of a growing trend of older Americans filing lawsuits against people and companies they say defrauded them of precious financial resources. Their argument is the same: because they are older they should not be held responsible.

According to the National Center on Elder Abuse, protecting senior citizens from financial victimization—even when it’s caused by their own mistakes—is now critical. “If we don’t solve this,” said a spokeswoman, “millions of older people will suddenly be reliant on their families or the government.”

After Mr. Pyle’s loss, he was forced to move into a small room in his stepdaughter’s house. “I guess I’m just kind of waiting for the end,” he said.

But allowing people to void contracts, get refunds, and abdicate responsibility simply because of advanced age is unfair, critics insist. One of the defendants in Mr. Pyle’s lawsuit says “There is no business on earth that can function if its customers can say, ‘I’m tired of abiding by this contract, so I want out because I’m old.’”

Tell us what you think: Is there an age when we should no longer be held responsible for our actions? Should elderly people be exempt from responsibility if they make bad financial decisions?

“I don’t have fertility problems,” she wrote, “but I would like IVF because it would be better for my career and lifestyle if I could give birth to multiples rather than prolong my family planning.” The woman then posed this question: “Is it immoral to want fertility treatments to become pregnant with more than one baby?”

That was in 2003, and the responses have continued since, some barbed, all blunt.

“Do you realize how insane and ridiculous you sound?”
“You are better off with a goldfish that doesn’t require your time.”
“Not only are you talking about something immoral, but something that’s just wrong!”

Many women wrote to tell their own stories of the difficulty and danger involved in multiple births, aghast at what they saw as a selfish quest for a “designer” family. “Putting your babies’ lives at risk for the sake of convenience is incredibly irresponsible,” one stated. A mother of triplets answered the original question head-on: “It’s not immoral to try fertility treatments when they’re unnecessary, but it is unethical.”

Others were less judgmental, like this mother who was pregnant with twins as she responded. “You have to do what’s right for you. If you want more than one child, then it’s your decision, no one else’s.” And another woman attempted to create room for discussion. “There are more of us out there that have had that same thought,” she wrote, “although some may not admit it.”

Tell us what you think: Is having unnecessary fertility treatments for career and lifestyle reasons immoral…irresponsible…acceptable?

It’s a debate that continues as the trend for not vaccinating children increases.

Parents who believe that vaccinations are linked to autism, or who object for religious or other reasons, balk at government regulations that bar their unvaccinated children from attending school if they don’t have the required shots. One anti-vaccination group calls forced vaccination “a violation of human rights.”

But those on the opposite side of the argument say not vaccinating violates the rights of others. According to officials at the Centers for Disease Control, “The decision not to vaccinate is a decision for your child but also a decision for society.” They say that unlike other medical issues where refusing treatment affects only the patient, refusing vaccinations puts others at risk as well, including newborns and people with suppressed immune systems.

Parents of unimmunized children rely on the vast majority of kids who do get their shots, figuring there’s little polio, measles, chicken pox or other pathogens to be found among so many protected kids. But with recent measles outbreaks in four states, that protection may not be enough. “We are seeing outbreaks that look different, concentrated among intentionally unimmunized people,” says an immunization official. “I hope they’re not the beginning of a worse trend.”

Tell us what you think: When it comes to vaccinations, do parents have a responsibility beyond their own children?

It wasn’t the first time Gloucester made international headlines. The tragic 1991 loss at sea of a Gloucester fishing boat and its crew prompted the book and the movie “The Perfect Storm.”

Now a tidal wave of finger-pointing about who or what was responsible for so many pregnancies tipped toward a “perfect storm” of outside influences.

Some blamed Gloucester’s depressed local economy and the demise of its once-thriving fishing industry. Others indicted so-called broken families and directionless youth. Gloucester High, it was suggested, had brought the predicament on itself, by providing easily accessible on-campus day care for the babies of student mothers. And Hollywood shouldered its share of responsibility—the movie “Juno” was blamed for glamorizing unwed teen motherhood, and the media’s obsession with pregnant celebs having babies as “accessories” was called out as well.

But soon cracks began to appear in the cultural blame game. A reproductive specialist noted that the pregnancy trend at Gloucester High began before “Juno” hit the theaters. Gloucester’s mayor said the pregnancy rate was a statistical “blip” and rued the lack of health education funding. And the School Superintendent stated that he’d never heard the term “pact” used by the students, only by the media.

After days of silence, one of the girls finally appeared on national television. 17-year-old Lindsey Oliver denied the existence of a pact. “There was a group of girls already pregnant that decided they were going to help each other to finish school and raise their kids together,” she said. “I think it was just a coincidence.”

Tell us what you think: Are the Gloucester teen pregnancies the result of a “perfect storm” of outside influences, or does responsibility lie elsewhere?

Spying, and proud of it, say parental proponents of stealth, who insist that protecting their children has no limits. “If I’m responsible for their actions, then I should be able to snoop,” says a mother in Tennessee. A Texas mom is point-blank: “I have made it perfectly clear there is no privacy in my house.”

And no difficulty violating it. Just a single piece of spy ware makes subterfuge simple, allowing parents to view everything their kid does online, including both sides of IM conversations. Parents who don’t like what they see can secretly shut down the kid’s computer by remote, then blame it on a mysterious network problem.

“I can see why some people worry that parents will become too controlling,” says a Texas father of five, “but I’ve found that technology actually lets you give kids more freedom.” By controlling what his kids do and see, he says, he hopes to “eliminate” the possibility that they’ll make bad decisions that could bring lasting harm.

Care or control? Insight or intrusion? The debate continues, especially in the increasingly popular grade-tracking programs that allow parents almost hourly access to their child’s progress in school, with the cooperation of teachers. Depending on the software, parents can check test and homework grades, disciplinary notices, attendance, missed assignments, and their child’s daily class ranking, on command.

A Georgia mother who used to incessantly check her child’s school progress by logging on each day at 6AM, has re-thought her dependence on electronically tracking every aspect of her daughter’s daily life. “It speaks to all your neuroses as a parent, all this need to control, that pressure to make sure everything is perfect,” she said. “How are these kids going to learn to be responsible adults?”

Tell us what you think: Should parents use technology to monitor their kids? Is it parenting, spying, responsible, or something else?

That was the mind-boggling moral journey undertaken by a writer named David Holthouse, who, along the way, was forced to define and redefine his views of personal responsibility.

At age 7, Holthouse was sexually assaulted by a high school football player. He wrote about the attack in his diary but told no one—not even his parents, who were close friends of the assailant’s parents.

For 25 years, Holthouse kept the awful secret. Then he learned that his attacker had moved to the Denver area, the same place Holthouse—by then a journalist—had moved to work for a local newspaper.

First he fixated on the memory.

Then he fixated on murder.

“I arrived at a point in my mind,” Holthouse said, “where it seemed to me that murder was entirely rational, justifiable and even a morally responsible course of action.”

With a gun, a silencer, and a plan, Holthouse staked out the man’s house and followed him to and from work. But before he could lure him to an out-of-the-way baseball field—“a good place for a killing”—his mother inadvertently foiled the plot. She happened upon the old diary, read about the assault, and informed the assailant’s parents.

So the murder Holthouse planned became the murder he wrote. In a remarkable newspaper article, he divulged the chilling details of his intent to kill, but not his would-be victimR