lol yeah it's so difficult not to give your credit card to your 11 yo kid
I think the issue is that when a lot of people react to these sorts of stories, they're not really seeing how the situation would actually play out. I mean, if you assume that the scenario was "kid asks for credit card and dimwitteed parent handed it over without a second thought," then yeah, it was a transparently awful idea worthy of derision from the start. But what's far more likely is that the parent
did initially resist, was eventually worn down by the persistence children are renowned for, cautiously relented, and then eventually became complacent when everything seemed to be going according to plan.
I'm not saying that excuses it. I'm just saying that I can empathize a bit with how these mistakes happen. And I say that not as someone who has or is planning to give their kid access to a credit card (my kid is three and doesn't understand how credit cards even work yet), I just understand that one is always going to let their guard down in some fashion. I'd rather reserve my derision for more harmful forms of neglect than this. Mind you, this was obviously a bad idea, but hindsight is 20/20.