When fatal life-changing tragic events take place, we sometimes look for blame. There is a difference between systemic tragic events and still difficult yet non-systemic events. Systemic events like the Tuskegee Experiment, the Flint Water Crisis, continued gender disparities in healthcare, and multiple ongoing genocides in Sudan, Congo, Palestine, and more places are systemic injustices. Systemic injustices require accountability and systemic change. After Tuskegee, there were changes implemented to protect individuals in research to require informed consent and approval from governing boards for research. When systems fail people, we must demand better systems.
But when children die in a car accident, snow event, swimming incident, health-related tragedy, or other similar events, these events often become public in a different way. People sometimes want to scrutinize who is at fault, what people should have done differently, or how the situation should be handled. Many times, we start to blame the parent or others about what occurred.
In my practice, I see this often. Individuals far removed with external information start to offer thoughts on how people should have handled the situation, how parents should be more aware of what their kids are doing, or how more safeguards should be installed. Individuals closer might start to discuss who they should support, and lines often become divided within a community.
Why We Reach for Blame
This impulse to blame has a psychological function. We separate ourselves from the unimaginable when we are able to recognize what someone did incorrectly. By saying things like "I would never let my child do that" or "I would have been more careful," we shield ourselves from the horrible reality that tragedies can be random. That sometimes terrible things can happen despite our best efforts, our love, diligence, and best attempts.
Western culture, steeped in individualism, teaches us that outcomes are the result of individual choices. We know evidence-based safety practices reduce risk, and this knowledge is valuable. But there's a difference between implementing reasonable precautions and the capitalist promise that perfect consumption and perfect parenting equal perfect safety. A myth that leaves no room for the randomness and vulnerability inherent to being human.
In fatal events, online systems offer us an illusion of comfort to judge while not facing the difficulty of our internal fears. Social media rewards our outrage with engagement. Algorithms prioritize judgment over empathy. While avoiding the actual task of being present to sadness, we publicly express our concern. We comment on the tragedies of strangers as though we are familiar with them, as though our viewpoint is significant, as though our analysis is beneficial to anyone.
What Blame Does to Grieving Communities
We frequently overlook the effect this has on the bereaved. In addition to the indescribable pain, parents who have lost children also have to deal with public criticism. They relive every second and every choice, questioning whether they could have stopped the inevitable. Their trauma is exacerbated by our blame. They become isolated as a result. It shatters the community support that they much require. The tendency to "pick a side" destroys the group support that bereavement demands for those who were more directly affected by the event. Family members stop speaking. Friends withdraw. Communities divide over who deserves support, as if grief is a finite resource, as if we must ration our compassion.
This fracturing happens precisely when people need community most. Grief spreads through relational networks. Everyone connected to a tragedy carries some of its weight. When we turn on each other, we lose the opportunity to hold that weight together.
The Alternative: Presence Over Judgment
In these moments, we often forget to remember the most important component is connecting with those grieving, being present with each other, building community, and offering support.
Being present looks like showing up without trying to fix. It looks like bringing food, watching other children, sitting in silence. It looks like asking "what do you need?" and actually listening to the answer. It looks like bearing witness to pain without trying to make it make sense.
Many Indigenous and collectivist cultures understand what we have forgotten: that grief is communal work. That tragedy requires the whole community to gather, to hold, to witness. That we don't isolate the grieving but surround them. That we don't need to understand or explain to offer care.
When difficult moments occur, we should focus on being present for families. Understanding their needs. Sitting with their grief. This means resisting the urge to offer explanations, to share similar stories, to minimize pain. It means accepting that we cannot make it better. We can only make sure no one grieves alone.
Learning Without Blame
We can quietly learn within our family systems by proactively creating safety plans without placing blame. There is a difference between accountability in systemic failure and blame in individual tragedy. We can update our own practices, have conversations about water safety or car seats or medical decisions, without projecting that onto families in crisis.
We can help our children understand grief, open their hearts to others who might want to sit with sadness. We can model for them that when someone is hurting, we move toward them, not away. We can teach them that sometimes terrible things happen not because someone made a mistake, but because we are human and vulnerable and life is unpredictable.
Holding Complexity
This doesn't mean we never ask questions. Sometimes there are genuine concerns about safety, about choices made. But there is a difference between a community privately supporting a family while also gently addressing concerns, and the public performance of judgment that serves our own anxiety more than anyone's safety.
We can hold multiple truths: that parents do their best with what they have, that mistakes happen, that some tragedies are truly unavoidable, that grief deserves compassion, and that we can learn and grow without blame.
A Call to Grieve Differently
The next time you hear about a tragedy, before you form an opinion about what should have been done differently, ask yourself: What fear am I protecting myself from by finding fault? What would it mean to sit with the randomness, the vulnerability, the reality that this could happen to anyone?
And then ask: What does this family need? How can my community show up? How can I move toward grief instead of away from it?
Because in the end, none of our judgment brings back what was lost. But our presence, our witnessing, our collective holding of unbearable weight. That makes grief survivable. That builds the kind of communities where people can endure the unendurable.