Under the common law (the legal rules we inherited from England and still apply in some form), parents were generally not held responsible, on the basis of their parenthood alone, for their children’s acts. Courts did not hold parents potentially liable to every possible victim of their minor children’s careless acts; and even when the child acted deliberately, the law required something more, such as proof that the parent knew of the child’s propensity to so act, and failed to do anything about it. Arguably, this approach focuses on protecting the parent, not the victim.