Should prominent adults (e.g. athletes) be held responsible as role models for young children even if they do not consider or present themselves as such?

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I do not think we have a right to expect prominent adults who do not represent themselves as role models to serve in that capacity, or to be held responsible for failing in that capacity, when they do.

To take a very controversial recent example, Tiger Woods became a celebrity because he is extraordinarily good at golf. He did allow and encourage that celebrity to be constructed into a highly marketable persona for endorsements and advertisements, and for these, he did take on a certain responsibility to behave in certain ways--or at any rate, not to behave in certain other ways (and I am sure that, as a matter of contract, his responsibilities were stipulated clearly). In failing to live in accordance with these quite legal stipulations, many of those who had contracted his services or used his name have now decided to hold him responsible for some things he has been discovered to have done, and many of his most lucrative contracts have thus been revoked or not renewed. But he is still, we assume, an excellent golfer, and just because we may not approve of his (now admitted) infidelities to his wife, it would be wholly inappropriate not to allow him to continue to play golf professionally, lest some of our (golf-admiring) children decide they would like to become "like Tiger."

The processes by which society singles out people to serve as role models for children is not (or at least mostly not) under control by those who are thereby represented as such. It makes no sense to hold people responsible for that which is not under their voluntary control. Insofar as Tiger Woods or anyone else does voluntarily seek to be identified in such a way, then we can fault them for their violations and seek to remove them from the list of those we regard as role models. But if this particular case or any of the many others like it haven't already proven the point for me, it should by now be seen as simply obvious that, as a society, we are doing an extremely poor job of identifying people as role models for our children. Highly successful professional athletes are credible as role models of being highly successful professional athletes. So unless being a highly successful professional athlete is our highest aspiration for our children, to use such a person as a role model is obviously foolish on its face. But it is our own foolishness, not the athlete's (unless, as I said, the athlete voluntarily promotes his or her own image as an example of a good role model for other more important aspects of human life).

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