it's absolutely doable. back in the day when life was tough, kids routinely had to put in serious work around the home, including being responsible for taking care of their younger siblings to some degree.
the difference is that those kids were raised appropriately to be able to handle these responsibilities, whereas the rekieta kids apparently were pampered and had everything taken care of by mommy and the nanny. but then mommy falls down the coke hole and the nanny quits, now all of a sudden nothing is getting done and the kids have no idea how to deal with it since they were never trained or prepared for this situation.
tl;dr: a 16 year old is definitely capable of doing the laundry and cooking dinner for his siblings - if he has been taught and trained on how it's done. i think that's probably where a lot of these comments are coming from: "i was able to take care of these things at 16 so why shouldn't rekietas kids be able to do the same?"
Listen, the difference is, those kids who HELPED also had mom and dad doing most of the parenting. Also, those people saying that shit probably didn't have 4 siblings, it was likely just a 16 year old and a 13 year old hanging out together after public school while their parents were getting off of work.
Also, even if he
could take care of all of his siblings in addition to taking care of himself, doing his own homework, studying for SATs, looking into colleges, maybe having a girfriend, and having friends he wants to hang out with?
It's too much to ask of any one kid. I am all for the older children helping, but this wasn't helping, Rikieta and Kyala were not there at all. They were GONE fucking whores, doing coke, and popping keitamine.
Just because those people were
capable of helping take care of their one or two siblings, dosen't mean they were capable of full on ass parenting their siblings plus all of the housework plus managing his own life.
Something had to give. Also, to the argument of :
"16 year olds are parents sometimes, you saying they ain't capable?" They have
one little baby to take care of, often time (though not all of the time) with the help of the grandparents! They are seldom doing it all alone. Also it's a tag team between the two, it's often times not just falling on one of the 16 year olds, there are two of them to share the child rearing load.