A single working mom making minimum wage at McDonald’s was arrested for leaving her apparently responsible nine year old alone at a park that was 7 minutes away, and a 6 minute walk from her home for which she had a key. Oh yeah, she also had a working cell phone.
Ok, maybe my intro is a little loaded, but I can’t believe they would arrest her over this. I know there are several who will claim we live in a dangerous world, but I’ve successfully raised 3 kids lately and by the time they were 9 they would have been fine in this situation. There is no law on the books prohibiting this. It will be interesting to see how the prosecutor plans to present this… “Your honor this is clearly a case of a bad, naughty mommy… she doesn’t helicopter enough.”
I was a latch-key kid after my parents divorced when I was eight. I had to call my mom when I got home from school to let her know I was home. After that, I could roam at will. I could build models, or watch TV, or even shudder do homework. Or I could go out on my bike or skateboard. A child being out and about, even a couple of miles from home, was a non-issue.
The Atlantic Monthly had a good article a few months ago about how things have changed in recent years regarding what level of supervision is necessary and healthy for kids aged 5 to 15. Mostly, the article lamented the trend toward helicopter parenting, and cited examples of recent attempts (mainly in England) to re-introduce less-supervised, borderline-“dangerous” play into childrens’ lives.
Utterly ridiculous. The only harm this child suffered was inflicted by the state. Her mom has no job now, may go to prison for ten years, and the kid was sent to foster care, obviously traumatic. How the hell can anyone consider this in the kid’s interest?
If my parents had been arrested every time my 9-year-old self went to the park, alone or with his friends, they would have done more hard time than Charles Manson.
Shit, our parents used to beg us to go to the park, so we wouldn’t play sports on their emerald-green lawns.
This is absolutely terrible. This mother should not have been arrested and should have been instead given access to resources that would help her instead of wasting taxpayer money on foster care, court cases and social service involvement.
That being said, we have no idea why the passerby called the police about this little girl. For all we know they saw her throwing rocks at cars or lighting stuff on fire or doing whatever the hell else a 9 year old might do when left alone. I remember one day where I drove past a house with two 7 or 8 year old girls out front who were flashing their genitals at cars as they drove down this residential street. They were still doing it when I drove by again 45 minutes later so I pulled over and knocked on their door and told the parents inside what they were doing. I was able to do that because they were standing in their front yard and it was easy to tell the adult in charge. If they had been doing that on a playground would I have called the police? Probably. Better that than some of the other terrifying stuff that might happen to little girls with their bits hanging out for the world to see.
When I was seven I was playing by myself in a creek a half mile from home. I’m pretty sure my parents didn’t even know where I was. When I was nine I was riding my bike around the neighborhood wherever I wanted, unsupervised (I didn’t even wear a helmet). When I was nine I was babysitting my two younger siblings. When I was 11 I was babysitting other people’s children. This is a ridiculous arrest and every person involved in it, up to and including her boss for firing her, should be ashamed of themselves.
Here’s something I wonder about stories like this (and especially the accompanying nostalgia about the halcyon days of unsupervised play and tempting concussions): in the “good old days”, if something bad had happened to one of those kids — either by accident or human agency — would there have been an absolute tidal wave of public condemnation and blame towards the parents (even from parents who WOULDN’T be considered “helicopter”), or anything close? And am I right in my impression that there would be today? Why THAT change, because that seems to be the relevant one here to me.
There was a thread a while back about helicopter parenting where some posters said they feared this exact scenario, that someone would call the cops because they let their kid walk to a friend’s house etc. Several people told them to show one example of someone receiving police attention over this, well here you go!
I don’t know. We were given pretty free reign as kids, but I’m pretty sure my old school, old country Polish mom would have killed my dad if he just dropped me off at the park while he went off to work. I hate to say it, but this does feel a bit negligent to me. I think the reaction to it is way overblown, but I understand the concern.
I do a lot of work in cases involving child abuse/neglect. Given that the article says the child was left alone at the park “for hours”, I could maybe see an arrest on a misdemeanor charge and the child being placed with children’s services for a day or two while an investigation was conducted. I think after that investigation was completed, the misdemeanor charge should be dismissed, and the children’s services case closed–perhaps with the mother being provided with information about affordable day care alternatives.
So, I thought of this thread on my way home tonight because some guy left his 6 and 9 year old kids in a car while he went into a mall. His excuse was that he was only going to be a few minutes. The official response from Childrens’ And Youth Services was that children under the age of 10 can NEVER be left alone.
I don’t think leaving the kids alone in the car was a good idea, and here’s what the actual Child and Family Services Act says:
So, the law is kind of wish-washy and holy fuck, if kids can’t play in the park at 9 years old we’ve lost our way. The pedophiles, rapists, and terrorists have won, apparently.
Fuck, at nine years old my parents never saw me for 10, 12 hours in a row!
This is the whole problem. A generation ago, a private problem was just that…a private problem.
Not a public issue.
If your kid got hurt, well,…he got hurt, and he had to get over it.
Maybe he fell down and skinned his knees…
Or maybe he crashed his bicycle.
Or fell out of a tree.
Or got beaten up by a gang.
Or got raped.
Whatever happened, it was a private issue for the family to deal with alone.
Society has changed, whether we like it or not. So now everybody has to play by the new rules.
I don’t like it either: we have too many snowflakes. But somehow the world has not come to an end.
(when the issue of complaining about different generations comes up, I like to make one comparison: the army.
A half million people is a large enough sample size to be meaningful.
I think that the current generation (of snowflakes) seems to have done a better job in Iraq than the previous generation ( non-snowflakes) did in Vietnam.)
It’s just a totally different world.
But yeah, it’s sad that a 9 year old can’t play freely any more.
