This seems related to the tendency that Roy Edroso of Alicublog constantly mocks among conservatives: an over-investment in ideology. The personal may be political, but one has to realize that there is a difference between your problems and “society’s problems”. It becomes too seductive to blame what are really personal failings on ideological menaces.

Many conservatives seem to lack this understanding. “But for the grace of God, there we go” as well.

If Kevane had been a black woman working a minimum wage job, there is a good chnace she could have had her kids taken away from her.

Hey DrDick - just saw your comment on smoking at LGM, it’s vaguely reassuring to know someone else is up reading the same blogs as me early on a Saturday morning.

Anyway, I agree with your point - the state would have come down HARD on a black woman in this situation, or else, they would have just assumed that it’s par for the course for ‘those people’ and used the story as an example of how black people live in a moral sewer, or something.  Nothing good.

So the prosecutor, in an effort to consciously attack class hiearchies that are the bane of civilization, claimed “I just think that even individuals with major educations can commit this offense, and they should not be treated differently because they have more money or education.” . . . and, as a result, failed to treat our little protaganist differently.

This piece is twisted. This woman is claiming that her background makes her above the law.

Hell, she drips with condescension throughout the entire piece: “They could have slapped me on the wrist, or warned me, ‘Don’t do that again,’ or settled for any number of lesser charges.”

Merely getting a warning would have been special treatment, obviously. Not three paragraphs down from that sentence, she accuses the prosecutor of accusing her of being “someone trying to receive special treatment.” The piece is nearly schizophrenic in its convoluted efforts to both <u>A)</u> claim class privilege and <u>B)</u>claim that she doesn’t have class privilege .

A) “The two police officers, so much younger than I. . .”
“I teach classes, write books and articles, and am chair of my department. I love my job, for one reason because it has given me the flexibility to be home for my kids every day after school.”
B) “Despite the fact that Montana professors are among the lowest paid in the nation. . .”

Kevane claims: “After all, there is no law in Bozeman against dropping your children off at the mall.”

No, there’s a law against neglecting your kids, and you can neglect them by leaving them alone when they need supervision.

You know damn well that if a daycare center had left her kids to their own devices and something had happened, all of that academic background and class privilege would have been brought to the fore in a lawsuit and PR frenzy that brought her full wrath down on the business.

She pretends that the law simply doesn’t exist: “But instead my actions were considered criminal neglect, ‘violating a duty of care.’Why?”

I don’t know, lady—maybe because twelve-year-olds have a tendency to run off and forget their responsibilities to three-year-olds? “I had no reason to doubt my daughter.” Well, no reason besides the fact that she’s twelve. She even points out that she thought it possible that the kids went wild; when the police called, “My first thought was that the kids had made a scene, that they had knocked something over, that they had run about recklessly.”

Leaving two 12-year-olds at the mall—perfectly reasonable.  Leaving them their with younger kids, expecially a 3-y-o, not so much.

You know, I was allowed to wander around the mall without my parents when I was 12.  But—and this is the important part—I wasn’t in charge of younger kids while I was there.  There’s a big honkin’ difference between letting your 12-year-old go to the mall by herself and expecting her to also keep an eye on 3 younger kids while she’s there.

I do remember how often my friends with younger siblings were treated as unpaid nannies who had to drop everything if suddenly Mom wanted to go out.  Have plans?  Too bad, so sad, come home right now to watch your sister.  And we’re not talking emergencies here, it was almost always, “I want to go out for a while, so you have to stop what you’re doing/cancel plans you already made for my convenience.”  Rude rude rude.

When are the wealthy, the educated, the famous, or the upper class ever really held accountable for their actions?

All too often in our society they escape the consequences of actions whether they are illegal, immoral, or merely highly questionable.

The wingnuts always used to decry the “bad example” set by Pres. Clinton, as far as his honesty, his sexual failings, his experimentation with drugs, his “traitorous” anti-war sentiment as a college student, etc.  And maybe they had a point.  Not a big one, but nevertheless.

But how does a society’s sense of right and wrong decay when we’ve been through the last 8-years of American lawlessness?  How does the knowledge that if someone is in big finance they can screw-up to the tune of billions/trillions and never pay a price (unless you’re Madoff) affect how Americans feel about their everyday moral and ethical challenges?  And after someone is caught doing something stupid/immoral/unethical/illegal, we’ve grown to expect that at the worst a stern lecture from a judge, a few hours of community service, or a trip to rehab or anger management therapy is all you’ll be penalized with, especially in the upper echelons of society.

We all screw up.  But we should accept responsibility for our actions if and when we do.  But it seems to have become a rarity in a society where who you are, who you know, and where you went to school somehow directly determines your personal guilt…instead of what you did and how bad the outcome was…

Good grief, it’s idiots like this lady who give highly educated people a bad name in the popular imagination.

Of course she should be prosecuted for child neglect.  She didn’t just leave her kids in one place while she went next door to get something she forgot.  She didn’t leave her kids in the car while she bought a gallon of milk.  She left five pre-teen kids, one of them a toddler, at a shopping mall—where, predictably, the two oldest behaved irresponsibly because they’re twelve. 

I think she can’t bring herself to acknowledge that the twelve-year-olds screwed up, because then she’d have to acknowledge that she screwed up by leaving the younger kids in their care.  Which she obviously doesn’t want to do, since she thinks she should get off with a stern warning for, well, neglecting her children in a fashion that put them in danger.

If she’d been flipping burgers at McD’s instead of a professor, chances are she’d probably be facing a few more charges, too.

Leaving two 12-year-olds at the mall—perfectly reasonable.  Leaving them their with younger kids, expecially a 3-y-o, not so much.

Exactly. This piece is getting picked up by advocates of a less restrictive mode of parenting, and for the most part I agree with those advocates, but they need to realize that in this case they’re throwing the baby out with the bath water (as it were). I think parents these days are often way too restrictive, often out of fear, but that doesn’t mean I would put my 12-year-old (if I had one) in charge of my 3-year-old (if I had one).

Also, did the mallcops know she was a professor when they brought the kids in?  It seems like the wheels were turning long before anyone knew who she was.

It comes down to the 3 year old, and the open universe of the mall. If the 12 year olds got distracted and wandered off, how much more likely the 8 and 7 year old would have been.

Put it this way: would you hire a 12 year old to baby sit your 3 year old?

There has been an infantilization of children that came with the backlash against feminism.

I was born in the 1947.  Granted I lived in a small town but I went to the movies alone as well as the beach and other places on my own by age 8.

I was babysitting my brother by 10.

I drove farm machinery by 12.

I was working class and poor kids had greater responsibilities than rich kids.

There is too much ultra right wing cult of the family BS in the idea that women in particular should be punished for any transgression from the super mother.

Oh yeah, my mom smoked (before the cancer labels) and drank too

Agreed. 

I think having your 12-year old watch a younger sibling while home for an hour or 2 is OK. 

I think letting your 12-year old wander around the mall for a few hours by themselves is also OK. 

But leaving your 12-year old in charge of a 3-year-old in public is where the line gets crossed.  Completely irresponsible.  When I was in high school, I worked at a local mall, in a store that was very attractive to children (something along the lines of The Nature Company, but not quite).  There were some parents who, quite frankly, thought that we were babysitters.  And we’d have to get mall security to track down the parents who just dumped their 6 year old kids off like we were a day care center, just because we happened to sell some toys.

And I lived/worked in a fairly upscale community.

Let’s not forget one key point:
The fact that she committed a shit for brained act (and is acting like a dick about it) on the one hand is quite separate from whether or not she committed a crime.

Leave aside class bias on the part of the prosecution of this or a working class woman, and come to grips with one uncomfortable fact: every parent, period, has done something this colossally stupid at least once between their kid’s arrival in and departure from the home.  It’s not right, but it is inevitable.  Is it necessarily a crime?

This isn’t to defend what she did, mind.  It is just to raise a concern as to whether or not she belongs in the criminal justice or social services systems.  Christ, I’ve seen children’s aid societies called because a parent forgot to pack a school lunch, so something is a little out of whack.

I was babysitting my brother by 10.

How far away were your parents?

How far away was the nearest responsible adult?

Were you in a public place or at home?

My mother would have the neighbor’s 13 year old babysit the three of us, but the neighbor lady was at home the whole time.

It’s not right, but it is inevitable.  Is it necessarily a crime?

When I was a kid, a family moved into a tiny rental house a few blocks away. I wasn’t really aware of them until their 5 and 7 year olds rang our doorbell, trying to get money to buy their mom cigarettes (the gas station on the corner had a cigarette machine).

Crime or no crime?

Hector B.:
No crime.  Possibly children’s services but not certainly.  I can, for example, easily see a seven year old do that on his/her own to be nice.

She’s saying, “I’m a perfect parent and never make mistakes” AND “My kids are perfect and never make mistakes”.  You see this with parents who are called to the school and self-righteously proclaim that THEIR precious little pearl would NEVER bully another child/steal an iPOD/cheat on a test…. and besides, it must have been the other kid’s fault.  You know she would have steamed down there and thrown her weight around if Macy’s had accused her daughter of stealing a piece of jewelry.  And probably would have gotten away with it.

When I was her age, I was regularly tasked with watching my four younger siblings at home (we didn’t have a mall for a hundred miles).  Did I resent it and want to ditch those kids every opportunity?  Hell yes.  And did I hear, “You’re not the boss of me!” a million times?  You bet I did.  We’re lucky we all survived our childhoods (hi, Mom… hope you’re not reading this).

My point being that watching younger kids at the mall is not the same as going off with your same-age friend and cruising the mall.  Even if the older girls had been responsible, they would have been somewhat resentful.  Bad position to put your kids in just ‘cause you’re “too busy” to be the grown-up.

I w[as confronted by two Bozeman city police officers. One told me that what I had done was completely unacceptable in his opinion and that he was going to arrest me for endangering the welfare of my children. I asked him if there was a mall age limit that I was not aware of. He told me to be quiet. I tried to explain to him that I had faith in my daughter’s skills and in the safety of the mall, and that I was not an endangering parent. As I tried to keep talking, desperate to clear up what was obviously nothing more than a huge misunderstanding, he warned me that if I “went crazy” on him, he would handcuff me right in front of the children and take me away to jail for the night.

[Emphasis added.]

Sounds like pretty typical cop behaviour to me.  I’m less worried about arrogant profs than I am about arrogant armed men who decide the law based on their opinion and who won’t listen to a citizen’s explanations without threatening to not only arrest the citizen but (and this is the part that probably caused him to feel all warm and sexy) humiliate her in front of her children.

Am I being anti-cop?  I would be, were it not for the fact that behaviour like this is rapidly becoming the norm, not the exception, for American police officers.

And you will notice that the father wasn’t charged, just the mother.

What NobleExperiments said.

Gee Jesse, thanks so much for buying into the helpless child paranoia that is perfusing our society.

Seriously - get a grip.

seeker6079 on 07/11 at 11:30 AM

one uncomfortable fact: every parent, period, has done something this colossally stupid at least once between their kid’s arrival in and departure from the home.  It’s not right, but it is inevitable.

One round-about attack on feminism is the subtle social pressure to outperform a mythical 1950’s era ideal of motherhood applied to any caregiver regardless of gender or familial relationship. Though the person in this case has made a large-ish parenting mistake, it pales in comparison to something very common: driving under the influence. If she had had a few drinks and was driving around with the kids, this would not even have made the news, if she even had been caught.

Put it this way: would you hire a 12 year old to baby sit your 3 year old?

People hired me to watch babies at age 11 and 12.  My 13 year old son watches the neighbor’s 3 and 4 year old.

Most families have actual expectations of responsibility from their children as they grow older.  Unless they have been gorging on the dual piss-streams of pedophile fear and infantilization of teens.

My mother was 13 when her sister was born and was expected to care for her from birth, often unassisted.

Twelve year olds minding babies is the history of human evolution, not an evil case of neglect, unless the 12 year old hasn’t been taught independence and responsibility by dint of recent fads in child rearing.

Yeah, she screwed up and was snotty ‘bout it. But I volunteer w/ the county Social Services & Family Court w/ abuse and neglect cases, and I usually see less-educated / less-rich people,* as well as their better-off brethren, ordered straight to parenting classes if something like this (isolated incident of parental stupid w/ no resultant harm, no prior history, no immediate danger, no drug use, etc.) happens, without the year of legal wrangling in the middle, in the criminal system no less.  That struck me as weird, Kevane’s victim complex aside.  Maybe prosecutor really was taking the mommy wars to the next level.  Who knows. 

Relatedly, I don’t think she should be criminally prosecuted for child neglect.  One of my cases had a flock of little kids who’d been running around filthy, half-clothed, and in their own poo while mom smoked crack (she didn’t beat them and did occasionally feed them, thankfully). That’s the crime of child neglect. This lady is just stupid. 

And yes, for about all the reasons seeker said above, call family services before the cops if you’re just suspicious and not personally witnessing abuse. 

*of all colors; county pop. is abt 50:50 black-white, abuse/neglect cases roughly 60:40.

The self-righteousness and condescension are pretty unforgivable.

But, the problem is not putting a 12 year old in charge of younger kids.  I babysat starting at age 12 for 4 girls, under 8, at one time.  Yes it was in a home. But it was for many hours at a time, long before cell phones.  This was very common in the 60’s and 70’s.  My three brothers and I were left with young sitters all the time. We survived and so did they.

The issue is the location, with added extra risk from having TWO 12-year-olds “in charge” of little kids in that setting. I wouldn’t have two 12-year-olds babysit one child in my home.  Two 12-year-olds, if they are friends, or even if they are not, equals total distraction. I taught middle school for 9 years—put any two 12-year-olds in room and try to get their attention. It’s a challenge. Put them in a mall—that is the recipe for distraction.

Gee Jesse, thanks so much for buying into the helpless child paranoia that is perfusing our society.

Seriously - get a grip.

Right.  Because when 12 year olds do the very irresponsible thing that 12 year olds are prone to do, I’m declaring that all children are “helpless”.  And as we all know, 8 year olds in strange places are hugely competent decision makers when charged with looking over two younger children. 

Get off this bullshit - there’s a huge difference between trusting a kid to walk to the library or go to or from school and leaving them in a giant commercial play area for two hours at a time.  There’s a difference, and it’s beyond asinine to pretend that anyone who leaves a group of kids somewhere to fend for themselves is always performing the same virtuous action regardless of context.

BTW, where was their father?  Why wasn’t he with them either?

And, no, I wouldn’t leave a 3 year old in the care of 12 year olds.  All the same, criminal negligence for lost kids is yet another way society creates ridiculous standards for parents and women in general.  Kevane may be celtic for “douchenozzle”, but there is still an issue of extreme idiocy and “put mommy in her place” mysogyny here when it comes to demanding that parents have 24/7 care for kids up to age 19 or they are criminally negligent parents.  Something has got to give.

Hasn’t anybody noticed that this case is valuable because it is a microcosm of a larger reality?  As our legal culture moves towards the enforced belief that there is a perfectible, error-free world and as the political culture moves towards that with the creation of seas of laws and regulations and sub-regulations and enforcement bodies this sort of thing is inevitable.  The system is creating a platonic ideal and enforces it with subjective gut definitions of what that ideal should be.

When I was in LS one of my profs noted that one of the greatest guarantees of civil liberties is limited resources: there are only so many cops, prosecutors and courts and so the authorities can’t drag you into the criminal justice system whenever they want (and they want to all the time, and, trust me, whatever it is there’s either a law against it or a law that can be twisted to fit).  I kinda think that Bozeman isn’t a town where the cops or DAs are, shall we say, overburdened with more pressing issues.  They have time to be petty.

You’ll note also her perceptive realization that what was needed from here was emotional theatre: kabuki grief and remorse.  The bitch must be shown to be penitent.  This is difficult for many people.  Me, I come from both a culture which demands (and a personal propensity towards) having one’s emotional discipline increase with the severity of the problem.  (I can freak out over somebody else’s driving error, for example, but have faced some fairly serious problems and dangers with almost no emotional response at all.)  I’ve noted it before but will repeat it here: some people in serious cases get arrested, tried and convicted simply because The Forces That Be (cops, prosecutors, juries) feel They Didn’t React The Way That They Should, which is one of the most bullshit and subjective measures of analysis out there.  Ask Robert Baltovich, a young man who spent over a decade in jail for the death of his girlfriend, a woman who was, it now seems clear, abducted and murdered by one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers.  Baltovich reacted to the disappearance of his gf with cool aplomb, helping her parents, helping the police and seeking in every way to help solve the mystery.  His reward was to have the first two detectives who interviewed him walk out of the house, call their Homicide colleagues and say “he killed her”; they never seriously looked at anybody after that, and distorted, altered or buried evidence that would point to other people.  Or ask Guy Paul Morin, who was convicted of a child’s murder and jailed because he was a socially awkward eccentric.  Oh, never mind that the child’s brother led police to the bones because “he saw them in a dream”.  Oh, never mind the fact that a local worker with a history of sexual offences against children was in the area in a company van, raced it back to the yard, and scrubbed and hosed it out—it had NEVER been cleaned before—and then fled town.  No, the cops thought weirdie did it.  (I mean, who relaxes by playing a clarinet alone?  He MUST be a child killer.)

This is one of the reasons that I see no conflict between being a progressive on the one hand and having a libertarian’s suspicious, gimlet eye on the state with the other.  We want government to work, and we want to make society a better place, including our rights to be free, to live how we want and love who we want as long as we don’t hurt anybody.  The state that we rightly create to achieve these ends is also the state which, left to its own devices, will undermine those very objectives.  Yeah, I know it’s a paradox.  But the investigative and prosecutorial arms of the state are over-staffed with people who are certain that most people should be in goddamned jail and it’s just a question of whether you can get ‘em or not.  They are people we should be warily watching.

Jesse, you have kids so you know what the range of responsible behavior for a 12 year old is, right?

I was allowed free roaming of my hometown when I was eight to 10 years old.  Nothing happened.  My sons are currently off at a gaming tourney, which they reached by public transportation.  They are 11 and 13, and I’m not the least worried.  Fact is, kids do have different personality quirks and different levels of ability - but none of them will have any of it if they are not trusted and not allowed to build up their skills in this area.  They will be the pathetic “drive me” brats who get to college and can’t function because nothing has ever been expected of them and they have been allowed no freedom to mature.

I moved across the country on my own and started running my own life at age 16.  By your standards, that is impossible or my parents should have been thrown in jail.  ENOUGH!

Where to start?  This story is so full of FAIL, it’s amazing. 
First, Judith Warner’s NYT column highlighted a single incident as if it was some sort of nation-wide epidemic of backlash against educated women. 
Second, the author fails to realize that it was her class and race privilege that allowed her to turn this incident into a story of her victimization rather than the more likely outcome for a less privileged woman - trying to get her kids back from foster care if she left them similarly unsupervised!

Twelve year olds minding babies is the history of human evolution, not an evil case of neglect, unless the 12 year old hasn’t been taught independence and responsibility by dint of recent fads in child rearing.

I have no idea why you’re conflating every possible situation you could leave a 12-year-old in as if one is exactly the same as another.

This is the exact thing that Kevane is doing.  I’m all about letting kids be more independent and make decisions for themselves.  But she stupidly put 12 year olds in a situation where they were highly likely to fuck up and, lo and behold, they fucked up.  And this is the problem: she hasn’t taken responsibility for the fact that she put those kids in a position to make that mistake or that the mistake was made.  Do I think that she should have had the cops called on her and been made to go to parenting classes?  No.  But she made a decision that resulted in the very outcome she was trying to avoid, and is using the response to it as reaffirmation of her own brilliance in making the decision.

You’re creating a dichotomy where, when a 12-year-old screws up, it’s the fault of society for making them screw up, even though 12-year-olds are supposed to be expected not to screw up.

She wasn’t all that concerned with the cops being assholes—she was concerned that the cops were assholes to her.

Further, that the 12-year-olds were not capable of being responsible for the three-year-olds is proven by the fact that the 12-year-olds failed to be responsible for the three-year-olds. How mature you were at age 12 is quite irrelevant. I was mature enough to manage a storefront, if necessary, at age 12. She didn’t get a 12-year-old version of me to watch her kids. She got her own kids to do it. They fucked up. QED.

I am amazed that people here fail to make the public/private distinction when it comes to this issue. Minding kids at home isn’t even on the same page as minding kids in a public place. I shouldn’t have to break down the differences. Just because the “crack-smoking mom” cliche deserves prosecution doesn’t mean the well-off white woman who parents badly doesn’t. The mere existence of a spectrum of bad behavior doesn’t excuse bad behavior at the end of the spectrum. I knew a man in prison for murder: ergo, the next guy I meet charged with assault due to a shoving match in a bar shouldn’t even be put through a trial.

She parented badly because she was being selfish instead of smart, and she did in public, and then she got caught. Her response is she shouldn’t be charged because she’s better than us. She can kiss the ass of every working class mother that has ever been.

Jesse, the biggest beef that she had was with being treated as a criminal.  Even in the article she talks about admitting error and similar matters.  And, on the criminality part, she’s right.

I moved across the country on my own and started running my own life at age 16.  By your standards, that is impossible or my parents should have been thrown in jail.  ENOUGH!

Really?  Because I…oh, wait, no, I didn’t say that.  Now 16 year olds are the same as 12 year olds? ENOUGH! 

Jesse, you have kids so you know what the range of responsible behavior for a 12 year old is, right?

I wasn’t aware that one needed to be a parent to determine what a 12 year old could or couldn’t be capable of.  I apologize, and will never again speak without direct experience of any and every situation on which I might speak.  I was also born at 17 years of age, and thus never experienced being a 12 year old, so I will now shut down Pandagon and submit myself to study by teams of expert scientists.

No One of Consequence:
Aren’t you failing to distinguish between the intervention of the remedial arm of the state (children’s services) and the prosecutorial arms (police, DAs and jail)?  That’s a pretty significant difference.

You’ll note also her perceptive realization that what was needed from here was emotional theatre: kabuki grief and remorse.  The bitch must be shown to be penitent.

DING DING DING DING DING DING

Society decides that something is wrong because it contributes not to the enslavement of women to their womanly child-tending duties, and creates excessively harsh penalties for transgression.  Then comes in a woman who doesn’t “act” appropriately mother-shamed, very possibly because of the exessive overblown penalties for not being mommy enough.

She screwed up, but admitting it is more difficult when the penalties are outrageously excessive.  Surely, Jesse, you are not blind to how this works with inner-city youth and small quantities of drugs.

Jesse, the biggest beef that she had was with being treated as a criminal.  Even in the article she talks about admitting error and similar matters.  And, on the criminality part, she’s right.

Her main beef seems to be that she was treated poorly because she’s her, and that someone like her should never be treated so shabbily by people who can’t understand her brilliant plans, even when they go awry.

Jesse, what’s so big a deal about admitting that somebody with years and years of experience at something has a better grasp of a topic that you do?  I’m fairly well versed in military matters and I’ve always been a civilian but I retain a right and ability to discuss them.  It doesn’t necessarily follow, though, that that right is synonymous with my being as conversant with military matters as somebody who has actually been in the service. 

Simple fact is, being a parent is a bit like being major league manager.  One tends to find everybody is absolutely certain that they can do their job better than you, and the certainty factor tends to go up amongst people who’ve never played the game, as it were.

CParis nails it - there is all the persecution here and absolutely no examination of the stupidity of the way the laws are applied or even formulated.

Thank heavens MA residents repudiated an attempt to make it a crime to leave a child LESS THAN 15 YEARS OLD home on their own, with the appropriate level of derision.

Jesse, the problem isn’t that 12 year olds do or don’t screw up - the problem is that parents are not allowed to put them in situations where they can learn by screwing up.  As a parent of independent kids around this age, who have friends of varying abilities, I think I know a hell of a lot more than somebody who was 12 once upon a time.

Do you think mandatory minimum sentences for drugs are a good thing for urban kids who “show no remorse”.  It is the same stupid sort of thing - small risk becomes giant crime with excessive penalty because somebody ain’t keeping their place.

As the (working class) mother of a 17 and an 8 year old, I’m saying this woman is a) an idiot for taking them to the mall where the temptation to be irresponsible is its reason for existence and b) a privileged whine-bag for complaining about it when caught. 

First, 12 year olds come in all sorts of maturity levels.  While some kids, even today, might be mature enough to handle such a responsibility, it’s rather obvious based on results that this one was not.  The question of whether any 12 year old of any maturity level should be asked to shoulder such responsibility is another question entirely.

Second, it just boggles my mind that she did this voluntarily.  I can’t say that I’ve never had to leave my kids when I wasn’t 100% comfortable with the situation but it dang sure wasn’t voluntary on my part.  It was a lack of child care that caused that situation—job and continued ability to live indoors or a couple of hours at home by him/herself?  That she did this when she didn’t have to, and then felt victimized when confronted with it, really underscores for me the difference between her experience of life and mine.

I should have that father in Costco last night sent to jail by this logic.  The one who sent his young children off together and then they “lost” their little brother.  The eight year old was crying, the six year old was cool, and I sent my 11 and 13 year old off with them so to collect the 4 year old and sweep them all back to their dad.  The big boys helping calmed everybody down and my 11 year old asked a few questions about what he liked to play with and found the boy quite quickly.

Oops, that means we both should be crucified as TEH BAAAD PARRUNTS!  I let an 11 year old loose in Costco!  With Black children! Except I’m white and educated and they were black working-class immigrants.  Never mind that nothing happened and nobody got hurt, and two bored shoppers got a satisfying dose of helping somebody.

When I first read this, I thought “so what.” When I was 11 I babysat small kids and when I was 14 I spent my summer as a live-in 24/7 nanny to another baby. At 12 I would never have left another kid alone at a mall in a million years, and adults knew that. And yet - when I think of leaving my 13 year old niece at the mall with a toddler, I probably wouldn’t. She’s a great kid but I just wouldn’t. I remember myself as much more responsible and grown-up than she and her peers seem. Is that just a perspective change that happens as we age? Kids do seem infantilized to me now but I don’t know if that’s a wise adjustment more in tune with their development levels or if in fact we could instill more responsibility in them than we do.

As for the mother’s attitude - many of my friends who are well-educated or highly-paid blatantly assume they are better parents than less educated people. I’ve seen my one friend talk about classism in one breath, then refuse to let her son make friends with another kid in his class because that kid and his mom live in an apartment, not a house. And on the other end, my friends who are unemployed or have retail jobs can evince real contempt for mothers with successful careers, assuming the kids are emotionally neglected. Judging women is a sport open to everyone!

Everything seeker said, and one last note for the afternoon: it’s easy to equate things, write things off as “cliche,” and recommend same punishment for all if you’ve never seen the actual after-effects of any of them.  That is what we seek to punish or correct—the harm to the child. The level of punishment or correctional intervention should reflect what was or wasn’t done to the kid, regardless of who the parent is.

Jesse, we’re talking about the Gallatin Valley Mall in Bozeman Montana here not the Beverly Center in L.A. Take a look at Google street view of 2825 W Main St. Bozeman, MT. Chances are good that one out of every four employees knew the kids by sight and name.

I have to agree with Ms. Kate

Gee Jesse, thanks so much for buying into the helpless child paranoia that is perfusing our society.

Seriously - get a grip.

I have worked in childcare for years, and I began baby-sitting my neighbor’s children when I was 11. It’s not uncommon at all. This will sound cheesy, but haven’t you heard of The Baby-Sitters Club series? There happened to be a time when 12 and 13 year olds baby-sat constantly, and weren’t expected to go run off and try on clothes.

What strikes me in this article is, yes, there was a possibility for disaster. If I had a 12 year old who I thought was mature, I would certainly let them baby-sit a 3 year old at home. I don’t know about the mall, because that would depend upon the maturity of the 12 year old. It definitely does seem careless and irresponsible to me. We also don’t know, though, how many 12 year olds have been dropped off with a little sibling at the mall and been perfectly fine. Those stories work out okay, and we don’t get to condemn the parents, so we don’t talk about them.

That said, part of teaching children responsibility is teaching them the consequences of what happens if they mess up. When children throw fits, get in fights, refuse to do their chores, a good caretaker doesn’t just say “oh, they’re children, they don’t know any better” or “it’s my fault.” They don’t know better much of the time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to teach them. Often, they do know better, but they have poor impulse control, and so they have to learn consequences.

A good caretaker or parent tries to teach their child that if they don’t do their chores, they may not be able to watch tv that night. Maybe this woman had left her children at home with her 12 year old in the past, and everything was fine. Yes, the mother made an error in judgment, and yes, she was utterly obnoxious about her mistake and really didn’t need to play the “elite” victim card. But I’d also expect better behavior from the 12 year old. The mother mistakenly placed her trust in her 12 year old, and her child was irresponsible. We don’t just suddenly magically mature at the age of 18, but we are supposed to learn responsibilities incrementally. The daughter should not be entrusted with the children again, but the daughter also needs to learn that she is a part of a family. A mother is there to love and take care of you, but also to help you grow. It’s not just a free buffet of “i must cater to you and make your first 18 years on Earth a joyous Peter Pan time” but “I love you unconditionally and I want to help you grow into a mature and capable human being.” That certainly doesn’t happen by pretending growing children have the maturity or attention spans of infants and need to be protected of themselves at every moment.

You know, I was a fairly difficult little child at three.  Almost enough to give my poor grandma a heart-attack.  I ran fast, liked the shiney, and was capable of doing thing like, oh, jacking the family car, driving it into building, and making the sad Immagunnagetawhupping face afterwards.  Did stuff like crossing busy roads and walking on railings a hundred feet above the ground.  People routinely delivered me back to my mother after they find me wandering miles from home “Is this your child?”

There are twelve year olds, and then there are twelve year olds.  Same with three year olds.

Beyond the general whiney asshole behavior of the mother, it seems apparent that she’s not capable of realizing that the mall is not her babysitter or her daycare center (which was what she was counting on) and was alost entirely missing the circumstances that makes it safe for a twelve year old to watch a small child, some of whom could be absurdley fast for their little legs.  A twelve year old doesn’t know a mall like he/she does her home or her area.  A twelve year old at the mall is entirely without backup in the form of an adult that she knows and trusts—a mall rent-a-cop is NOT someone she knows and trust and is NOT someone she *should* know and trust.  Malls are also sensorially disorientating, especially for children of most stripes.  If something should go wrong, that twelve year old, no matter how competent he is for his age is in deep water, and very fast. 

Three year olds are too little to “make their own mistakes”.  Having a twelve year old placed in circumstances where she could “make her own mistakes” that might derive from a three year old’s mistakes, in an environment where the 12 year old doesn’t have much control of, is idiocy.  It has nothing to do with “I was driving a tractor at 12”, which is fine when you’re on your own property, with yours nearby (and ignoring the statistics on youth farm deaths and maimings, which are terrible).

I think it’s fairly safe to call the professor a self-centered (unfeminist unkind whatever).

Seeker (at 12:32)—the problem with your analysis is that this woman does NOT have years and years of experience at being a mother.  She has at most 12 years.  Now, I do have years and years of experience.  I have nine children, now ranging in age from over 50 to just under 21.  Since most of them were adopted, I can claim to have experience with a wide assortment of types of kids.  Moreover, I have been the headmistress of a couple of small private schools, the kind where the head knows all the kids very very well.

Here’s her mistake.  She might have safely left one 12 year old in charge of one or maybe even two younger siblings.  But she left TWO unrelated twelve year olds in charge of THREE younger kids.  Two twelve year olds together are more interested in performing for each other than they will ever be in watching younger kids.  Even as babysitters, sensible parents would specify “no having friends over” and probably “no taking them to the mall”.

No matter how much she knows about one subject (Spanish, eh?  Oh, she speaks another language really well), that does not make her an expert in any other field (maybe we should ask her to design the new power plant).

I’m of two minds about this story.

On the one hand, I may be too similar to this woman to rebuke her. I have left my 11-year-old in charge of the 3 and 5 year old at the children’s section of Barnes and Noble while I shopped in the other parts of the store. (But it was the same store. I was in earshot of a loud “MOM!” if needed.) I have left my 12 year old in the car to watch his 2 year old sister, while I took the 11-year-old and the 5 year old into a store to buy sneakers, and I came very close to being arrested for it (it was not a hot day, I left the car running to give them air conditioning, the kid had his cell phone, the baby was sleeping, and I was gone for 15 minutes… and the kid was 2 months short of 13, which is the legal age for babysitting in my state… but apparently I was a Bad Mommy and needed to be served criminal charges. Which the state’s attorney dropped.)

On the other hand… I haven’t read the article, but to me, there is only one legitimate defense here—“My kids are 12 and experienced at babysitting; I didn’t think they would wander off.” The whole “I’m a white middle-class college professor” thing is class warfare. If a poor black woman whose 12 year old watches her little kids all the time does the exact same thing because she expects her 12 year old to be responsible, she has just as much right or lack of right to do so as the college professor. Being a college professor may give you some degree of expertise in what’s cross-culturally permitted for children, and therefore give you some perspective, but *any* mother has just as much of a chance of knowing her own kids well enough to know what they’d do, regardless of their educational background. If she was arguing that this was the wrong way to treat *mothers*, I’d be down with it, but if she’s arguing that this is the wrong way to treat *her*, that’s unacceptable.

And honestly I do think that criminal charges for leaving your 12-year-old in charge of little kids *is* ridiculous. This *was* a situation that warranted a stern rebuke, not threats of arrest. Hell, I’d have found it acceptable if the store threw her out, because her poor judgement led to her kids creating problems, but criminal charges is going way too far. But if her argument isn’t “criminal charges are ridiculous for any mother in this situation” and is instead “criminal charges are ridiculous for a fine upstanding citizen-mother like *me*”, then that’s wrong.

Oh, by the way, I am over 70.  My MOTHER wouldn’t have done this, and she was pretty relaxed about kid-control.

seeker6079  on  07/11  at  12:27 PM
Aren’t you failing to distinguish between the intervention of the remedial arm of the state (children’s services) and the prosecutorial arms (police, DAs and jail)?

I acknowledged that the cops were assholes. Aren’t you failing to give criteria that makes the distinction you’re concerned with relevant to the issues at hand? Nothing in the ADA’s or DA’s behavior seemed to me to be unjust. Child neglect being a crime isn’t particularly unjust and not a single person on this thread has come anywhere close to approximating why it shouldn’t be a crime. . . or why this woman is a poster child for its decriminalization (*snort*).

And, oh:

seeker6079  on  07/11  at  12:32 PM
And you will notice that the father wasn’t charged, just the mother.

The father didn’t have immediate responsibility for the kids—he wasn’t there. Are you now suggesting the law is bad AND simultaneously suggesting the law should be applied to both parents for maximum devastating effect?

Ms Kate  on  07/11  at  12:28 PM
She screwed up, but admitting it is more difficult when the penalties are outrageously excessive.

She isn’t concerned about the penalties. Hell, she has received very little in the way of penalties. A black woman with less financial power could have easily already lost her kids—and such a woman would have a legitimate social excuse for lacking the proper resources to care for her kids perfectly!

Simple fact is, being a parent is a bit like being major league manager.  One tends to find everybody is absolutely certain that they can do their job better than you, and the certainty factor tends to go up amongst people who’ve never played the game, as it were.

Some major league managers ARE inferior in management skill to laymen. And many, many, many parents are inferior in parenting ability to people who have no kids. Ooh, ooh, my anecdotes are bigger than your anecdotes—I win!!!1!!. Okay, more seriously: Anecdotes != data.

Kevane messed up, and even though the authorities mistreated her it’s absolutely right that if she were poor or working class she would have been even more mistreated.

But if she were “Brad Kevane,” no way in hell would anyone prosecute Brad for child neglect.  All blame would go to the 12-year-old girls.  Selfish, vain, reckless, irresponsible little snots, running off playing Hannah [of] Montana rather than thinking of the kids and disappointing Dad, who trusted them.

Ms Kate  on  07/11  at  12:28 PM 
She screwed up, but admitting it is more difficult when the penalties are outrageously excessive.

Oh, yeah, almost forgot: she’s not failing to admit failure because of the penalties. She’s failing to admit failure because she’s an arrogant, stuck-up, class-and-race privileged asshole.

Ms Kate  on  07/11  at  12:39 PM
I should have that father in Costco last night sent to jail by this logic.

(Ms Kate proceeds to analogize to a situation where the parents did not deliberately abandon the kids to their own devices, the parents were separated from their kids for less time, the parents were on site, and where the site itself had fewer exits and enterances.)

Boy, well, I’m convinced. All 12-year-olds, under all social, in all geographic locations, are basically alike.*

Really, I could have stopped at “deliberate.”

*It’s not like we don’t have evidence that directly contradicts that notion, like evidence that 12-year-olds, under certain circumstances, can fuck up.

Oh yeah, except for the bloody case immediately at issue.

No one, so you really think that a Pandagonian’s criminal prosecution for leaving a 12 year old in the car with a sleeping baby on a mild day was acceptable,  as described in an earlier thread? That her being hassled by cps and prosecuted for criminal offenses was appropriate societal response?  An appropriate use of resources?  Acceptable in any way?

This is the problem - the criminalization of parenting.  This woman was an idiot - every academic should know that you go to the mall with your kids and hang out in the central food court on the wifi with your cel phone and do spot checks.  However, the kinds of excessive charges heaped on women who question the right of legislators and police to make parenting decisions and don’t cry tears of humiliation for their bad mothering are very very real.

There has been an infantilization of children that came with the backlash against feminism.

Children?  Sheeeeeit.  A friend of mine’s son went to a family reunion recently.  He had to fly from Phoenix to Chicago.  The night before the trip he walked into the living room and asked his dad if he was going to walk him to the gate.  This “child” is 20 years old.

No One of Consequence said,

Nothing in the ADA’s or DA’s behavior seemed to me to be unjust.

I beg to differ:

The city attorney made no secret of the fact that her own parenting choices informed her decision in backing up the police officer. She told my lawyer in their first meeting that she also had a daughter and would never have left her at the mall. She also said she believed professors are incapable of seeing the real world around them because their “heads are always in a book.”

If you are a DA and your decision on whether or not a crime has been committed is based on, in effect, (a) “well <u>I</u> wouldn’t have done that!” and (b) “everybody knows how irresponsible people like you are!” then you acting unjustly.

Older:
She’s got three kids and I count each year for each kid as a year of experience.  And whatever she has it’s more than Jesse, which is kind of my point.

I ask folks to read the article.  While she is blinkered in her response she isn’t the WATB narcissistic elitist portrayed by Jesse.  I don’t think that she is a smug know-it all simply because she thinks that she should be able to exercise her judgment in the raising of her own children without being treated as if she was selling crack at a day care.

She erred, and badly, which she admits.  But the state’s response was hysterical, condescending, sanctimonious and excessive.  By the standards of this response every repeat every repeat every parent at one time or another is a criminal deserving of jail.

What it comes down to is this: she made a bad parenting decision.  (No argument there.)  She was also made the subject of a wholly excessive criminal prosecution based, in very large measure, on ignorant cops and a vindictive prosecutor driven largely by their subjective perceptions and—I would argue—the lack of anything more serious to deal with.

She isn’t concerned about the penalties. Hell, she has received very little in the way of penalties. A black woman with less financial power could have easily already lost her kids—and such a woman would have a legitimate social excuse for lacking the proper resources to care for her kids perfectly!

Great.  Now the measurement of whether or not our cops and prosecutors have acted badly is not, naturally, whether they have acted badly.  It’s “the upper class snot should STFU because others have it worse”.  No, NOoC, nobody should be humiliated and criminalized for an error in judgment.  Call me crazy but I don’t think that police and prosecutorial excesses should be acceptable merely because they are becoming more democratic and less class-biased in their wrongdoing.

Oh, and btw, NOoC, I’ve found over the years in working in academic environments, law and nonprofit work that the people quickest to whinge that “anecdotes are not data” (which is horseshit, because they are data, just provided in individual increments) tend to fall into one of two categories:  the anecdote provides data that they don’t like and which undermines their own—usually excessively generalist—views; they are people very disinclined to listen to the stories of individuals as having any merit.  (After all, if the statistics can be made to line up in a certain way then who the devil cares about the people who have experiences contrary to the data?  They don’t count.)

Which group are you?

I began babysitting at about 13 (back in 1963, when yes, kids ran free)—but always in the various parents’ homes. (Once at a picnic with a very distracting pool, but the parents were there, as well, so we had each other for backup, and the child was a baby, unable to toddle off.)

So even back in the day before parents were helicoptering 24/7, parents in our lower-middle class suburb had sense enough not to neglect their children in such an obvious way.

No matter the arguments made around the fringes of this case: the woman is a fool, arrogant and yes, was neglectful to drop three small children (including a three-year-old, no less!) off at the mall with two sure-to-be-distracted 12 year olds, who no matter their sense of responsibility, LEFT THREE SMALL CHILDREN ALONE in a public place.

(Malls safe? I was stalked in those very public places by more than one older man as a very young teen alone, who looked more the child than a teenager. Which made it that much more frightening, that I knew I looked like a child and the men were sexually attracted to me, even tho I was old enough to get away from them.)

No matter the professor’s entitlement, or the assumptions made about “people like her” she got off easy and the those who called the police, the child welfare professionals, the juvenal justice system, and the police did their job, protecting her children.

The frightening thing is that idiot professor is so busy justifying her actions, she seems not to have learned a basic lesson about childcare.

“If Kevane had been a black woman working a minimum wage job, there is a good chnace she could have had her kids taken away from her.”

If Kevane had been a white woman working an ordinary (not necessarily minimum-wage) job there’s a good chance she could have had her kids taken away from her.  I sit here shuddering, trying to imagine what the reaction of the local bureau of child-minders would be if one of my neighbors were suddenly to decide that, tra-la, I’m off to drink a latte or so by myself in peace and quiet, and in order to accomplish this I’m going to dump five kids, none of whom have reached the age of thirteen, in front of the Macy’s counter at the South Hill Mall.

Oh, God.

DSHS would definitely find that situation interesting——and might decide to get involved.

I was allowed free roaming of my hometown when I was eight to 10 years old.  Nothing happened.

Were you roaming with a 3-year-old in tow?

My sons are currently off at a gaming tourney, which they reached by public transportation.  They are 11 and 13, and I’m not the least worried.

Are they supposed to be babysitting a 3-year-old while they’re there?

It’s not like this woman got in trouble because she let her 12-year-old go to the mall by herself.  She got in trouble because she dropped off her 12-year-old and her 12-year-old friend with three younger kids and told them that they were in charge while she drove off to do other things.  This isn’t, “I’ll be in Macy’s—meet me in front of the fountain at 3:00.”  She left the property.

When your sons found the lost kids at Costco, did they have to try and call the parents to figure out where they were, and it turned out they had dropped their kids off at Costco alone and gone to run other errands somewhere else?  No?  Then it’s not the same thing, is it?

The real question with your sons is, would you take the 13-year-old and his best friend and drop them off at the mall with two kids and a toddler and drive away?  Are you completely confident that your 13-year-old and his best friend are so responsible that they can watch three other kids in a mall without getting distracted?

Does she deserve to be prosecuted?  Probably not.  Should she at least acknowledge that it was a bad decision rather than self-righteously whining about the criminalization of parenting and claiming that her 12-year-old could handle the situation even after the 12-year-old clearly failed at it?  Yep.

Color me unsympathetic.  That blog post was an exercise in self-pity.  She thinks the DA is out to get her?  Come on.  She’s also willing to believe her daughter’s lies or is making up lies on behalf of her daughter:

While the girls were in the dressing room, some Macy’s employees spotted the three younger kids and called mall security. When Natalie and her friend returned less than five minutes later,

No 12-year-old girl has ever managed to try on clothes in five minutes or less.

And I babysat from the age of 13 through 17, so my “anecdotes” range over four years time and a half dozen or more familes.

My friends babysat as well (some, their younger brothers and sisters starting even earlier) but again, according to my memory, always in a home.

For the life of me, I can’t remember an anecdote in all our experiences as babysitters similar to that professor’s.

I’m not sure she should be prosecuted for child neglect, but there really does need to be a conversation.  This was a pretty obvious parental error.  It’s not that the individual pieces of this aren’t fine—two 12-year-olds can take care of themselves at a mall; a 12-year-old is, in fact, often quite capable of babysitting a couple of younger siblings at home for a few hours, etc. etc.  It’s that the combo was actually not a great idea, and a fairly foreseeable consequence of this combo took place, and it’s time to suck it up, apologize, and figure out why you made a decision that was, in hindsight, pretty obviously the wrong one.

Now, the fact that she’s making this argument implies to me that she’s dealing with this issue in other areas; academia is an awful place to raise children these days, and every woman really is under constant, relentless assault on how she can never be a good enough mother.  But yeah.

I agree with Unree; she would have almost certainly been treated worse if she were working class or non-white, but if she were a man, she would definitely have been treated better. Men aren’t expected to know how to raise kids. I mean, when a father watches his own kids, we call it “babysitting.” If a dad did something like this, he would be trying his best, and making an endearing mistake that any man could make.

And I was babysitting my 3-year-old brother at age 11, and watching other families’ babies at age 12. Not in a mall, of course. That was dumb, but it was hardly criminal neglect.

However, prosecution for child neglect seems pretty ridiculous.  Parents are often under tremendous stress, and we should expect them to make the occasional bonehead move.  Child neglect laws are not for those people.

So far as Mall Security and the Police knew, this lady had left 3 little kids alone in the mall.  Which is pretty much the case, isn’t it, since the 12-year-olds were not around?

When she kept on blabbering and boasting and arguing after the Police asked her to be quiet, they were “rude” to her.  Their comments seem to be in response to her arguing the legalities with them.  They should have told her “argue with the Judge”. 

They were following the Law; that is their job.  They are not required to be extra polite just because the person being charged is a well-to-do educated white woman.

Now if they’d cuffed her or tazed her, or accused her ‘resisting arrest’, she’d have cause to complain, or even sue them.

To them she was just another parent who left a toddler and two very young children alone at a mall.

I love personal anecdotes, but not even half as much as I love needless hand-wringing and only a quarter as much as I love fruitless criminal prosecutions.

She is trying to hide behind feminism, to blame her experience on anti-feminist police rather than anti-child-endangerment police.

Suppose the 6 & 8 year olds had left the 3 year old, and he decided to play on the escalator or in the fountain (most malls have one or both).

The 12 year old babysitters were unfit for the job, as shown by their abandoning the little kids.  They deserve punishment too, since they knew better.  But the parent has the ultimate responsibility.  Being an ‘educated’ woman doesn’t make her less responsible, in fact just the opposite.

She’s Playing The Feminist Card.  Women like her give real feminists’ a Bad Name.

I have to say, I don’t like the actions of the cop or the prosecutor, but this is just suburban mom getting in touch with the realities of what cops are really like.  As in, don’t argue with them!

No 12-year-old girl has ever managed to try on clothes in five minutes or less.

Hi, nice to meet you.

I think parents these days are often way too restrictive, often out of fear, but that doesn’t mean I would put my 12-year-old (if I had one) in charge of my 3-year-old (if I had one).
Triplanetary on 07/11 at 11:15 AM

Wow, hold it. stop right there!  Yep, I would put two twelve y o in charge of the younger ones.  At home for a couple hours, taking them to a park or neighborhood playground, you bet. 

Her problem was with her choice of venue, her judgment of the maturity and responsibility if these particular 12 y o and NOT giving them explicit instructions.  Not to mention malls, ick, nasty places anyway.

Part of the problem is that the laws across jurisdictions vary widely, and there is a ton of latitude deferring to the judgment of the parents within those laws - which is as it should be - kids vary, neighborhoods vary, situations vary.  And for most parents, it is a leap of faith in the kids as to when they are responsible + necessity in many cases.  That first time, whether they’re 12 or sixteen, it is almost always a cross your fingers and hope kinda thing.  I mean, how do you test for that with certainty?

In my case, the first time the kids were left alone, large guard dog there, the sun was shining, and we were at a meeting less than a 1/2 mile from home.  Kids had been given all the appropriate instructions and emergency numbers etc including the cell phone which I wore.  45 minutes, tops.  30 minutes into the meeting, which was in a windowless room,  the tornado siren (which was right next to building went off)  observers claimed I left sneaker tracks as I sprinted out of the building.

There were some parents who, quite frankly, thought that we were babysitters.  And we’d have to get mall security to track down the parents who just dumped their 6 year old kids off like we were a day care center, just because we happened to sell some toys.

Yes. At EVERY SINGLE retail job that I’ve worked at. The sci-fi store (at the Mall of America), the bookstore, etc.
However I would say that the horrible examples of parenting really stick out in your mind a bit more than the good ones do. (Kids actually saying please and thank you seem to be so few and far between that it’s shocking to hear sometimes.)
That said, if she getting on a high horse claiming “unfair” because she’s upper middle class then maybe next time she’ll let the two 12 year olds off on their own and get a damn babysitter (which she can do doubt afford) for the others.

Parents are often under tremendous stress, and we should expect them to make the occasional bonehead move.

And that’s part of the job. Seriously. When was having kids ever considered something that a parent could just walk away from or drop altogether when they got stressed out? It’s a damn serious thing to raise another human being. Blaming everyone but yourself also doesn’t help your case if you’re the parent. It makes you look irresponsible and uncaring. There’s a strange cult around parents - as if when you reproduce suddenly you become some sort of canonized saint which is bullshit. Yes, there’s tons more stress and etc. but YOU WALKED INTO IT FREELY.

People are seeing the situation from the mom’s point of view when the relevant perspective is the mall employees’, wondering what an 8 year old, a 7 year old, and a 3 year old are doing by themselves in a mall with no adult (or even adolescent) in sight.

But I’m reminded of the bookstore near my house that advises, “Unattended children will be given espresso and a free kitten.” If you believe it takes a village to raise a child, let the rest of the village know you’re depending on them.

I think having a 12 year old watch over a 3 year old is totally fine.  I was routinely asked to babysit for families on my block at that age (that was in 1993-5), some of whom had kids 1 or 2 years old. 

I do agree that taking kids to the mall is irresponsible, since the task of paying attention to the kids gets harder while the potential harm to the kids simultaneously goes way up.

But the question of whether this is a criminal form of neglect still seems apt.  It seems like poor judgment, but not of the criminal kind.  Were the cops out of line? It’s not clear that they were acting based on any kind of anti-smart-lady sentiment, but I do think it shows how screwed up our legal system is re: kids.  WE routinely take kids away from parents when being with them is best option, only to send them to horrible group homes or sketch foster homes that may be breeding grounds for delinquency. And this punishment just seems absurd given that it seems to be one instance of poor judgment and not evidence of routine neglect. Maybe the lady is a pretentious, entitled, d-bag who made some poor parenting decisions, but that’s not grounds for criminal action.

<blockquote>I wasn’t aware that one needed to be a parent to determine what a 12 year old could or couldn’t be capable of.  I apologize, and will never again speak without direct experience of any and every situation on which I might speak.  I was also born at 17 years of age, and thus never experienced being a 12 year old, so I will now shut down Pandagon and submit myself to study by teams of expert scientists.
Jesse Taylor on 07/11 at 12:26 PM <blockquote>

Ok then Jesse, tell us where to find the how to book for kids.  You know, the one that lists every conceivable specific situation and venue and the ages at which kids can be left alone in them.  The one that comes with a guarantee that if you follow the book, there will be no screw ups, no tragedies, no mistakes. 

Parenting is a series of trail and error and a difficult balancing act, which seems to be what most people here realize - on the parent’s and the kids part.  Neither comes with a guarantee.

You haven’t “determined what a 12 y o could or couldn’t be capable of.  Neither the parent or the 12 y o nor any judge can know for sure beforehand.  You’re trying to imply that your hindsight is 20/20 and therefore, a parent’s foresight should be, too.  Newsflash, Jesse, everyone’s got great rearview vision.

I’m pretty sure this is a both/and blog.

The woman probably shouldn’t have done what she did, and is a privileged twit for how she handled getting in trouble for it. 

Prosecution is going a little overboard in this case, society is unfair to mothers, and cops can be power-tripping assholes.

Both/and.

“I want to go out for a while, so you have to stop what you’re doing/cancel plans you already made for my convenience.” Rude rude rude.

My cousin who lived with us for a while when I was a kid said that because she was a teenage girl, people used to say that Mom had a ‘built-in babysitter”, when the truth was that far from exploiting her, she could drive the car to go out as along as she took us kids out once in a while as well, and my folks paid for babysitting when it was needed.

One of the funniest Dr. Laura calls I ever heard was the one where a mother with an infant was a bit perturbed that her teenage daughter resented looking after the baby.  Dr. Laura asks, was she involved in the decision to have the child, no, of course not. Well, then, she has a job to do as a teenage girl to go to school and do well and have some time for herself, the infant isn’t her responsibility, and the mother was unreasonable to expect her to help raise her sister.

I’ve been involved in a case where a baby was in a shopping cart all by itself, the parents were elsewhere in the store, and the store manager called the cops. The mother had a warrant out on her which the cops served on her as she exited the store after CPS was called,  the infant was living with its’ grandma, and it was a real mess all around.

My cousin who lived with us for a while when I was a kid said that because she was a teenage girl, people used to say that Mom had a ‘built-in babysitter”, when the truth was that far from exploiting her, she could drive the car to go out as along as she took us kids out once in a while as well, and my folks paid for babysitting when it was needed.

Nope, it’s still a pretty much guaranteed to be available or instantaneously available kind of sitter if it’s a short errand.  That’s very different from having to find someone a week ahead, make sure they have rides to and from your home and that you have a backup if they get sick or something BEFORE you make the diner reservations of buy the concert tickets or think about a longer trip to the store. 

That’s why I now think the extended family or multi-generational household was a real boon to parents, even though it may have seemed like a loss of privacy at the time.  Even if the grandparent wasn’t really capable of a lot, presumably they’d have called 911 before the flames or the water got too high.

Ms Kate  on  07/11  at  01:19 PM
This is the problem - the criminalization of parenting. 

No, the issue is the criminalization of a failure to parent. I’ve yet to see anyone on this thread even attempt to make a case that the criminalization thereof is inappropriate.

And the idea that the state can’t interfere at all in parenting:

. . . the right of legislators and police to make parenting decisions. . .

. . . is simply completely absurd. You’re damn skippy the state can jump in if a child’s well-being is at stake; the only issue is under what circumstances. And those cricumstances are exactly what Ms Kate refuses to define, hell, refuses to admit exists, and those circumstances weren’t even a teeniest portion of Kevane’s diatribe against the mean old state for refusing to recognize that her porcelain skin and genteel bearing more than compensate for any lack of concern for her offspring.

seeker6079  on  07/11  at  01:37 PM
If you are a DA and your decision on whether or not a crime has been committed is based on, in effect, (a) “well I wouldn’t have done that!” and (b) “everybody knows how irresponsible people like you are!” then you acting unjustly.

There’s some bullshit in here. Using the quote seeker employed:

The city attorney made no secret of the fact that her own parenting choices informed her decision in backing up the police officer.

*Gasp!* Weilders of government power using their personal experience to contextualize the behaviors of those over whom they weild power?! Why, that’s, that’s. . . just what the framers and legislature had in mind.

Judges, lawyers, and legislators are EXPECTED to draw upon their own personal experience when making decisions. This is why diversity of race and class are compelling interests in hiring for state positions. This is why diversity of race is compelling enough an interest to reform voting districts. The DA acted honorably by being up front with this.

A better way to think about this: what would be said of a DA who refused to allow her experiences to inform her decisions? What the hell would she be relying upon? Can’t be the law, because the law doesn’t contemplate even a significant portion of what actually happens in real life. If she made the absurd claim that her experiences have no impact on her decision making, it would merely be proof that she lacks the intellectual ability to properly evaluate her decision-making method.

She told my lawyer in their first meeting that she also had a daughter and would never have left her at the mall.

Well, yeah, and a bunch of people on this thread agree. So here’s the really interesting bit:

She also said she believed professors are incapable of seeing the real world around them because their “heads are always in a book.”

Prejudice, oh nooooes! Now the DA has damned herself because the only reason she had to bring this case against Kevane was that prejudice—

oh, except it wasn’t. The DA had legitimate grounds to bring the case. If mere prejudice, or, hell, even virulent bigotry (not that that’s here), contaminated a legitimate legal case, the U.S. would have to throw out huge percentages of present-day cases and pretty much every case against a person of color alleged until the latter days of the civil rights movement. Prosecutors can be assholes and still be just prosecutors.

So the only real issue left is whether or not Kevane is a classist prick. She is:

I don’t think that she is a smug know-it all simply because she thinks that she should be able to exercise her judgment in the raising of her own children without being treated as if she was selling crack at a day care.

No, she’s a smug know-it-all because her behavior is consistent with that of a smug know-it-all, and her judgment in raising her own kids was and is shitty.

She erred, and badly, which she admits.

No she doesn’t.

I ask folks to read the article.

Take your own advice. Nowhere does she take an appropriate degree of responsibility. Her actions make it clear that she doesn’t think the error was great—and she implies it’s the 12-year-olds’ fault.

Nope, it’s still a pretty much guaranteed to be available or instantaneously available kind of sitter if it’s a short errand.  That’s very different from having to find someone a week ahead, make sure they have rides to and from your home and that you have a backup if they get sick or something BEFORE you make the diner reservations of buy the concert tickets or think about a longer trip to the store.

Here’s a funny notion:  why not respect your kids enough to ASK if they already have plans before making your own plans instead of demanding that your kids cancel theirs an hour before they’re supposed to go to the beach with their friends because, hey, your plans are obviously far more important than theirs, so much so that you didn’t even have to tell them ahead of time?

Again, we’re not talking about emergency situations.  We’re talking about routinely assuming that your teenage child should be at your beck and call 24/7 without warning to babysit.  And, again, it’s not like there was only one friend that this constantly happened to—it was all of them with younger siblings.

Correction:  it was all of the girls I was friends with.  Somehow, none of the boys ever got treated like unpaid 24/7 nannies, even if they had younger siblings.  Funny, that.

seeker6079  on  07/11  at  01:37 PM
Now the measurement of whether or not our cops and prosecutors have acted badly is not, naturally, whether they have acted badly.  It’s “the upper class snot should STFU because others have it worse”.

Alright, this is bullshit. You refused to note that I TWICE pointed out that the cop was an asshole. And it was on you to give any evidence that the DA acted inappropriately—I saw none. You KNOW I addressed that because you took it upon yourself to try to provide some evidence (and I tore that apart above). So your characterization of my point is completely unwarranted and requires willful ignroance on your part.

If your arugments are so weak you want to argue only with yourself, fine, but please keep the strawmen in your head and don’t waste the bandwidth.

Further, and once more with feeling, the criminalization of her bad parenting has yet to have even an attempt made at attacking the same. It wasn’t even a topic of my own posts, wasn’t a topic of Jesse’s post, and no one here has done anything more than pull the claim out of their asses. No evidence, no argument, just “I’m right because I’m right.” If you can’t be bothered to argue the point, please don’t pretend I’m arguing against you.

seeker6079  on  07/11  at  01:52 PM:
. . .“anecdotes are not data” (which is horseshit, because they are data, just provided in individual increments)

Bullshit. Before an anecdote is data it has to be shown that the context of the event is appropriate for the issue studied and the event can be reasonably compared to other events that would comprise the set of data. Pulling some random experience out of your ass because it fits in the same broad category as a blog post (“Parenting! I once saw something involving parenting!”) does not create data.

I’ve found over the years in working in academic environments, law and nonprofit work. . .

seeker sets up an argument-from-authority fallacy;

. . . that the people quickest to whinge . . .

seeker sets up a false-dichotomy fallacy.

the anecdote provides data that they don’t like and which undermines their own—usually excessively generalist—views

seeker ignores the fact that I gave an anecdote that was more on-point than the anecdote he gave, up thread, and then pointed out that neither anecdote was adequate as data. Thus, even if seeker wasn’t wallowing in a disgusting affront to formal logic, he or she would still be utterly fucking wrong since, as I humorously pointed out above, my anecdote was better. . . as were those of several others on the thread.

Not to scare-monger, but it’s not true that “nobody’s ever been abducted from the mall”, there was a massive case in England when two 10-year-olds kidnapped and murdered a toddler from a shopping centre.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_James_Bulger

Mnemosyne  on  07/11  at  04:29 PM
Here’s a funny notion:  why not respect your kids enough to ASK if they already have plans

With Mnemosyne on this: I have no qualms about coercing family members I have power over into sacrificing some time for the sake of the family—if it is utterly necessary—but that isn’t even close to an excuse for disrespecting anyone, even a child. If you are worth of respect in a family, as a parent, uncle, aunt, etc., then you have to treat others with respect. Giving a head’s-up to a 12-year-old a weak in advance is pretty far from a hardship, and reasonable negotiation is also appropriate. And a proper respect for what a given 12-year-old can and can’t do is also necessary. Those older kids in this story got a fairly harsh lesson about responsibility, one that could have been taught in a much more benign fashion.

Nope, it’s still a pretty much guaranteed to be available or instantaneously available kind of sitter if it’s a short errand.

Except we lived outside the city limits, across the street from an orange grove.

Mom didn’t work outside the house, and saying my father was cheap with gas when it was less than 40 cents a gallon seems almost as fantastic as saying that one had a nodding acquaintance with Lucy.

We only went shopping once a week after we had our weekly restaurant meal, and mom didn’t work outside the house, so the idea was that my mom could sit on her(presumed) lazy butt while my cousin did all the grunt work, remember that this was about 40 years ago.

Mnemosyne wrote:

Does she deserve to be prosecuted?  Probably not.  Should she at least acknowledge that it was a bad decision rather than self-righteously whining about the criminalization of parenting and claiming that her 12-year-old could handle the situation even after the 12-year-old clearly failed at it?  Yep.

This pretty much sums up my feelings on the issue, too.  The cops should have let her off with a warning and maybe an advisory call from CPS.  I imagine her attitude probably made things worse for her than it really should have been.  I’m not saying that’s fair; that’s just the reality of dealing with cops.

The cops should have let her off with a warning and maybe an advisory call from CPS. 

From my experience as a motorist, if you act reasonably, the police will treat you reasonably in return. If you’re doing 90 in a 70, don’t argue you’re only doing 75—that’s simply not the path to getting a warning. The Professor did not comprehend that she had screwed up and was in serious trouble. She did not get a warning because she refused to admit she had made a poor decision that jeopardized her kids’ safety. The DA did not let her off because she showed no sign of having learned her lesson. Had she said when she got to the mall, “I made a bad decision because I was so tired; thank you so so much for taking care of my kids, I will never do that again,” they likely would have let her go. Instead she said, in effect, “Get off my back you idiots. I know what I’m doing.”

She chose to go the hard way, and even now she cannot bring herself to admit she was in the wrong.

This reminds me somewhat of when Michael Jackson dangled his baby off the balcony. It didn’t bother me, but a lot of mothers had a real problem with it. As if Michael Jackson would drop his baby.

And it’s never good policy to antagonize the police, as even Mel Gibson came to understand.

No One of Consequence and Mnemosyne,
i think the idea of asking your teenage kid whether he’d mind helping out with child care is a bit strange, but it could be a cultural difference.  Growing up, all my friends were indian, and our parents just assumed that whatever plans the parents had trumped whatever plans we might make.  This meant that if shuba mashi and manoj uncle were coming over for dinner on a sat. night, and we had group plans, friends would have to cancel so they could wait on the guests and be hospitable.  Family obligations (even boring Indian classical music concerts) always trumped personal preference.  This held true even if my dad only told me about the obligations the same day. I was so badly behaved that my parents rarely got consent from me, but I always knew i was the one being the jerk, not them.  AT the time, i thought it was a pain in the neck, but I also think it led to much tighter knit families and much greater familial support.  Then again, the parents sacrificed in ways that most families here would think are absurd.  I guess it depends on how you raised your kids until they were teenagers.  The kids I nannied wouldn’t do impromptu child care, but then they were selfish, kinda mean little twits who couldn’t do anything for themselves except be shuttled to about 8 dozen different lessons, often having to leave early from one (volleyball) to be taken midway to another (soccer).

as to the cops being assholes….well, so what’s new?  cops are frequently jerks, and it doesn’t sound like they’ve deviated from their normal level of jerkitude in this instance.

If she were Professor Brad, the whole episode probably would have been laughed off as a daft plan by an absent-minded professor. I can’t imagine anyone criminally charging a dad for this.

Twelve is old enough to babysit at home, alone. A suburban mall is a safe place with tons of adults around, including security guards. Leaving the kids wasn’t a shining moment for Professor B., but it was hardly gross neglect.

The woman probably shouldn’t have done what she did, and is a privileged twit for how she handled getting in trouble for it.

Prosecution is going a little overboard in this case, society is unfair to mothers, and cops can be power-tripping assholes.

Agreed.  Being arrogant about one’s socio-economic and educational status is not only ineffective in dealing with cops…it is often viewed by many cops and less privileged citizens as an attempt to use that privilege to gain special treatment that wouldn’t be accorded to the rest of the hoi polloi. 

Only argument is that the prosecution is going way overboard in this case…not merely a little. 

One of many cases where the prosecution and cops are overstepping IMO when a stern warning and a possible fine would do…..and where Levine is certainly no poster rebel for the Sonny Curtis and the Crickets’ “I fought the law” song…especially when her very privileges mean she’s already won far more than those less socio-economically and racially privileged than herself.

Why do Americans think that every FAIL is a crime?

A suburban mall is a safe place with tons of adults around, including security guards.

Considering the stories of fights, kids getting lost, and more that I heard from cousins who grew up in some posh upper/upper-middle class suburban areas all over the states from the 1960’s-‘80s and my own experiences at several rural and suburban malls during my undergrad and after…I wouldn’t be sure too about that…..

Suburban malls aren’t any more or less safe IME than many urban department stores I’ve been in and around in urban areas in Boston and NYC. 

In some ways, this is the flip-side of the stereotype that all large urban areas are *horrors* crime ridden cesspools while suburban areas are a utopia of perfect safety which causes most suburbanites I’ve encountered to feel entitled to warn me about the “dangers” of walking around on NYC streets at night while simultaneously being lulled into such complacency that it often bordered on complete obliviousness. 

Agg..meant to say lulled into such complacency in their suburban environments including suburban malls…

Urban or suburban, malls are generally safe places. The whole marketing concept behind the mall is the appeal of of a hyper-controlled bubble. Malls are well-lit, full of people, and patrolled by security guards. It was a dumb idea to leave two 12-year-olds in charge of three younger kids. But not every lapse in common sense is a crime.

I’m with the people who see this as a horrible cycle of cascading hostility. It’s seldom a good idea to explain to a cop why the thing you did wasn’t really bad or illegal, and never in a manner that could be construed as disrespectful. And police and prosecutors use apparent remorse as a way to gauge punishment all the time, so the more that Kevane insisted that deliberately losing her kids was no big deal, the more the DA was going to be the kind of egomaniacal ass that some DAs can be…

But I’m not sure about the scenario with Brad. If a single father had done something like that, it would of course be the fault of the evil teenage girls to whom he unwittingly trusted his kids. But if a married one had done it, what do you want to bet someone would have arrested his wife for letting him do it?

Wow, as a parent of a big family, and the eldest of an even bigger one, I can say without a doubt this was an epic shitty idea. An adult can’t “make” a three-year-old stay in a stroller, much less a twelve-year-old kid, they’re equal parts ninja and one-man riot at three! And it’s just straight-up classist to expect every clerk in the mall to mind your brats, which was what the author was unthinkingly doing. What a thoughtless person. Yes, the cops were dicks, because surprise! cops are dicks! It’s worrisome, at the very least, and there should be more outrage about the abuses they perpetuate, but let’s be honest here: I don’t doubt for a minute they got a hefty dose of “Offended White Lady” when she realized she wasn’t going to get off with a warning. I’m having an especially hard time feeling sympathetic for someone who feels comfortable dumping off OTHER PEOPLES’ CHILDREN, only one of the twelve-year-olds was hers, that shit’s not cool.

A suburban mall is a safe place with tons of adults around, including security guards.

That did sweet fuckall for Adam Walsh.  Or Jamie Bulger, mentioned elsewhere.  How quickly we short-attention spanned forget.

Dear gods.  The mall is NOT safe, and it’s the epitome of assholery to expect mall clerks to keep an eye on unattended children to maintain the illusion that the mall is safe.  They’re already too busy attending to customers and keeping an eye on the wannabe shoplifters to add babysitting strangers’ children to their duties.

[...]I can say without a doubt this was an epic shitty idea. An adult can’t “make” a three-year-old stay in a stroller, much less a twelve-year-old kid, they’re equal parts ninja and one-man riot at three! And it’s just straight-up classist to expect every clerk in the mall to mind your brats, which was what the author was unthinkingly doing. What a thoughtless person.

[...]

I’m having an especially hard time feeling sympathetic for someone who feels comfortable dumping off OTHER PEOPLES’ CHILDREN, only one of the twelve-year-olds was hers, that shit’s not cool.

YES.

I really don’t understand the people defending this woman.  Oh, boo hoo, she’s a professor, and telling her she made a super stupid decision is misogynist!  Horseshit.  I don’t care if she’s the president of the godsdamned universe, she made a super stupid decision.  Was she criminally negligent?  Probably not, but she was certainly criminally brain dead there.

My kid don’t go to the mall alone, and they’re 13 and 17.  Sure, they can go to stores other than the one I’m in.  Together, and both with their cell phones, with a designated meeting time and place.  Because, as I learned as a mallratting teenager in the 80s, malls are not safe.  The presence of adults and security guards and big lights is meaningless.  If someone aims to misbehave, they will, and they do, and no one stops them.

Correction:  it was all of the girls I was friends with.  Somehow, none of the boys ever got treated like unpaid 24/7 nannies, even if they had younger siblings.  Funny, that.

Mnemosyne, this is something I like to remind people of when they extol the wonderful virtues of extended families and the awesome way in which they share in childrearing and care-taking duties.  Forced into those duties is more like it, and nearly always the women and girls.  It’s a system predicated on rigid gender roles and unpaid female labor.

The whole marketing concept behind the mall is the appeal of of a hyper-controlled bubble. Malls are well-lit, full of people, and patrolled by security guards. It was a dumb idea to leave two 12-year-olds in charge of three younger kids. But not every lapse in common sense is a crime.

Lindsay,

That’s marketing hype….not necessarily actual reality with all or even most malls.  Moreover, even if we accept that malls are safe because they are well-lit, full of people, and patrolled by security guards…is it really fair and considerate to off-shore one’s parenting responsibilities to the security guards, mall workers, and the rest of the people in the mall?

And it’s just straight-up classist to expect every clerk in the mall to mind your brats, which was what the author was unthinkingly doing. What a thoughtless person.

Exactly. 

Moreover, I am with Mnemosyne on her point that it is unfair to assume that older children should automatically be taken for granted as free babysitters to their younger siblings…..tends to breed bitter and justified resentment against the parents…..

Jesse, the problem isn’t that 12 year olds do or don’t screw up - the problem is that parents are not allowed to put them in situations where they can learn by screwing up.

This is kind of extreme though, because in this case the 12 year old’s screw-up could have ended up hurting the 3-year-old, and if she knew her kids at all she had to know her 12 year old was going to screw this up.  Letting kids reap the consequences of their own decisions is good parenting, but you have to make sure the consequences would likely be proportionate to the offense.  “I couldn’t buy something I wanted because I spent all my allowance foolishly” is a reasonable alone-in-the-mall consequence.  “My toddler sister spent a week in the hospital after my 8-year-old brother tried to take her stroller down the escalator when I was supposed to be watching them” is not.  Preteens on their own have a good enough instinct for self preservation that they can be counted on to make reasonable mistakes, but smaller children are unpredicatable, especially in public places.  It’s not fair to raise an irresponsible kid and then put them in that situation because you’re busy.  It’s doubly not fair to put a toddler in the care of an irresponsible sibling.

When I worked in an amusement park, we had lost kids all the time.  The older ones went to a security guard and were taken to guest services, parents were paged and everything ended well.  Younger ones would, almost to a kid, think that the best idea would be to go find the parent’s car and wait there.  If the kid was under 8 we’d have to be extra vigilient about the exits to prevent the kid from wandering around the highways or getting hit by a car in the parking lot.  Once the 12 year olds ditched the kids, it was no longer “two 12 year olds in charge.”  It became “an 8-year-old in charge” and I think we can all agree that’s a bad idea. 

Chances are good that one out of every four employees knew the kids by sight and name.

Then why didn’t one of these people call her and tell her to pick up her damn kids before the cops were called?  Plus, it’s also a gesture of major assholery to expect store employees to keep an eye on your kids like it’s their job, even if your town is small and close knit.  Notice there’s no mention of her asking anyone in the mall to do so, or any reason for the employees to believe she wasn’t somewhere around.

A lot of judgey comments. Anyone never made a mistake?

Come on, there is definitely anti-intellectualism here.

Kevane does not say once in the article ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?’ or ask for special treatment, it was others perceiving her as doing that.

And it is sexist. Absolutely, had he been Professor Brad it would just have been an absent-minded professor type mistake.

And if he had argued back to cops, he would just have been passionate. Laydeez are not meant to argue! Laydeez must be appropriately nice and repentant! And must definitely not have opinions or intelligence! Gosh no!

This expectation is often greater on middle-class women. (OK, which is based on classist assumptions of what can be expected of ‘those’ people, and not being all ‘what about teh middle class’ - but it’s not fun to be expected higher standards, and unrealistic ones - anyone never had a bad day and been mildly rude?)

I would be here forever if I detailed every occasion in which I have been shamed for speaking up.

There are two prejudices going on here, the ‘know it all profesors, head in a book’ and ‘intelligent women are cold evil mothers’.

Not saying Kevane did nothing wrong, just that it’s not criminal.

Yeah *shock!* Kevane made a mistake!

Agree with Ms Kate, kids have to learn, and won’t ever learn except by doing. Yeah, I babysat as a teenage girl and amazingly, made some mistakes when doing so. I survived, kids survived. Big deal.

i think the idea of asking your teenage kid whether he’d mind helping out with child care is a bit strange, but it could be a cultural difference.  Growing up, all my friends were indian, and our parents just assumed that whatever plans the parents had trumped whatever plans we might make.

One of the friends I’m talking about was Indian, but the others were white.  It was perfectly acceptable to white suburban parents to pre-empt their children’s plans with zero notice, so it can’t be much of a cultural difference.  I didn’t have younger siblings but my parents did at least attempt to let me know when family parties were happening so I wasn’t getting ready to walk out the door when they suddenly announced, “But we’re going to Grandma’s today!” and had to try and get hold of my friends to tell them I wasn’t coming after all.

My parents also didn’t yell at me in front of my friends but always asked to come to another room if I was in trouble, but very few of my friends’ parents offered them the same courtesy.  I will never, ever forget being trapped in the car with one of my friends while she had a screaming fight with her mom that ended with her mom pulling to the side of the road and ordering her to get out.  So I did.  Her mom never forgave me for that—apparently I was a bad influence for doing things like telling her daughter that mosquito bites didn’t itch because the eggs were hatching in her arm.

I guess it depends on how you raised your kids until they were teenagers.  The kids I nannied wouldn’t do impromptu child care, but then they were selfish, kinda mean little twits who couldn’t do anything for themselves except be shuttled to about 8 dozen different lessons, often having to leave early from one (volleyball) to be taken midway to another (soccer).

Ah, so people who resent having been used as unpaid labor with no notice by their parents are selfish and mean.  Nice.

Most of the time, expecting people to show some consideration of the fact that at every stage they were active proponents of worsening their situation is needed before people *stop* being judgmental.  The rest is privilege of some kind, like when that friend of Dick Cheney apologized for getting his face blown off by Mr Cheney.

Of course, this is something that goes into the news as “that silly mother!  Proper women know better!” all the time.  Of course the reporting mechanism is sexist.  Also of course, this is a story that villian reports on her own initiative as if she hadn’t done anything wrong instead of sexist reporters.

That doesn’t change the fact that she could have *easily* won a Darwin award, beyond the improv babysitting demand.  This is alot closer to leaving the kid in the hot car for hours than the quick run for milk and dishwasher detergent.  She wasn’t harried by external demands, or had much of any other excuse for thinking this was okay.  I hate it when people don’t really understand the whole “chances are”.

Then she goes off and becomes argumenative with a cop, and then the DA, and now she apparently wantss public concern.  Narcissic much?  Privileged people gets to make mistakes.  It’s how they get off for raping someone, or beating someone else within an inch of their lives or more.

My kid don’t go to the mall alone, and they’re 13 and 17.

The 17 year old?  Seriously?

We only went shopping once a week after we had our weekly restaurant meal, and mom didn’t work outside the house, so the idea was that my mom could sit on her(presumed) lazy butt while my cousin did all the grunt work, remember that this was about 40 years ago.
Dark Avenger Guardian Chow Mein on 07/11 at 04:58 PM

Not quite what I meant DAGCM.  Growing up, we had the maternal grandfather living with us.  In our particular ethnicity there was a lot of this, mostly grandmothers, due probably to the statistical longevity advantage of females. 

Now, grandfather wasn’t the cuddly amuse the kid type - and he spent much of his time in his room, dreading and “doing his correspondence” on an old Smith Corona typewriter, or listening to his “hi-fi.”  But, what this meant is that if my mom, who worked outside the home but had a midweek day off wanted to go to the mall to buy a new dress without the hassle of watching the kid, or even over to the next door neighbor’s for a cup of coffee or dad on his days off wanted to go to the local bar (yeah, it was the ‘60’s) to watch a ballgame, there was someone in the house so they weren’t leaving the kid alone.  90% of the time, he didn’t have plans to go out.  My equivalence there with the teen is that 90% of the time, a teen might well be hanging around the house listening to music etc.

Yelling, “hey, you gonna be home for the afternoon?” Keep an eye on the kid.”  is a helluva lot easier than arranging a formal babysitter.

And if he had argued back to cops, he would just have been passionate. Laydeez are not meant to argue! Laydeez must be appropriately nice and repentant! And must definitely not have opinions or intelligence! Gosh no!

Depending on the area and the mood/jerkishness of the cops, he may just as well have been handcuffed…or even physically subdued or even beaten. 

Most cops hate having their “authoritah” questioned by any seemingly ordinary member of the public and will retaliate harshly as much against the questioner to the extent they can get away with it. 

Knew plenty of upper/upper-middle class White dudes who were given the same third degree by the authorities or worse…physically assaulted for mouthing off to the cops….and they got off very lightly compared to their less socio-economically and racially privileged friends and counterparts who were given worse treatment and charges.

Ah, so people who resent having been used as unpaid labor with no notice by their parents are selfish and mean.  Nice.

t-ster even admits to refusing to comply with his/her parents’ wishes most of the time, but I guess that’s not selfish and mean.  Another thing I’ve noticed about people who wax about the superiority of extended traditional families is that they tend to be people who experienced them as children - so most of the time they were being taken care of and not doing care-taking - and haven’t gone on to live in extended families as adults.

Maybe I’m just missing something here, but it seems to me Kevane didn’t bring up the class issue—the prosecutor did.  I completely agree that a working class or black mother would have been treated worse than she was.  However, I think she was treated badly, and I never saw her say anywhere in the article that she knew more than anyone or was a better parent than anyone because of her profession.  She talks about her profession at the beginning in describing the work-family balance, and how she’s made it work.  That’s all.  If she attributes her parenting skills to anything, it’s to how her parents raised her, and she never mentions her parents’ level of education.

I have been on the receiving end of people who think that because I am well-educated, that means that I automatically have no common sense, and that they can therefore dismiss anything I have to say as not coming from any real-world experience.  It’s as infuriating and ugly as the prejudice that assumes that non-college educated people are stupid.

I’m also trying to understand how defending herself makes her an narcissistic asshole.  Are you of the mind that she should have pled guilty?

My kid don’t go to the mall alone, and they’re 13 and 17.  Sure, they can go to stores other than the one I’m in.  Together, and both with their cell phones, with a designated meeting time and place.  Because, as I learned as a mallratting teenager in the 80s, malls are not safe.  The presence of adults and security guards and big lights is meaningless.  If someone aims to misbehave, they will, and they do, and no one stops them.
MaggieB on 07/11 at 07:53 PM

Hey Maggie - heads up here.  In less than one year, that 17 y o* “child” of yours will be considered an adult in many respects.  He or she will be able to vote, enlist in the military (and make life and death decisions while there) enter into contracts, etc.  In most states, he or she can already get married.  Please tell us what magic pill you imagine you will be giving said “child” to effect the overnight transformation to adulthood? 

*since you didn’t specify, I’m assuming a person with no mental disabilities.

The 17 year old?  Seriously?

Yeah, I did a double-take on that as I started undergrad at that age several hundred miles away from home and being able to deal with adult responsibilities such as fulfilling my academic obligations, planning my schedule, finding part-time work to defray expenses not covered by my near-full scholarship, budgeting to ensure I didn’t run out of money by the end of the academic year, and generally finding ways to get through college without getting myself into the sorts of serious problems which seemed to dog classmates older than myself.

Hector—you deal with different cops than I do.  And I’m a privileged white guy.  I blew a “no right turn on red” sign in total darkness in light traffic at a grand total of five miles an hour, because I didn’t see the sign.  The cop acted like I’d killed someone’s cat.  Yes, I was polite—I was obviously in the wrong.  But there was just no way to placate the guy.  He was seriously upset about the whole thing.

Some people are assholes.  More of them are assholes to women.

I have been on the receiving end of people who think that because I am well-educated, that means that I automatically have no common sense, and that they can therefore dismiss anything I have to say as not coming from any real-world experience.  It’s as infuriating and ugly as the prejudice that assumes that non-college educated people are stupid.

The “smart people have no common sense” meme is so irritating.  Sure, some smart people have no street smarts but other smart people have it in spades.  There are also plenty of dumb people with no common sense.  At least the smart-but-common-sense-deprived people have the capability of learning it.

You know what? I was babysitting at 12. I was also the oldest of five, and was given a lot of responsibility. My 12-year-old wanted to start babysitting right away just like I had. But she’s not me. She’s a good kid, but she’s had a very different life than I. So we’ve constructed a sort of graduated “program” (for lack of a better word, though I know there’s one) whereby she watches the small fry at family gatherings while the adults are nearby, and sometimes will now look after slightly older kids at our home or theirs. In a year or two she’ll be fine. Right now, she’s fine on her own at home; she makes a mean mac and cheese, does her own laundry. I wouldn’t leave her in a mall in charge of anyone. Yet. Know your kids!

Also, don’t talk back to cops. Right or wrong, they have “authoriteh” (as noted above) - and the reality is that cooperating and at least appearing contrite (but not abasing oneself, that confers too much authority) is the pragmatic way to deal with the situation.

Please tell us what magic pill you imagine you will be giving said “child” to effect the overnight transformation to adulthood?

There is no pill.  The “child” will be like many of the young adults I know.  Utterly dependent on his/her parents.

so most of the time they were being taken care of and not doing care-taking - and haven’t gone on to live in extended families as adults.
DonnaDiva on 07/11 at 08:36 PM

I think it can go in stages DD, and, as I said above it does mean a loss of privacy, more so then than now, as homes tended to be smaller (3 bedrooms and 1 bath 900 sq ft).  Yeah, there were times when there was tension and not much space to get away from it.  That also runs in stages.  AS a teen, I really resented having the grandparent in the house.  As a young adult, I didn’t like having the parent around, and when I finally began to appreciate the advantages I was the caretaker for the parent - sometimes it’s not fun coming home to an empty house, sometimes a goldfish can make it seem crowded. 

Nope, I never got to be the “middle generation.”  My family has long generations (latelife childbearing).  But having a family now, I regret on an almost daily basis that the parents didn’t live long enough to be around: for the stories my kids miss (the sweep of history that I understand comes very much from listening to grandfather conversations), for the advice, and yes, for the babysitter you know has a vested interest beyond the $.

I also work with many farm families who are unbelievably multigenerational and close.  Almost invariably, there is something about both the kids and elderly that embodies a dignity of purpose and place.  I just met one such ag family last month.  My main contact has been trough a college age ag kid and her dad.  Her great grandfather is still alive - ‘90’s.  She talks about him like a friend.  - She is old enough to have kids of her own and her cousins do.  The family actually LIKES each other and though they don’t live in one house, they have chosen to live nearby each other.  They also choose to work with each other on various businesses, even cousins. 

And they aren’t unique - almost uniformly, farm families are closeknit and I imagine growing old in one is a very secure thing.  That’s something I think about as I get to what is certainly over the hill in the journey to finitude.

i think the idea of asking your teenage kid whether he’d mind helping out with child care is a bit strange, but it could be a cultural difference

I may have misrepresented myself; I wouldn’t go that far. I would require a child of mine to comply, but I’d make the process as easy as possible, and use it as an example of how I’d expect to be treated. Of course, if the kid in question is far too immature to pick up on the nuances of respect, then yeah, direct orders will be given. But I don’t assign kids like that responsibility over other kids.

Family obligations (even boring Indian classical music concerts) always trumped personal preference.

Well, I think there are plenty of cultures in the U.S. that force kids to do annoying things for social reasons; I grew up in one (church, etc.). I would be reluctant to create familial obligations that would make my children overly unhappy, but that’s only because I recall my childhood all too well. But the fact that I can pick and choose those obligations, to a certain extent, does imply a cultural difference.

Either way, treating a child as a servant of convenience is simply bad parenting, imo, and no tradition or familial obligation justifies that.

Lindsay Beyerstein  on  07/11  at  07:06 PM
Urban or suburban, malls are generally safe places.

Eh, I have to disagree with that one. Malls have their share of predators.  (See the other posters.) Further, plenty of women and girls have been stalked in malls—it’s where predators go. More importantly, malls have plenty of opportunities for children to do property damage or get themselves hurt. They are not designed with unmonitored children in mind. And how “safe” a location is for an adult has little bearing on how “safe” it is for a three-year-old. In any event, it doesn’t really matter. You just don’t leave a three-year-old unsupervised, anyplace.

Butterflywings  on  07/11  at  08:01 PM
Come on, there is definitely anti-intellectualism here.

WTF? I’m sure this site has FAR MORE than its fair share of graduate degrees. Why the fuck would we be anti-intellectual?

I’ll buy that it may well be sexist—but in such a case the father should not receive better treatment.

Hey Maggie - heads up here.  In less than one year, that 17 y o* “child” of yours will be considered an adult in many respects.  He or she will be able to vote, enlist in the military (and make life and death decisions while there) enter into contracts, etc.  In most states, he or she can already get married.  Please tell us what magic pill you imagine you will be giving said “child” to effect the overnight transformation to adulthood?

*since you didn’t specify, I’m assuming a person with no mental disabilities.

I’m well aware, thank you very much, and he’s being taught quite well to take care of himself.  He knows how to do his own laundry, go grocery shopping, make small household repairs, balance a checkbook.  He can cook - better than I can, even, as he’s in his school’s culinary arts program, and earning loud and voluminous praise. 

He’s a responsible and respectable kid who is involved in many community and school service activities, and is generally free to go wherever he damned well pleases.  Off to the zoo on the other end of town with his girlfriend?  Sure.  Science center downtown?  Art Museum?  No problem.  Spend hours and hours after school organizing GSA activities, then ride his bike home?  Call when you hit the road.  Drum circle at the arts center?  Fine.  Here’s ten bucks, grab lunch on the way home.

But not the mall.  Because the mall?  Is demonstrably not safe.  The gang activity, rash of assaults, robberies, the teenager who was just STABBED not ten feet from a security patrol car just two months ago?  The curfews that have not helped an iota?  The RIOT in the food court?

Yah.  Fuck that noise.  Other people can willingly send their children into that environment, and more power to them.  But until my kid is eighteen, I am legally responsible for him, not you, not the other people who send their kids off unattended, and I am the one who has to live with the consequences if I send him into a known danger and something happens.

He’s not going to suddenly be unable to fend for himself because I don’t let him go to the mall alone.  But thanks for playing.

I’m also trying to understand how defending herself makes her an narcissistic asshole.  Are you of the mind that she should have pled guilty?
Monala on 07/11 at 08:39 PM

Agreed.  In many cases, it is the privileged who have the ability to fight back for all.  If Kevane just rolls over and pays the fine or takes off work to do parenting classes, that then becomes standard practice.  Look at homeschooling.  It wasn’t the poor rural mom fundies who got homeschooling rights codified (although now they are a pretty entrenched voice for homeschooling rights via HSLDA and all.  It was originally a bunch of educated hippie California parents who pushed for it.

Yah.  Fuck that noise.  Other people can willingly send their children into that environment, and more power to them.  But until my kid is eighteen, I am legally responsible for him, not you, not the other people who send their kids off unattended, and I am the one who has to live with the consequences if I send him into a known danger and something happens.

He’s not going to suddenly be unable to fend for himself because I don’t let him go to the mall alone.  But thanks for playing.
MaggieB on 07/11 at 09:16 PM

Whoa there!  Evidently, not every mall is the same, evidently.  I see your point, and now that you say it, I do remember reading about incidents at an inner surburban mall that sounded similar. Our outer suburban mall isn’t like that - I hate the crass commercialism and overpriced same stuff in every store conformity meme, but would consider it very safe.  I used to take the kids there as babies because they had a kick ass play climby thing in the food court and it was FREE!  Your first post didn’t make it clear, but now I can understand that - it’s not the kid, it’s the mall.

DonnaDiva, I actually do think I was a selfish and mean kid, at least to my parents, and that my refusal to accept the notion of familial “duty” was part of that.  I think my parents got screwed in the cosmic child lottery on that score.

I don’t think kids who resent being impromptu babysitters are automatically mean and selfish—I was making an observation with the only sample of extended adult responsibility for children that I had, but obviously it can’t be generalized. What I was saying is the expectations you were raised with alter what you think is fair, and if you were raised thinking your parents should not expect your time or energy without permission, you will obviously balk at demands being made that infringe on your freedom. Conversely, if you are raised to think that you are part of a family unit that functions together and that you have responsibilities within that unit independent of what you want, you probably will resent it less (assuming duties are divvied up in a fair way amongst siblings, parents, etc.)

And I was actually never a beneficiary of an extended family setup.  My grandparents were old and lived thousands of miles away, and we had a small family in the US, (though 10 uncles/aunts in India), so my parents did all the child-rearing without the benefit of these. The older fam in India still lives in a joint family, and while they may have their squabbles, i think they’re actually quite happy with it.  (Although the 10 people in a 2 bedroom apartment of the 70’s was probably too much).

Why do Americans think that every FAIL is a crime?

Let’s see, in my own family life, FAIL was a burned pheasant that my father left me to watch on the roaster without making sure I’d know when it was ready to be taken off, when I was 14/15 years old.

His reaction was rather impulsive, but he later came to realize the position he had put me in, through no fault of my own.

That was a misfortune, not a crime.

Can you tell the difference now?

someone would have arrested his wife for letting him do it?

“Letting him do it?”

Exolt, I’m not saying that malls are risk-free environments.

However, there are degrees of risk. Leaving those five kids at the mall was an epic parenting FAIL, but it wasn’t a crime. It’s not like she left them at the beach with the 12-year-olds lifeguarding, or at the bus station at three in the morning. Deliberately leaving kids in a hot car would be a crime. Leaving the kids at the mall, not even close. Not everything bad is criminal.

Nor am I saying that it’s acceptable to expect clerks to babysit your kids. If they aren’t mature enough to function in a store like any other patron, they should be accompanied by a competent babysitter. But that’s an issue of consideration not an issue of criminality. A lot of horribly obnoxious behavior is still perfectly legal.

However, there are degrees of risk. Leaving those five kids at the mall was an epic parenting FAIL, but it wasn’t a crime. It’s not like she left them at the beach with the 12-year-olds lifeguarding, or at the bus station at three in the morning. Deliberately leaving kids in a hot car would be a crime. Leaving the kids at the mall, not even close. Not everything bad is criminal.

Nor am I saying that it’s acceptable to expect clerks to babysit your kids. If they aren’t mature enough to function in a store like any other patron, they should be accompanied by a competent babysitter. But that’s an issue of consideration not an issue of criminality. A lot of horribly obnoxious behavior is still perfectly legal.

Agreed it wasn’t illegal and that Kevane shouldn’t be prosecuted…or even arrested for that matter.

A stern warning and a possible fine would have been sufficient. 

I do disagree malls are safe as you phrased it as that has not been my or my older cousins’ experiences…..and they grew up in posh suburban neighborhoods throughout the US…especially with the prevalence of fights among the adolescents…and they experienced this during the 60’s-80’s. 

That’s not to say one should completely ban adolescents and young adults who are responsible from going there unsupervised…..but the phrasing you used is quite reminiscent of the very oblivious complacency many suburbanites tended to fall into when they are in their familiar suburban surroundings…including suburban malls….

Malls are the last places I’d consider to be safe places…especially for children and adolescents.  Best to go there aware of your surroundings and on guard rather than be surprised by the unexpected.

But not the mall.  Because the mall?  Is demonstrably not safe.  The gang activity, rash of assaults, robberies, the teenager who was just STABBED not ten feet from a security patrol car just two months ago?

And this is a mall that you willingly go to and bring your children into? What makes you so magical that suddenly you are safe when you go, but your 17 year olds aren’t?  Seriously, not buying this.

As far as extended families: I cannot say that I am impressed with the performance of nuclear families to the point where I would start criticizing those who praise the extended family model.

Wonder how much jail time these parents are facing?

http://news.aol.com/article/teen-circles-world-alone-on-sailboat/565236?icid=main|hp-desktop|dl1|link3|http://news.aol.com/article/teen-circles-world-alone-on-sailboat/565236

If Kevane just rolls over and pays the fine or takes off work to do parenting classes, that then becomes standard practice.

Exactly.  She may be an asshole who did something wrong as a parent, but that doesn’t mean that defending herself and calling out the bullshit is legally wrong.  Legislating parental discretion has the same effect on parents as it has on kids: they make bad choices because they never get to make choices and the limits are obviously bogus if they are at all explicit in the first place.

Part of the reason why we have all these teens entering college who have no farking clue how to organize their own lives without a parent sheparding them around for one excuse or another is that we live in a society where parents are lead to believe that AGE 18 is a *magic* dividing line where kids suddenly will know, without any experience, what to do with themselves.  We also have severe early adult drinking issues because somebody decided that the wisdom fairy plops in at age 21 and magically renders youth old enough to drink, and driving problems for the same stupid arbitrary reasons of arbitrary ages set by law and not evaluation of the person at hand or good sense.

It takes time to teach kids to drink responsibly, and so I offer small amounts of wine or beer to the kids at meals (they usually refuse) if I am drinking them.  Conversely, I may not let my kids take a drivers license until they pass my test, not that joke of a test that MA offers. I let my kids have limited but increasing freedom, and they are building their independence and if they fail to be responsible (don’t answer their phone, don’t check in at appointed times, etc.) they lose their privileges.  All of this actual “growing up” is impossible in the sort of belligerent, mother-shaming nanny state we seem headed for, and yet those who most strongly promote the criminalization of parental discretion seem to be the same ones that throw up their hands and yell and scream about how kids these days don’t grow up and are permanently immature.  Well ... DUH.

A friend of mine works as a mall cop at a big mall in Burnaby, BC. He has some hair-raising stories about people knifing each other in the food court and whatnot. No public place is immune from crime or violence or sexual coercion, but those things are endemic in society at large. His perception is that the mall is just one more place people who are inclined towards knifing each other happen to go. It doesn’t mean that the average patron is at risk of getting stabbed.

Statistically, kids are way more likely to be abused by the adults they know and trust than by some mall perv. People vastly overrate the risks of stranger crime and vastly underrate their chances of being victimized by people they know.

I thought this was a feminist blog.

As far as extended families: I cannot say that I am impressed with the performance of nuclear families to the point where I would start criticizing those who praise the extended family model.

Meh.  Grass is always greener elsewhere.  Both types of families are predicated on rigid gender roles and unpaid female labor.

Okay, I read the entire article (I’d just skimmed it earlier) and I’m just not coming away from it thinking that Kevane is a supercilious asshole.  YMMV but I found her to be honest and self-deprecating.  It’s true that a poor, minority woman would be facing harsher treatment but I don’t see how Kevane wearing a hairshirt is going to improve that situation.

Eloquently put, Ms. Kate.  Our midwife (at home birth)  had the neatest thing in her contract “Life is a risk”  why is it that so many people don’t accept that? 

I have a cousin, I may have mentioned her on here before.  She had two sons. Was overprotective (paranoid over the top) of both e.g, as a responsible 25 y o I got a 20 minute lecture before taking the 5 y o for ice cream at the local DQ.  The older one rebelled to the point where he is now an obnoxious covering massive insecurities covering racist, misogynist etc. tendencies.  The younger is a clueless, socially inept/completely socially handicapped 20 something momma’s boy who works at the same big box store his dad does because the kid can’t drive. Absolutely no friends.  Meanwhile mom is terminally mentally ill (early onset ALzheimers.  I shudder to think what will happen when mom and dad die.)     

Younger kid’s cat got hit by a car the other day.  Yes, much tears (mine too).  But when we talked about maybe we should make all the cats inside cats, both kids quickly argued against this, listing what the cat would have missed had he not been allowed out - hunting mice, wrestling with other cats, chasing grasshoppers, fishing in the ornamental pond, etc.  I think they get it.

Here are some questions for those of you who think that criminal charges are appropriate in this case:

How many children died last year or in a five year period as a DIRECT result of being allowed to go to the mall on their own (or simply to be unsupervised)?

How many in Montana?

How many children died or were maimed in farming accidents?

How many in Montana?

You see, it was somehow CRIMINAL for her to let her kids go alone to the mall, but it would be TRADITIONAL to allow them to operate farm machinery despite the extremely well documented hazards and dangers and accidents in the former situation.

Why not go after the real situations where kids get killed?  Otherwise, aren’t you being classist? (hint: between 1982 and 1996, 9 children age 4 and under died due to farm equipment accidents according to OSHA.  Seven ten to 14 year olds died while operating farm equipment in the same period).

Statistically, kids are way more likely to be abused by the adults they know and trust than by some mall perv. People vastly overrate the risks of stranger crime and vastly underrate their chances of being victimized by people they know.

True dat.  But focusing on stranger danger and internet predators lets everyone pretend it isn’t so.

Exactly.  She may be an asshole who did something wrong as a parent, but that doesn’t mean that defending herself and calling out the bullshit is legally wrong.

Not legally wrong, but extremely unwise when done in front of a jerkish/moody cop IME unless you’re prepared to incur more serious charges/possible physical injury for questioning their “authoritah”. 

Better to save the efforts and energy to argue one’s case before the judge with the assistance of an attorney where it can really make the difference…..and not risk making possible incriminating statements to boot.

Meh.  Grass is always greener elsewhere.  Both types of families are predicated on rigid gender roles and unpaid female labor.
DonnaDiva on 07/11 at 11:41 PM

Say what?  Uhm, no.  In many cases it allows women more freedom as the “retired or otherwise infirm” do some of the passive childcare, leaving the woman to an active economic pursuit - today that is usually education or career.  Another farmer I was at the other eve, the younger 30-40 somethings were working cattle, the kids were helping husk corn and clean fish - one uncle and the grandparents were involved in that.

Younger generation farm folk don’t see gender roles as rigidly defined - just like the rest of society has changed.  In another family, of two kids, it was the teen girl who hopped the fence to check the pregnant cow, while the son talked to me about recipes and cooking.  I think the main point is that everyone’s contribution is valued, and everyone is seen as able to contribute. 

Or maybe it’s just that farmers have always been resourceful and not wasting. We have a farm museum near where I live. They have one piece of furniture I love - it’s a rocking chair with a cradle attached.  The idea was that even if all grandma or grandpa could do was sit on the porch and rock, then even that rocking was made into an asset - so that mom could go about other active chores.

Sorry - I meant the latter situation - letting your child operate farm machinery on your farm or a farm where you are working in Montana is not a crime, despite ample evidence and documentation that it is quite hazardous for a variety of reasons (judgment, size of machinery versus child size, isolation of work, etc.).

Dropping your kids at the mall is apparently a crime because you are a professor and egghead and the prosecutor is on a rampaging egoquest.

BTW, those stats for kids being killed were for MONTANA only.

Nationally: 2174 kids were killed during that period.

Wonder how much jail time these parents are facing?

I missed the part in that story where his parents put a 9-year-old, an 8-year-old and a 3-year-old on the boat with him and sent all four of them off without adult supervision.  Can you please point out the paragraph in the story where that information appears?  Because without that detail, it’s not the same thing, is it?

Again, this woman isn’t in trouble because she let a 12-year-old go to the mall by herself.  She’s in trouble because she dropped off two 12-year-olds—one who wasn’t even hers—and three younger kids, told the 12-year-olds they were in charge, and drove off.  It’s a pretty basic aspect of the story that people who are desperate to defend this woman keep conveniently ignoring.

Again, this woman isn’t in trouble because she let a 12-year-old go to the mall by herself.  She’s in trouble because she dropped off two 12-year-olds—one who wasn’t even hers—and three younger kids, told the 12-year-olds they were in charge, and drove off.

And, in the same state, had she taken two twelve-year-olds, two eight year olds, and a three year old to her farm or her ranch, asked these children to operate a piece of farm equipment and watch the baby, drove off, and the three-year-old died, it would have been a horrible farming tragedy.

Yelling, “hey, you gonna be home for the afternoon?” Keep an eye on the kid.” is a helluva lot easier than arranging a formal babysitter.

So what happened when your grandfather said, “Sorry, can’t do it, I’m meeting Sid in an hour to go play chess”?  Did your mother demand that he cancel his meeting with his friend, or did she make other arrangements?

I’m not desperate to defend the woman.  I think she made a mistake.  The desperation I see is in the people attempting to turn Kevane into Susan Smith, mostly because they don’t like her uppity attitude.

And, in the same state, had she taken two twelve-year-olds, two eight year olds, and a three year old to her farm or her ranch, asked these children to operate a piece of farm equipment and watch the baby, drove off, and the three-year-old died, it would have been a horrible farming tragedy.

For which she would have been prosecuted for child neglect or child endangerment.  Are you seriously under the impression that there’s never any investigation when a 3-year-old is killed by a tractor?  And you seriously think that if it turned out the 12-year-old was running the tractor without any supervision at all, the DA would say, “Well, these things happen.  Who wants a doughnut?”

You have those OSHA statistics because someone investigated those deaths.

The desperation I see is in the people attempting to turn Kevane into Susan Smith, mostly because they don’t like her uppity attitude.

The desperation I’m feeling is with the idiocy of people who keep insisting that letting a 12-year-old go to the mall by herself is exactly the same thing as leaving her there with her friend and telling them they’re in charge of three younger kids. 

Ms. Kate, you never answered my question:  would you drop off your 13-year-old, his best friend, and three younger kids, one of them a toddler, and drive off fully expecting them to be able to safely watch all of them by themselves?

And let me add my voice to the chorus about how it would be totally different if Prof. Bridget Kevane were Prof. Brad Kevane.  Lack of contrition and all.

Mnemosyne, can you quote someone, anyone, on this thread who claims that they are exactly the same thing?

Somebody investigated them.  Nobody was criminally prosecuted.

FURTHERMORE, state laws in many states EXPLICITLY EXEMPT farm families from child labor laws, and have consistently failed to legislate safeguards for farm kids using dangerous machinery BASED ON THOSE FINDINGS - MONTANA being one of them.

Explain to me how it is NOT elitist and classist for Kevane to be prosecuted and farm parents who leave their kids to do dangerous work to get a free pass.  And, yes, they do get that free pass.

Now tell me how many kids died at that mall?

For which she would have been prosecuted for child neglect or child endangerment. 

Nope.  She would not have.  that’s the point SHE WOULD NOT HAVE.  It is protected behavior.

No criminal charges here, despite hazardous work - IOKIYAF!

Re: how bad was Kevane’s mistake, I’ve already spoken about the sexism.  Professor Brad Dad would have been patted on the head.  Now I want to say that my partner and I will be vacationing through Bozeman at the end of this month and I intend to force him to visit this mall with me!  We’ll try to see if it was a cozy “everybody knows your name” setup or a dangerous marauding ground, and will leave a little note saying Pandagon Wuz Here.

No criminal charges here, despite hazardous work - IOKIYAF!

Again, Ms. Kate, where is your story of a 12-year-old running over a 3-year-old with a tractor?  I can’t believe that I have to repeat once again that it’s not the same fucking thing, but you’re so fixated on the idea that the problem here was that the 12-year-old went to the mall, not that the 12-year-old was left in charge of three younger children at the mall, that all you can give me is cases that have nothing in common with the one we’re talking about.

Mnemosyne, can you quote someone, anyone, on this thread who claims that they are exactly the same thing?

DonnaDiva, read every comment by Ms. Kate.  She’s the one making the case that there’s no difference between a 12-year-old getting hurt while driving a tractor and a 12-year-old running over a 3-year-old with a tractor when he was supposed to be babysitting the kid.

Again, Ms. Kate, find me the case that parallels this one—a case where a farming kid and his/her friend were left in charge of three younger kids while the adults left the farm—and I may concede your point.  But until you stop insisting that we all acknowledge the apple in your hand is an orange, I just can’t take any of your arguments seriously.

Moreover, Ms. Kate, even if letting your kid die using farm equipment were a prosecutable offense in MT, how often do you suppose it would be zealously enforced by self-righteous cops and prosecutors?  How many juries in Montana would convict?

Mnemosyne, that’s not what I asked you.

And, once again, Ms. Kate, since you refuse to answer the question:  would you drop off your 13-year-old, his best friend, and three younger kids at the mall, tell the boys they were in charge, and drive away?  After all, it’s exactly like letting your 13-year-old go to the mall with his friend or having your son babysit at home, right?  So of course you would put them in charge of three younger kids at the same mall you let him go to by himself.

Mnemosyne, that’s not what I asked you.

Then what did you ask me?  Ms. Kate says that letting your 12-year-old drive a tractor is exactly the same thing as leaving two 12-year-olds in charge of three younger children at the mall and has posted several examples of such.  If that’s not what she’s saying, then she’s bringing up completely irrelevant examples for no reason.

Oh, and Ms. Kate?  Your claim that farm families are never prosecuted for child deaths or injuries while working on the farm is patently not true.

I don’t see why it would be difficult to find at least one case of a farm equipment death occurring where a child of 12 (or even younger) was put in charge of younger children.  Then again, I don’t see why the presence of the younger children and the responsibility of watching them is necessary for Ms. Kate’s point to be made.  “As a 12 year old you are not capable of keeping an eye on a toddler at the mall.  But by all means, operate this wheat thresher.”

Then again, I don’t see why the presence of the younger children and the responsibility of watching them is necessary for Ms. Kate’s point to be made.  “As a 12 year old you are not capable of keeping an eye on a toddler at the mall.  But by all means, operate this wheat thresher.”

You really don’t see any difference between the child being responsible for him/herself and the child being responsible for other, younger children?  None at all?

You said people (not just Ms. Kate) were claiming that letting 12 year olds go to the mall by themselves is exactly the same as putting them in charge of younger children at the mall.  I asked you to cite some examples of that.  Instead of providing me with quotes, you went off on a tangent about Ms. Kate and what she’s been saying about farms. 

I happen to agree with you that the added responsibility of minding children is substantively different than merely letting 12 year olds be at the mall unsupervised.  But I happen to disagree that Kevane is the worst mother in the world for having done that.  I’m not defending Kevane’s decision.  I’m just asking for some sense of proportion.

You really don’t see any difference between the child being responsible for him/herself and the child being responsible for other, younger children?  None at all?

I see the difference.  But the strawperson you think is me, and with whom you are having this argument, apparently doesn’t.

Donna, here’s Ms. Kate’s very first comment:

Gee Jesse, thanks so much for buying into the helpless child paranoia that is perfusing our society.  Seriously - get a grip.

Unless Ms. Kate has moved to Oz, she’s not a strawwoman.  She’s been saying throughout this whole thread that she sees no problem at all with leaving 12-year-olds in charge of little kids at the mall, and those of us who do see a problem with it are just being hysterical.

That said, I do actually agree with you that this isn’t a criminal case.  I don’t agree with Ms. Kate that it’s no big deal, Kevane did absolutely nothing wrong, and those of us who have a problem with what she did are just being hypercritical.

Let me clarify slightly:  I do think this was something that needed investigation.  I don’t think that the facts support an actual prosecution, but I can’t get on Ms. Kate’s bandwagon that investigating this at all is criminalizing totally normal parenting.

Mnemosyne, just admit that you can’t quote anyone saying what you alleged all kinds of people are saying.  You keep quoting Ms. Kate who, while she disagrees with you on the main issue, has not once said that leaving 12 year olds unsupervised at the mall is exactly the same as putting them in charge of younger children.  They are not the same and no one is making that case.  However, reasonable people can and do disagree about what age is minimum for kids to watch other kids.  Many people think 12 is old enough.

But not the mall.  Because the mall?  Is demonstrably not safe.  The gang activity, rash of assaults, robberies, the teenager who was just STABBED not ten feet from a security patrol car just two months ago?  The curfews that have not helped an iota?  The RIOT in the food court?

Sounds like a job for The Mall Ninja…

<i.And if he had argued back to cops, he would just have been passionate.

Professor Brad Dad would have been patted on the head. </i>

Let’s break this down a bit, shall we?

Police are attracted to their jobs because they get to wield lawful authority.
They don’t take kindly to miscreants who fail to respect their authority.
The fastest way to sooth them is to make a show of respect (but not obsequiousness, which can easily look like sarcasm).

Prof. Brad Dad would have been patted on the head only if he admitted he had made a mistake. He could make such an admission because his ego would not have been tied up in being right. His ego would have let him admit he was wrong because his expertise as a parent is not part of the core of his very being.

Had Prof. Brad Dad passionately argued with the cop, PBD would have been booked and taken to jail for resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

Hector, I agree with your prediction. But if you can predict that one stranger is less likely to be ego-involved than another, that’s presumptive evidence that there’s a systematic bias at work. All other things being equal, why wouldn’t Prof Dad be just as likely as Prof Mom to get mad about the police telling him he was a bad parent?

If we’re right that dads tend to be less defensive than moms about public criticism of their parenting, what does that say about the gendered double standards of parenting? Probably that moms are hyper-scrutinized and therefore defensive.

Have any of you people been to Bozeman?

Probably not.

No one goes to Bozeman only 35,000 people live there. By population it is the fifth largest city in Montana. Geographically Montana is the fourth largest state in the country with a population of a whopping 900,000. Basically anywhere in Montana is the middle of fracking nowhere. Hell Butte, with a bustling population of 33,000, is 90 miles away.

I’m sure some urban and suburban malls get over 35,000 visitors a day. That’s more than the population of Bozeman. We are not talking about an urban mall or a suburban mall. Hell calling this place a mall is a stretch of the imagination.

The crime this woman committed is not leaving her kids at the mall. The real crime is raising her kids in Bozeman.

Whoa there!

What kind of reaction did you expect, precisely, when you opted to lecture me about my kid, tell me “in many states he can already get married” (any</i> of them), and imply that he’s too helpless and stupid to take care of himself because I don’t let him loose in a dangerous place?  Tea and cookies?  Gratitude?  A promise to do better by your standards?  Holy cats, your assumptions were offensive as hell.  Try not to make those, and you won’t find your nose snapped off, eh?

Evidently, not every mall is the same, evidently.  I see your point, and now that you say it, I do remember reading about incidents at an inner surburban mall that sounded similar. Our outer suburban mall isn’t like that - I hate the crass commercialism and overpriced same stuff in every store conformity meme, but would consider it very safe.  I used to take the kids there as babies because they had a kick ass play climby thing in the food court and it was FREE!  Your first post didn’t make it clear, but now I can understand that - it’s not the kid, it’s the mall.

No, all malls are not the same, and they’re sure as hell not the same as when I was a kid.  I used to go to the mall closest to me (we had three) with my aunt when I was a pre-teen, and we always had fun.  But by the time I hit high school, that mall had become a gang haven and a shithole, and it became known as a terrible place to hang out - unless getting shanked was your fetish.  When that mall closed, the thugs moved to the other two malls.  One of those closed, leaving what used to be the “posh” mall, the mall I could take my kids to for lunch and people watching when they were small.  Guess where the gangs and miscreants moved to? 

The presence of Hollister and Ann Taylor and Abercrombie and Coach and a kiddie playland doesn’t mean the mall is safe.  It just means it’s a mall.  Most of the teenagers of my acquaintance would rather play on the railroad tracks than go to the mall.  They understand that we don’t live in an 80s teen movie.

If we want to go shopping now, we go to the newer “open air” mall in the suburbs, and the kids STILL don’t go alone.  We go to whatever specialty shops we need to get in and out of, and we’re gone, daddy, gone.  If they need to go to the game store while I’m fetching some gadget or other, they go together, and meet me as soon as they’re done.  We don’t expect it to be much longer before that mall falls to the same fate as the three in the city.

There’s plenty enough to do for free in our city that “hang out at the mall” does not need to be amongst the activities I approve for my kids.

Mnemosyne, i’M NOT ARGUING MORAL EQUIVALENCE or what constitutes sane judgement in the eyes of the educated childfree idealist.

I am arguing LEGAL equivalence - that, in MONTANA, it is LEGAL to stick your 12 year old into an unshored trench next to a backhoe operated by a 16 year old, while his 11 year old sister does “light” chores and watches the small children DESPITE THE WELL-DOCUMENTED HAZARDS, and yet a zealous DA goes after a mother who sent kids to the mall.

Was Kevane stupid?  Prolly - BUT YOU DON"T KNOW HER KIDS or HER COMMUNITY.  Was she CRIMINAL?  Well, I guess she should just buy a farm for protection.

DonnaDiva is right - even if it were illegal to have kids do dangerous farmwork, when they get killed it would be a rare prosecutor who would go after the parents.  But, hey, the mall is DANGEROUS? 

Montana: State of Hipocrisy.  They need to protect all children equally - not just save rich kids from the statistically unsupported risks.

Oh, and Mnemosyne?  Strawmen are common on farms in the area - but wouldn’t likely know that as you probably don’t know anybody who grew up on a farm near Bozeman.  I know several.  They use strawmen to drive away pests - but I’m not a pest and you are not arguing in good faith about the law and it’s varied application to child safety.

I think that the media’s hysteria any time a white child is kidnapped (and sadly it often ends in their murder), while they steadfastly ignore miniority children who disappear every day, has fostered a backlash among liberals.  And this backlash has taken the very strange form of; if you don’t let your children ride their bicycles alone off the block, and if you don’t let them wander, or leave them at the mall, or if you carefully monitor who is permitted to be alone with them, then you are some sort of fear-infested monster who is raising pathetic freaks.

And it’s really fucking stupid, and the people who suscribe to this come off as really fucking arrogant, and I’m really fucking tired of it.

I have niece and nephew who spend more time with me, overnight in many cases or for the weekend, than is usual due to family circumstances.

And I watch them very closely, I do not allow anyone to be alone with them other than a very select few, they do not, ever, go for walks around my neighborhood or bicycle rides alone, and it is for shit sure they are not going to the movies or the mall alone.

And if you don’t like it?  fuck you.  shut up.  and sit down.  Mind your own backyard.

Have any of you people been to Bozeman?

Yes, I have.  I have also had grad-student buddies who collected some of the death data (injury data is difficult to come by - it was mostly death certificates, not investigations). That’s why I am so baffled about the way the state has chosen to treat this family.

Mind your own backyard.
Nice theoretical treatment of the subject.

Problem is, Kevane isn’t slamming people who give kids freedom - she is protecting her own parental rights.  Fuck you too ... go have hot unmarried sex and never have kids, please.

BTW, many professors are dealing now with the influx of pathetic freaks.

“You see, it was somehow CRIMINAL for her to let her kids go alone to the mall,”

I gotta agree with Mnemosyne on this

This has nothing to do with 12 yr olds alone at the mall, or 8 yr olds alone at the mall but with a 3 yr old alone at the mall

I haven’t read every single comment here, so forgive me if this has already been raised, but if the parent leaving the twelve-year-olds in charge of the little ones at the mall had been a father instead of a mother, I believe the cops’ reactions would have been identical.  This isn’t about the cops being anti-woman.  This is about the cops having an understandably hair-trigger reaction to children being at risk.  (And it isn’t often you’ll see me defending police behavior: my brother-in-law just won a huge police brutality lawsuit in NY; I’m well aware how a few bad apples can go totally overboard for no reason whatsoever.)

Like many, I babysat small children when I was eleven years old.  But only in homes that I could walk to from my own house, and if anything had gone amiss and I couldn’t reach the parents, my own mother and father were a phone call and a few blocks away.  And this was in the 1970’s, long before the media publicized child kidnappings and murders the way they do now.

In Florida, we’ve had cases of teenaged girls being abducted in broad daylight while walking home from malls by themselves; it’s ridiculous to state that it’s “infantilising” to not let your young teens walk around alone in areas where there are no adults or security people or police to whom they could turn if someone threatened them.  Same thing with extremely crowded places and young children: if I didn’t keep an eagle eye on my boys when they were three, they’d have been at the other end of the mall in a New York minute, and I’d have been running around frantically, sick to my stomach.  Is there something wrong with holding a three-year-old’s hand the whole time you’re in a crowded public place?  I don’t fall into that category of parents who carry antibacterial wipes with them everywhere and refuse to let their kids play on park equipment because of the nasty germs, but jeeez, a little common sense is in order here: child abductions can and do take place in crowded places like malls and parks, and if you leave small children in the care of easily-distracted pre-teens, the chances something horrible and irreversible will occur are significant enough to make you go, Hmm, maybe it would be better to have the twelve-year-olds do the babysitting at home.

It’s stories like these, oddly, that make me grateful for having three ADHD boys with learning disabilities.  From early on, I had to accept that my children were 1) wildly distractible 2) unresponsive to classic behavior-mod techniques, since they almost literally wake up in a new world every single day, having mostly forgotten whatever reinforced lessons they learned yesterday 3) in need of constant, vigilant supervision, lest their impulsiveness send them to the top of the kitchen cabinets, ready to launch a test-flight with the Batman wings they’d made by cutting up my new bedspread when I was in the shower for ten whole freaking minutes and 4) highly unlikely to *ever* be the sort of children, at any age, to whom we could entrust the safety and well-being of younger children, ergo, no such babysitting adventures as detailed by Judith Warner have ever taken place with our kids.

Listen, no-one appreciates the aching need for a break from Teh Rugrats more than Robert and I do.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wept with exhaustion as I checked and re-checked the driveway, anxious for R’s return; or how many times I’ve been the traveling party and R has said, Thank GOD you’re home, I couldn’t get a thing done but I’m wiped-out anyway.  Even the mildest-mannered children are a huge amount of work.  Throw in some “attention differences”, if you will, and the stress increases exponentially.  But you can’t just lose it and say, Ah, to hell with it, off you go to the mall, the whole freaking lot of you, and let the chips fall where they may.

Well, you can say that, but you have to be prepared to deal with those scattered chips.

Meh. At age 11 I routinely looked after my 4-year-old brother for hours-long stretches for my single-parent mother (who was at the time an ambitious DC attorney rocketing up the career ladder, shattering glass ceilings by the dozen, and those ceilings were rather thick back then). My duties included heating up and serving dinner. This was in 1980.

On the other hand, my mom would never have burdened me with looking after him and additional children in a shopping mall, with a peer along.

If cops now engage in hyper-moralizing, fascistic over-reaction against everyone regardless of class, race, and education… well, I don’t really call that social progress. The mother’s apparent bad attitude seems of little consequence in this particular case - it’s more revealing of some of our own class issues than anything else.

“many professors are dealing now with the influx of pathetic freaks” - Ms Kate

Tell me about it. I could write several monographs on the shocking lameness of so many of today’s undergraduates. (Though that story would have to be balanced by that of the growing number who are heroically working and paying their own way through, which I certainly never had to do.)

oh yes, and I always fail to understand in this age of effective contraception why anyone would ever deliberately have more than 2 children

it seems a bad move in almost every way, for everyone

(yes, I know, *your* large litter is an unmitigated blessing, and you wouldn’t have it any other way)

Caton seriously just described OTHER people as being arrogant.  Someone may want to check the integrity of the space time continuum, as bullshit that rank is bound to have consequences.

BTW, many professors are dealing now with the influx of pathetic freaks.

As are employers and co-workers.

Wow, waspie, some strong words, eh?

This is about the cops having an understandably hair-trigger reaction to children being at risk.

Umm, that’s what cops love to say to rationalize their behavior and it may even be somewhat true…..but most of the reaction in this case was an example of “Don’t question mah authoritah!”. 

Kevane made a serious mistake, but it isn’t grounds for being prosecuted in court or even arrested.

Tell me about it. I could write several monographs on the shocking lameness of so many of today’s undergraduates. (Though that story would have to be balanced by that of the growing number who are heroically working and paying their own way through, which I certainly never had to do.)

In the defense of many of today’s undergrads, much of that is on the parents. 

When you have an increasing number of parents, especially those from the upper/upper-middle classes insistent on micromanaging matters most undergrads in my time felt was mainly the undergrad’s responsibility such as grade disputes, registering for classes, or talking to the academic advisor…..I am not sure if it is fair to place the lion’s share of the blame on the undergrads themselves, especially when some IME may not have even known about their parent’s(s’) involvement until after the fact and were appalled when they found out.

And this backlash has taken the very strange form of; if you don’t let your children ride their bicycles alone off the block, and if you don’t let them wander, or leave them at the mall, or if you carefully monitor who is permitted to be alone with them, then you are some sort of fear-infested monster who is raising pathetic freaks.

Oh, bullshit, Caton. It’s not liberal guilt or liberal backlash. It’s because we used to be able to ride our bikes alone and walk through the neighborhood like normal people.

And 17 year olds can’t go to the mall alone? I suppose when they need to buy clothes or books they need to ask permission an be chaperoned by mommy?

I grew up in the 80s at the height of the public hysteria about crime and even then our family was able to make rational judgments about risk. That and our parents were quite busy and didn’t have the leisure time to sit around concocting fantasies about every fearful thing that could possibly happen to us if we were out alone.

So what happened when your grandfather said, “Sorry, can’t do it, I’m meeting Sid in an hour to go play chess”?  Did your mother demand that he cancel his meeting with his friend, or did she make other arrangements?

Mnemosyne on 07/12 at 12:54 AM

It was back in the ages when people actually spoke to the real people in their homes and lives were a bit less hectic.  So, 1) mom would have known that Tuesdays were chess day, whether it was a regualr event or not.  2) Grandad would have known that Wednesdays were her day off and both would have made other plans with the caveat that family plans would supersede.  The family was a unit, and the circle of loyaltywas to the family function first.

Again, Ms. Kate, find me the case that parallels this one—a case where a farming kid and his/her friend were left in charge of three younger kids while the adults left the farm—and I may concede your point.  But until you stop insisting that we all acknowledge the apple in your hand is an orange, I just can’t take any of your arguments seriously.

Mnemosyne on 07/12 at 01:28 AM

I can give you a close one:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/728452/posts

Gee Maggie, have a nice fucking day at wherever the fuck you shop.

Your first post was quite unclear that you weren’t labeling malls in general…so reading it as “I wouldn’t let my 7teen go to ANY mall because they’re all dangerous gang infested hellholes” I’ll still take to be a fair reading and say it’s infantilizing your child.  ANd you still seem to be saying that.  On the other hand, saying that your particular mall atttracts a dangerous element of society and is a high crime area, and thta’s why you don’t let your kid go there, is different, but as someone else pointed out, what’s so magic about momma being along if it’s so bad?

And if you don’t like it?  fuck you.  shut up.  and sit down.  Mind your own backyard.

Caton on 07/12 at 10:20 AM

And my backyard includes the adults those kids will magically become in a few short years.  Kids who often don’t have a clue about how to make choices or even know that choices have to be made and that those choices will have consequences, because they’ve never had to make one.  ANd then you or their parents will get all huffy when I tell them exactly what you just told me.  Fortunately, I usually put it a bit more diplomatically.

.I am not sure if it is fair to place the lion’s share of the blame on the undergrads themselves, especially when some IME may not have even known about their parent’s(s’) involvement until after the fact and were appalled when they found out.

exholt on 07/12 at 01:30 PM

Uh, wait a minute, isn’t that what those of us who’ve commented on parent’s infantilising behavior have ben doing?  Pointing out that the parents are to blame, too?  ANd we’ve gotten ballistic MYOB responses in return. 

This seems to fall into two camps:  on the one hand, there are some who view parenting as keeping a child safe at all costs.  the other camp says parenting means training the child to be a functioning adult, with making mistakes to learn from being part of that process.

Was Kevane stupid?  Prolly - BUT YOU DON"T KNOW HER KIDS or HER COMMUNITY.

Well, I can’t speak to her community, but we do know HER KIDS because we know what happened. This is not a situation where a mature, sensible 12-year-old and her friend were babysitting younger children, did so competently and nothing at all went wrong. Her 12-year-old (and apparently the friend, who is not Kevane’s child) were not capable of being left in charge of an 8, 7 and 3 year old at a public shopping center.

This was not a situation where Mommy was taking a nap upstairs and all the 12-year-olds had to do was put a DVD of Blue’s Clues on and make sure nobody got into the Drano. Mommy was at home while the children were at the mall - that exciting place full of all kinds of cool stores, and all of a sudden there aren’t any adults around to cramp their style. Woohoo!

(There’s also the fact, if you read the article, that Kavane “ordered” the three year old not to leave her stroller. Oh, yeah, that works.)

Bottom line is that if the mother had been a poor single mother named LaShawndra, Judith Warner wouldn’t have given a flaming shit. But it’s one of her very own, a fellow sister of the chattering classes, so it’s time to whip out the Chardonnay and the victim card.

On behalf of all retail employees everywhere:  THEY ARE NOT YOUR FREAKIN’ BABYSITTERS and the mall is not a playground!

Just a word to those here who take the writer to task on her failure at any one of a number of points to be contrite, admit her error, meet the cops/DA halfway, and so forth:  You are being naive.

An admission to the police or prosecutors is one of two things:

* It is extracted as a means of humiliating you to the satisfaction of the officer or prosecutor.  And once, obtained, is not necessarily matched up with a softening of their position in exchange for your softening of yours.  It is often a case of, “there, now that you’ve said that I’m going to do what I was going to do anyway, but I do feel better for having extracted a bit of contrition from you”.  It is a bully making you jump for the hat that he has no intention of giving you.

*  It is extracted as part of the kabuki contrition mentioned above.  It serves a function in maintaining the officer’s certainty in his rightness in prosecuting you.  It’s a classic no-win: If you beg forgiveness and you reassure him that he’s right.  However, if you challenge his view you have not respected his authori-tah and are obviously a malcontent that he’s right to target.

* It is a club with which to beat you.  It is not the starting point of reasoned discussion, it is an admission which they will craft any way necessary to sustain their position.  What, did people sleep through the Miranda warning that they heard a million times on TV?  ”Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

People who deal with the police regularly know this.  They shut up.  They know that the cops are NOT there to help them in cases like this.  People who are unused to being in trouble babble like idiots and it all goes down in the copper’s notebook in the way that best suits putting you in jail, not settlement and certainly not objective reality.  (My former partner once had a copper carefully omit the question mark from the astonished “<u> I</u>  shot the clerk?”uttered by a stunned and innocent witness had been accused of being the shooter in a muddled convenience store robbery.

I stated upthread that the woman did admit error at one point; NOoC pointed out the error; I went back and see that NOoC was correct.  That said and my error admitted, I think that she would have been seven different kinds of moron to make any such admission to cops who bluntly told her that so far as they were concerned she was a criminal, and eight different kinds of fool to make such an admission to a DA who bluntly stated that she was guilty because she (the DA) wouldn’t have done the same thing.

That was a really interesting post denelian, it gave me alot of food for thought and brought out the contrasty.

seeker6079, that point has been addressed above.  The point is not to antagonize the cops, not being cooperative.

Oddly enough, the only time I have ever met a reasonable cop was when I was dead to rights.  The rest of them have been mostly racist unhelpful assholes in beautiful Cobb County, Ga.  It’s fustrating that way, just how much luck you need get someone who is reasonable.

I am really disappointed in your choice to judge Bridget in such a negative fashion for doing absolutely nothing wrong.  People like you are one of the reasons that parenthood in general and motherhood in particular are so difficult.  There was no reason for the mall cop to over-react and charge her.  It was completely ridiculous.  Aren’t there any real crimes going on in the world?  The best thing he could have done was to admonish her and then go on his merry way.

TanyaD:

Wait wait wait, doing nothing wrong?

I’ll admit that after reading this thread, I’ve revised my opinion on the advisability of charges being brought against her.  A warning should have sufficed.

However, any parent who lets loose five children, all of them pre-teens, one of them not her own kid and another a toddler, in a large public space with lots of distractions without adult supervision has certainly done something wrong.  Whether you want to label it a lapse in judgment, a mistake, or neglect is up to you.  It’s still something that she did wrong.

This isn’t criticizing a woman for choosing bottle over breast, or daycare over stay at home, or blaming her for her kid falling off a bike and scraping a knee.  IMO, Kevane did commit a pretty big error, and that she wrote an article about it means that she also opened herself up to criticism for that error.

Have any of you people been to Bozeman?

I worked on a project there over the course of 5 years when I was a teenager/young adult. That was more than a dozen years ago. Comparing this area to suburban malls is probably a stretch.

I’m sure that some of the folks who work for the university are made to feel less than welcome by some of the local population, which may account for the uncalled for escalation and unmeasured response from the police, Kervane and DA.

Meh, I remember a school trip to a small country town, probably something like Bozeman. We got to the main square and the teachers said: “You have thirty minutes to walk around the square and buy something if you want, in thirty minutes be here at the fountain!” And we were there, no problem. We were in the freaking third grade, that is eight year old, yet somehow we managed not to get ourselves maimed, lost, kidnapped or run over by a car. My boyfriend remembers the same thing, it was (and I hope it still is) considered a norm. But then, we’re European. In fact, my boyfriend says his teachers did the same thing on a school trip to a FOREIGN COUNTRY, to Hungary. He was eight or nine years old. Somehow, he survived and bought a digital watch.

I find this thing ridiculously overblown. If it wasn’t for the three year old, I’d say it was completely alright; with the three year old it was a bit risky, but certainly nothing for the police. It was a small town mall, for dog’s sake! The only people who behaved like complete idiots were the cops and the shop assistants who called them. A normal person would call the older girls on the intercom and give them an earful; as I understand it, they were not far from the little kids and didn’t leave them for too long. Sorry, if an eight year old tells you “I’m waiting here for my older sister, she’ll be right back,” why on earth would you call the police? Honestly, this thing is so many different shades of crazy I even don’t know where to start.

denelian:
“say to them “i won’t do it again” and hope for the best ” = admission.

It’s not a wise plan; such an admission could have put her in jail.  Even without out it they were doing their best to put her there; can you imagine what would have happened if she had?

Of course, not saying anything makes things worse.  There are few things that bad cops hate more than somebody that knows their rights ... and one of those few things is people who exercise their rights.

However, any parent who lets loose five children, all of them pre-teens, one of them not her own kid and another a toddler, in a large public space with lots of distractions without adult supervision has certainly done something wrong.

You all do realize that this would also preclude, “hey twelve year old, take your brother and sister to the park down the street.  WHat Betsy is here with her little sister, well ask her if she wants to go to.”
After all, parks hav eno adult supervision and there’s a whole wide world of distrations there too, like, ‘gasp’ other kids and ‘gasp’ boyz.

Yes, sadly I see we’ve gotten to the “kids can’t play in parks era.”

We got to the main square and the teachers said: “You have thirty minutes to walk around the square and buy something if you want, in thirty minutes be here at the fountain!”

Did the teachers put you in charge of three little children? Did they go home to take a nap to pick you up at an unspecified time? Did they order little Lars, who has a habit of wandering off and forgetting what time it is, to “stay in his area” and expect that would solve the problem?

I’m astonished at how many people are using this story as an opportunity to preen about how responsible THEY were at age whatever (in some cases because of their superior non-American ancestry, apparently), in their eagerness to brag about Kids In My Day Were Responsible shooting right past the whole point: that this woman left two clearly irresponsible twelve-year-olds in charge of three little children at a shopping center and went home, and that she thought it was okay because the twelve year olds had taken a babysitting class and because she “ordered” the three-year-old to stay in her stroller. Also, that Judith Warner has her tighty-whities in a knot because the cops aren’t supposed to pick on us.

It’s like that whiny column Anna Quindlen wrote about post-9/11 airport security searching middle-aged white people. How dare they!

denelian - I agree with you that it’s pathetic that poor and minority kids are getting ignored because “what do you expect of those people”. I don’t agree that minimizing what happened here is the solution.

Well count me amongst the “misogynists.” I don’t care what shape an adult person’s genitals are. Any adult who leaves children unattended ANYWHERE is an asshole and FAILS as a parent.

On what planet would what this twit did ever be okay? Gah!

You all do realize that this would also preclude, “hey twelve year old, take your brother and sister to the park down the street.  WHat Betsy is here with her little sister, well ask her if she wants to go to.”
After all, parks hav eno adult supervision and there’s a whole wide world of distrations there too, like, ‘gasp’ other kids and ‘gasp’ boyz.

Many differences to unpack here.

There’s a big difference between babysitting at home and babysitting at an outside venue, especially ones with the distractions of a mall…which can often be far greater than ones in a local park, especially when the mall’s specific aim is to get people to come into each of the stores to look at and buy stuff. 

There’s a big difference between taking 1 or two younger siblings to a local park and taking three younger siblings including a 3 year old to a distant mall reachable by car.  More so if the supervising child/adolescent has a similarly aged friend along.  A reason why most parents I knew who hired babysitters or had older children babysitting younger children specifically state that the older children were not to have any similarly aged friends with them during the babysitting. 

Moreover, I agree with those who stated that this wasn’t really granting much freedom to the 12 year olds as they were burdened with supervising three younger siblings including a toddler in a venue that’s often quite distracting to many adults well into their fifties as some of my older cousins and colleagues have demonstrated. 

Most older cousins, classmates, and colleagues who had to supervise younger siblings at their parents’ behest tended to recount being so worried about supervising the younger siblings and/or resent those “tag alongs” that they were not able to enjoy their out of house time….including the mall.

@ Seeker,

What you wrote about how to deal with the police reminded me of some information an environmental activist told me she teaches in workshops.  How do you think this would have gone down, had Kevane used it?

She said that when stopped by the police, you first ask, “Am I being detained?”  If they say yes, ask what the charges are.  If they give you charges, then ask them to Mirandize you and request a lawyer, and don’t speak again until the lawyer is present.

If they say no, or fail to give you charges, then say, “So I’m free to go.”  Then walk away.  If they don’t allow you to walk away, tell them, “I do not consent to this,” and remind them that if you are being detained, they must charge you.  Then shut up and leave the ball in their court.

@ Seeker,

One more thing, she said to make sure to say all of the above in a calm, polite manner.

That said…there should be a serious investigation into the behavior of the cops and the DA for their overreaction in arresting and prosecuting Kevine. 

Considering that DA’s anti-professorial attitude….maybe she wants to hand back her law and undergrad degrees as she gained them through being educated by those whose “heads are in the clouds”......

As for the cops…what can one say….most tend to be attracted to the jobs because of “teh authoritah” and have no hesitation in displaying that attitude….especially when one gets into the suburban/rural areas….

oh here comes ms. kate again to declare that you can’t have an opinion on kids if you don’t have your own. get over yourself. last i heard, people in this blog could have opinions on marriage without being married, so get a grip.

You all do realize that this would also preclude, “hey twelve year old, take your brother and sister to the park down the street.  WHat Betsy is here with her little sister, well ask her if she wants to go to.”
After all, parks hav eno adult supervision and there’s a whole wide world of distrations there too, like, ‘gasp’ other kids and ‘gasp’ boyz.

So completely not what I meant, and I’m not going to insult your intelligence or mine by pointing out the differences between a neighborhood park and a suburban mall. 

I don’t want kids to remain indoors unless they’re safely tethered to their parents.  I also don’t think that putting the twelve-year-olds in charge of two younger kids and a toddler (the toddler thing is what really puts this case over the edge for me) in a mall and then driving off the premises is a reasonable action, either.

Monola:
Sensible stuff.  You might want to entertain yourself by following the links in this old post:
http://seeker6079.blogspot.com/2008/11/i-dont-know-who-this-pain-in-ass-is-but.html

You’ll note that the cops feel that there is a middle world of “we can keep you here against your will” which lies between “detained/arrested” and “free to go”.

The gap in our wee chat is, of course, the fact that they had her kids.  It’s one thing to take the “arrest me or let me go” position as an adult secure in the knowledge that a stupid arrest might be more easily knocked down.  But as I’m sure many people could tell you, getting one’s children back out of—let alone back out in any reasonable measure of time—the bowels of the social service system once they’re in there is an oft impossible challenge.  And you can be guaranteed that if she said, “if I’m not being detained and they’re not being turned over to social services then we’re all walking out of here” she would have been arrested for, well, not being arrested.  You can throw on “assaulting an officer”, “obstructing an officer” and “resisting arrest” to flavour it, but being arrest for not being under arrest is a not uncommon occurrence, to say the least.

PS:
I notice that YouTube has removed the video for a “terms of use” violation.  I think we can safely translate that as “the Border Patrol, objecting to being clearly shown to be either morons or authoritarian assholes, has pulled a reason out of their ass and we caved”.

The rest of the posts seem to be still up, though*, and it seems as if the cops have escalated their harassment of this fellow.  Do you wanna bet that if the writer of the article had “gotten away with it” at the mall she suddenly found herself on the receiving end of dozens of “routine traffic violations”.

* - http://www.youtube.com/user/CheckpointUSA

mythago: Did the teachers put you in charge of three little children?

Don’t forget that the people put in charge were twelve, not eight. The point I was trying to make is that an eight year old is, or should be, capable of functioning in a public space on his/her own for a limited period of time. Kids this age go to school on their own and go shopping, unless the place is too big, so they shoudn’t run into trouble when two twelve year olds are with them. What I do find a bit risky is the presence of the three year old, though apparently, the kid was well-behaved, so I can understand the mother felt it was OK for her to go. Moreover, don’t forget that many strollers have strings to tie the kid in to prevent falling or sudden run offs.

I read the original post. She said that the kids were on the phone, there was a specified time when she would pick them up, and - something people tend to forget - her husband was in his office “down the street from the mall, less than five minutes away,” and he as well as the other mother all thought it was a good idea. So it’s not just one loony woman, but three adults who thought it wasn’t dangerous for the kids. The place is a very small town, apparently with very low criminality. What I don’t get is what people think was the great peril lurking in the mall. A big bad pedophile?

I’m astonished at how many people are using this story as an opportunity to preen about how responsible THEY were at age whatever (in some cases because of their superior non-American ancestry, apparently), in their eagerness to brag about Kids In My Day Were Responsible shooting right past the whole point: that this woman left two clearly irresponsible twelve-year-olds in charge of three little children at a shopping center

I mentioned that I’m from Europe (and live there) not because I think it makes me ubermensch, but because I got the impression such teacher behavior isn’t the norm in the US and wanted to prevent misunderstandings. I didn’t want it to sound “superior”.

Now, two of these children weren’t “little”. They were eight. If your 8 year old kid can’t behave on his/her own in a smallish country town mall, something was wrong with the parenting. The older girls were irresponsible, but they didn’t do crazy shit like abandoning the children for half an hour or more to go smoke pot. They went away for a couple of minutes, to try on T-shirts. They deserved a stern lecture and revoked privileges, but they didn’t do any objective harm to the kids. I really don’t see the horrible tragedy of that day and the huge parenting failure. And the involvement of the cops? Court proceedings? Downright insane.

I recently let my 12 and 9 year old nieces take my 18 month old son to the park down the street (with a clear understanding that the 12 yr old was in charge). My parents were leery of the decision but my wife and I and our brother-in-law (the niece’s dad) all felt that the girls were responsible enough to take care of him. They also had a cell phone if anything came up. I also think that the mall’s a bit of a different circumstance from the park down the street (though I’m not exactly sure why). Before reading this, it never occurred to me that many people would consider me a negligent (and possibly criminally bad) father.

Amen chibi.
(and not just on kids either.)

Majoranka - no, sorry, this is a huge parenting failure, and I am agape at some of the reasons you are giving for this. It’s OK to leave a three year old unsupervised because strollers have strings in them? An eight-year-old on a supervised trip with all of his or her friends is analogous to two pre-teen girls being left to supervise three small children alone, especially when the girls promptly demonstrated that they were irresponsible babysitters?

The mom’s own rather self-serving account, by the way, says that she left the girls with these three kids at 1:45 and intended to pick them up at 4. It didn’t even take an hour for the twelve-year-olds to wander off and leave the little kids alone.

What kind of dangers could these free-spirited children have faced? Well, let’s set aside pedophiles for the moment. Let’s even set aside creepy teenage boys or men who think it’s funny to sexually harass and threaten twelve-year-old girls. There are escalators to get stuck in or fall down, places to get lost, pedestrians and wheelchairs and strollers to run over little children who dart out or aren’t paying attention. There’s a parking lot outside, since this is a mall. There are ordinary falls for a three-year-old.

And setting aside dangers, the store employees aren’t Kevane’s fucking babysitters. It’s not their job to make sure the three-year-old doesn’t crawl under a rack of clothes and start pulling things down, or to keep the eight-year-old from squirting perfume from the Samples stand everywhere. (If you really think every eight-year-old is perfectly behaved unsupervised, I don’t think you paid attention on that class trip. Even Europeans have bratty kids, I’m told.)

Kevane dropped her kids off because she was exhausted and overwhelmed and managed to persuade herself that it would be a swell idea to ditch them at the mall for a few hours. Now she and her But We Are Nice People buddies are whining that it’s not fair to pick on her. You think if a single mom from the projects had done the same thing that Judith Warner would be writing an impassioned defense? I don’t.

Well, I think we both approach this story with very different presuppositions about the kids, the place, and perhaps about children and childhood generally. We actually know little about the details of the situation. My presuppositions include: 1) it’s a quiet small town and the mall is not very large, nothing like the big and often labyrinthine places you find in large cities. I definitely wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving kids in any of these. Why do I think so? There were three adults, three parents who all thought the place was safe, while only one of them was “exhausted and overwhelmed” and motivated by a desire to get some peace and quiet. The very same reasoning leads me to 2) The kids have been to the mall many times, perhaps were already allowed to go about the mall on their own, and know the rules. Yes, kids can misbehave and many things in the mall are potentially dangerous, but so are many things on a street or in a park or a library, not to mention in one’s own backyard. One day you’ll have to let the kids go out on their own and you can only hope you’ve prepared them enough. If there was no such preparation on the parents’ part, then, by all means, I will declare them irresponsible and neglectful.

For some reason, you construe all the kids as “free spirited” or bratty and a source of problems for the shop assistants, though they didn’t even have time to get into any serious trouble, besides the girls’ fated trip to the changing room. Now, the presence of the smallest child is what gives me pause a bit, as I mentioned. However, I can’t decide if this is a case of neglect without knowing more about the circumstances. I’ve seen several cases of people twelve or younger looking after toddlers, taking them out to play, pushing around babies is prams.

What I’m quite sure about, though, is that the involvement of the cops and court is outright madness. If there’s anything wrong with what these parents did, it’s a case for the social services, some visits from a social worker. I believe the hysterical reaction of the local law enforcement did far more harm to the family than the trip to the mall could ever do, that is if we stay in the realm of statistically probable. The twelve year olds deserved a lecture, not months and months of anxiety. Even if the parents did their best to shield them from what was happening, kids at this age aren’t stupid.  And what raises my suspicions about the whole thing even more is the fact that it was her alone who was charged - not her husband, not the other mom, just the Puerto Rican egghead.

You know, chances are that the single mom from the projects, if this ever happened to her (some commenters here judge it unlikely) wouldn’t know about the existence of a “Free Range Kids” blog in the first place. She wouldn’t need it, she wouldn’t have any “choices” to make. Bringing her kids up “free range” would be the only choice possible for her. It is only for us with money to worry about every shadow and cushion the kids’ every step, so that nothing happens to the poor darlings and they don’t get the chance of possibly knocking something over.

I think, in many respects, kids are what you allow them to be. They can handle a surprising amount of responsibility and freedom, but you must allow them to grow into it, and you must know their characters to judge if they’re ready. This doesn’t mean they’ll never make mistakes, just that they’re far less likely to make the life-or-limb threatening ones.

And forgive me for being a European - I can’t help it, being born here and all.

I’m going to bed now, so I won’t be responding any time soon, I’m afraid.

Then shut up and leave the ball in their court.

Very similar to the advice my father gave me, except that in my town it had been a practice of the police to detain teenagers on vague charges like that of mopery, and then they would release them to their parents with no record in their files about the temporary detention.

If you read the Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout, the narrator/second banana Archie Goodwin deals with the cops all the time and in only a few of them is he placed behind bars for any length of time.

My dad’s advice if put under arrest to follow Archie’s example:

1. Call a lawyer.

2.  Imitate a clam.

The mall in question has one level.  You can see a floor plan here.  It’s not very big.  It has a JC Penney, a Macy’s, a Barnes and Noble, Sears and a movie theater as its anchor stores.  There are about 50 stores total.  There are 8 places to eat in the food court.

I don’t think it is automatically wrong to leave three children with two 13-year-olds outside the home.  Had it been me and my best friend when I was 13, those kids would have been carefully watched.  We would not normally have considered leaving them alone for a minute.  Other 13-year-olds would not be so careful.  We don’t know what kind of 13-year-old these kids were—dumb; irresponsible; risk-taking; distractible; and so on.

Is it really so strange to think it wrong that a woman who is a Jew, an intellectual, and not American-born, who sticks up for her rights, is abused by the system, eventually getting a criminal conviction on her record because she can’t swallow the bullshit required to appear contrite about something she really didn’t think was a criminal offense? 

I’ll raise the same question others did.  If a particular mall is a dangerous place, how is it significantly safer to come to the mall with Mom and go your separate ways if fights and stabbings and so on are happening in that mall?

For some reason, you construe all the kids as “free spirited” or bratty and a source of problems for the shop assistants

I construe the kids as behaving in a manner consistent with average children of their age group. For example, I don’t assume a three-year-old will quietly and politely sit in her stroller for three hours straight because Mommy said so. I don’t assume an eight-year-old is careful, thoughtful and aware of the movements and behavior of other people around him at all times.

I think, in many respects, that the Free-Range Kids philosophy is simply mirror-image control freakery. If only we let kids alone? Yes, let’s pretend that it’s our superior hands-off parenting that makes them mature and responsible; certainly they can’t be immature, silly or have personality quirks. No, instead of bragging about how Parsleigh walked at six months and read Koine Greek at a year and a half, yuppie parents can now brag about how early she could go to the mall alone and babysit her little cousins.

Whether charges were appropriate is a whole different issue than whether Kavane’s actions were appropriate, and I don’t at all understand the desperate need to condemn the former by excusing the latter. And no, I doubt “she was raised in Puerto Rico” or “she was Jewish” had much to do with this. Most likely it was to slam her down for her attitude, and while I don’t in any way condemn police or prosecutorial harassment, Kavane isn’t really helping herself with her “boo hoo I was sooooo tired” bullshit.

Oh, and about the European thing? You’re the one who brought it up as evidence of why you were so much more mature as a child. Forgive me, do, for being a mere American who doesn’t have a jot of patience for that game.

We don’t know what kind of 13-year-old these kids were—dumb; irresponsible; risk-taking; distractible; and so on.

Yes, we do. These 12-year-old kids ditched the little ones in their care after less than an hour to go try on clothes. We know exactly how dumb, irresponsible, risk-taking and distractable they were, because they PROVED IT.

Oh, and about the European thing? You’re the one who brought it up as evidence of why you were so much more mature as a child. Forgive me, do, for being a mere American who doesn’t have a jot of patience for that game.

I’ve already explained why I brought it up, yet you persist in being offended. Would it make you happier had I said I was from Japan or New Zealand, for example? I can’t help it if, in your formative years, a German (or Czech like me?) stepped on your toe. So by all means, nurse your persecution complex.

Is it really so strange to think it wrong that a woman…who sticks up for her rights, is abused by the system, eventually getting a criminal conviction on her record because she can’t swallow the bullshit required to appear contrite about something she really didn’t think was a criminal offense?

Arguing with the cops is not only a bad way to stand up for one’s rights when they are looking for someone to scrutinize/arrest, but also undermines that as the cops can use whatever you say against you in court….a reason why every lawyer and person who dealt with the cops will advise one to maintain their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination by maintaining their right to remain silent and to a lawyer as underscored by

My dad’s advice if put under arrest to follow Archie’s example:

1. Call a lawyer.

2.  Imitate a clam.

For some reason, you construe all the kids as “free spirited” or bratty and a source of problems for the shop assistants, though they didn’t even have time to get into any serious trouble, besides the girls’ fated trip to the changing room.

Um…. Police were called.  Unless you believe that JC Penny sales clerks spend their days hunting for unattended children just to get the egghead outsider Jew in trouble, then the 8 and 3 yr old were doing something to call attention to them selves by being “a source of problems for the shop assistants”

” And what raises my suspicions about the whole thing even more is the fact that it was her alone who was charged - not her husband, not the other mom, just the Puerto Rican egghead”

Her husband didn’t leave the 3 yr old unattended by an adult, he left the 3 yr old attended by said “Puerto Rican egghead”

The other mom has no responsibility for the 3 yr old, and left her 12 yr old in the care of an adult

mythago:

I don’t assume a three-year-old will quietly and politely sit in her stroller for three hours straight because Mommy said so.

Neither did Kevane.  She said:

The plan was for the kids to have lunch and walk around a bit. I told the older girls the rules [emphasis mine]. They could not leave the younger kids unsupervised. They could not make a ruckus. They had to behave. Olivia, the three-year-old, had to stay in her stroller.

That doesn’t sound to me like she’s relying on the self-control of a three-year-old who was told once.  These are the rules, rules the older girls were to enforce. 

I’m not sure if you just missed this or what.  But you can stop worrying that Kevane thinks telling a three-year-old she has to stay in a stroller will be sufficient control for four hours.

And I have to ask—was there any evidence that the three-year-old was out of the stroller?  This seems to be a point of focus without a real cause.  Two twelve-year-olds who are paying attention and who have done babysitting could keep a three-year-old in the stroller. 

jefft452:

Her husband didn’t leave the 3 yr old unattended by an adult, he left the 3 yr old attended by said “Puerto Rican egghead.”  The other mom has no responsibility for the 3 yr old, and left her 12 yr old in the care of an adult.

From Kevane’s account, again:

When I called my husband and the other mother to let them know the plan, there was no hesitation on their part.

It wasn’t just Kevane deciding to dump the kids and no other parent knowing about it.  They were informed, and at least according to Kevane, they said they were fine with this arrangement.

I’m curious about the other Bozeman account above denelian shared, from someone named Pete.  If his account is accurate, then it is definitely that she “should have known better” because of her learnings, and must be punished. 

And of course it is relevant that she spoke up to the police.  Yes, as a pragmatic matter, you don’t do that, no matter how big an asshole the cops are being.  That actually doesn’t make the prosecutor’s game any more palatable.  Kevane got it on both ends, and while I’d probably find a way to cry on the stand as the jury consultants suggest, in fact it would be easy because I often cry under stress whether I’m “sorry” or not, she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and decided to take the guilty plea. 

She also wants people to know what happened.  I would, too.

I will be looking for more information about this particular incident online, from someone else’s perspective.  Sometimes it feels like blogs just throw a hunk of raw meat to a group of people and no one looks any further.  “Haha look at this joker.”  Perspective is useful in a situation like this.  Assumptions like “the three-year-old could get caught in an escalator” or “some malls have knifings and murders” can be investigated.  The first at least isn’t applicable.  If there’s no evidence of violent crime there, then the second isn’t relevant either.

That actually doesn’t make the prosecutor’s game any more palatable.  Kevane got it on both ends, and while I’d probably find a way to cry on the stand as the jury consultants suggest, in fact it would be easy because I often cry under stress whether I’m “sorry” or not, she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and decided to take the guilty plea.

I don’t think most people who are mentioning the imprudence of arguing with cops were saying it made what the cops or the DA did palatable or right as IMO they really overreacted and should be investigated….though I won’t hold my breath. 

Just that the place where arguing one’s case would be most effective is in front of the judge with competent legal counsel…..not the cop/DA whose interest is in gaining another arrest/successful prosecution to show how “effective” they are in “fighting crime”.

“One more thing, she said to make sure to say all of the above in a calm, polite manner”

Dont forget to tell them that your a taxpayer and that you pay thier salary, that way thell give you more respect

Dont forget to tell them that your a taxpayer and that you pay thier salary, that way thell give you more respect smile

Ahahahaha!!!

Quite a few undergrad classmates actually expressed such sentiments to the cops’ face during events such as the WTO protests or your campus protest du jour…...almost all ended up being arrested….and some were beaten and bloodied with batons, shields, etc with the cops being let off because they were “restoring order against rioters/disorderly hooligans”.