A Nation of Children

Let me be clear.  I think the mom did something questionable.  But isn’t this a bit of an over-reaction?

When Bridget Kevane dropped her three children and their two friends off at a Montana mall in June 2007, she never thought that a few hours later she’d have a criminal record.

But that’s what happened when Kevane let her daughter Natalie, 12, and her best friend of the same age take three younger children—including Kevane’s 3-year-old daughter—to the mall without adult supervision.

“I was definitely in shock,” Kevane told ABCNews.com of her initial reaction when told that she would be charged with a criminal offense because of her decision to let her kids roam the mall alone.

Under Montana State law, a parent can be charged with child endangerment if he or she “knowingly endangers the child’s welfare by violating a duty of care, protection, or support.”

When the two 12-year-olds went inside a Macy’s dressing room to try shirts on and left the three younger children, ages 8, 7 and 3, unattended, an employee called mall security. Police were called to the scene and they summoned Kevane and her husband to the mall and arrested Bridget Kevane. She was allowed to leave the mall with the children, but given a court date for a few days later.

I have no problem with leaving three kids in the charge of two 12-year-olds, positing that they’ve demonstrated the maturity to babysit.  I don’t have a problem with letting two 12-year-olds wander the mall on their own.  It’s the combination of circumstances that seems to have been a problem.  The two baby-sitters fell down on the job—leaving the little kids unattended.

I wouldn’t have done this because I know how difficult it is to keep track of little kids even for an adult.  Expecting a 12-year-old mind to focus on that task with the distraction of a mall is a bit much.  But criminal charges?  I suppose the cops are hoping to “teach her a lesson” or “make an example of her”.  But being charged with a crime has a massive impact on someone’s life, particularly a charge of child endangerment.  And I particularly like the Police Deputy trying to justify their actions by pretending Bozeman Montana is some kind of meth-infested cesspool.

This case has, of course, become a springboard to the much larger debate of how much we should coddle our kids.  The article even includes a quote from Lenore Skenazy; She’s the mother who let her 9-year-old ride the subway.  Yes, “the”.  We’ve gotten so paranoid about our society—even as we’ve slowly drifted down to 1970’s level crime rates—that letting your kid ride the subway is front-page news.  And that’s the comparatively mild form.  I know parents who are shocked that I was allowed to walk home alone from school at age six.  That was a mile walk through an extremely safe suburb.  Although I will let on that it was uphill, both ways, in the snow, even in June and I had no shoes and bullies were chasing me.

At least, that’s the way I’ll remember it when it’s my daughter’s turn to walk home from school.

We’re raising a nation of wusses.  We’re raising a generation of kids who think that a pedophile is crouching behind every tree and a mugger in every alley.  Kids who turn to jelly if a parent is not in view.  It’s one thing to teach kids safe behavior—my mom made sure I knew not to talk to strangers before she let me walk home.  But it’s another to hold kids’ hands 24 hours a day, to never let them out of your sight and to shriek every time a parent leaves some kid on their own more than 18 nanoseconds.