Government Enforced Helicopter Parenting? Throw Me in the Slammer Now

Ever wonder why we have so many obese kids in the good old US of A? How about this. A mom gets fed up with her daughters arguing and decides to teach them a lesson by dropping them off 3 miles from home to think about their behavior on the walk home, and hopefully work things out between the two of them.

Her reward? A child endangerment charge and a court order barring her from seeing her daughters. It's not like this family lives in Harlem or the Bronx. They live in a 2 million dollar house in Scarsdale, NY. Their mother, the epitome of irresponsibility, is a partner at a law firm. If the family was poor and actually lived in a dangerous part of town like Harlem or the Bronx one might be able to make the child endangerment argument. However, there's a good chance walking would already have been an everyday part of her kid's lives, since cars and parent shuttles aren't nearly as ubiquitous outside the burbs. She made her kids walk a whopping 3 miles, for crying out loud. That is a one hour brisk walk or an hour and a half slow walk. I was doing that with my younger siblings when I was 12. Have kids suddenly lost their ability to engage in bipedal locomotion If so, maybe the Planet of the Apes wasn't so science fictiony after all. Backwards evolution really does occur, and is even encouraged by the US government. The thing is, kids all over the world walk 3 miles every friggen day, especially in barbarian, backwards countries like France and the Netherlands. My coworker had to walk 2 miles to get to the bus stop, so maybe somebody should sit down and talk with some public school officials about how they are endangering kids lives by making them walk so much. Getting back to the subject of the story, the woman's daughters weren't hurt. In fact, I bet it was statistically safer for them to be on the streets of Scarsdale 3 miles from home than in an inner city public school. Are we going to start throwing parents in jail for sending their kids to our dysfunctional and incredibly dangerous inner city public schools?

My opinion. The cops and judge who pushed it to this level and have prohibited these children from seeing their mother ought to be thrown in the slammer with some pervs so they can think about what child endangerment really looks like. Because if it looks like this, then you might as well throw my parents, my coworkers parents, and me in jail (not to mention 90% of parents outside the US), because letting your kids wander three miles from home is common among responsible parents, especially in previous generations and outside of car obsessed America.

In fact, I'll up the ante. Here is my message to the NM Children, Youth and Families Department. There's no way on God's green earth that I'm gonna keep my kids on a leash that short, so go ahead and just get it over with. Charge me with child endangerment and take my parental rights away now before it's too late... fatso. The well-being of my children is at stake... chunky monkey. Act now before before my poor, endangered children grow up as fit, yet mal-adjusted morons... and your stock in McDonald's plummets.

You almost can't make this stuff up.

MB