<p>My oldest came down to the beach to see us this past weekend. She brought several of her girlfriends with her. They are all in their early to mid twenties. Each and every one of them said they were never having children and each and every one of them pointed out several different places where mothers have been arrested for doing ridiculously normal thing things just because they had children. “Don’t want to be a prisoner of the state,” one said. “Forget it.”</p>
<p>@OsperyCV22 Okay, interesting points. And, I agree it’s very likely we don’t have the whole story. Six drug convictions is a lot. And, summer does happen every year. I’m rethinking this one.</p>
<p>Osprey – Those convictions are in her past. Everything published so far indicates that she pulled her life together. Absent some evidence that she’s using drugs now, her past is her past. I saw plenty of moms and dads in inner city schools who’d turned their lives around after a lot of problems in teen/young adult years. I applaud that.</p>
<p>Being in the park with a cellphone seems to be a whole lot less risk than I had as a similarly-aged kid being gone from the house most of the day in the summer swimming, out on a rowboat in the water, or playing in the neighborhood. My mom/dad had no practical way of reaching me, and we did not live in anything like a Mayberry.</p>
<p>Whatever you think of the nature or severity of the consequences, IMO this was neglect. There isn’t much of a gray area when a kid is regularly left totally alone in public for the duration of a parent’s work day. </p>
<p>Well, her life was certainly not together if she was dragging a 9-year old to work at McDonald’s everyday. That’s in itself displays an appalling lack of common sense. It’s not okay. And being a past drug user is quite different from being a drug user with 6 convictions. That requires a lot of getting into bad situations, repeatedly. I need more facts. The kid in the park with a cellphone doesn’t bother me much, though.</p>
<p>I got dragged to a shipyard with all sorts of hazardous materials/chemicals to wait around and work with my dad for hours at a time as a kid and I don’t view that it was child abuse. Upthread someone mentioned the virtue of kids carefully doing homework in their parents’ Chinese restaurant – not sure why sitting in the McDonald’s seating area would be less of a virtue. It seems fairly racist – Chinese kids (and parents) doing good in the same situation where a black woman is vilified.</p>
<p>My, my Osprey, you retrieved all that information from reading Ms. Harrell’s mind? To me you have egregiously jumped the gun.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding her past drug problems, she has a job that requires some managerial responsibility. Her employer’s job application surely includes questions about drug use and possible arrest record, but she got the job nevertheless. Someone in authority, namely her employer, trusts that she is reliable and has decent judgment.</p>
<p>Also, why do you compare the South Carolina event with a “hot car” tragedy. The comparison terribly flawed and unfair. And how is the story “one-sided?” Back up your biased suppositions!</p>
<p>Really? Do you think a restaurant is going to hire a waitress who is planning to set her kids up at an empty table? Nope. I’m surprised they allowed it all. Having said that I have worked with people who inappropriately brought their kids to work with them but it never went on long and it did not go over very well. Occasionally, everyone gets it. Now, in a family-owned restaurant or small business it would work, but not at a chain store. It’s not about race. It’s about rules.</p>
<p>That park is reportedly full of unsupervised children. Most parks are around here. Without more information I don’t think it’s child neglect at all. I do think it’s very bad judgment.</p>
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<p>We are making it impossible to be a parent in this country. Too many rules. Too much government in our personal lives. If you look at this life we have now created? It’s like a horror book from the past.</p>
<p>PG, I completely agree with you on that point. However, I have no problem with a fast food restaurant requiring workers to find someplace other than the seating area to use as a daycare center. That rule is okay by me. The government over-reach thing we agree on 100-percent.</p>
<p>It’s all a part of the same thing. We used to go to work, raise our kids, be a part of a community. People knew if someone’s kid was sitting there that they were there for a reason. It was part of the freedom of life, which included work and people taking a break or a lunch. The whole thing is bad for our freedom. Either way, I think we need to lighten up. Let people live, work, whatnot. I don’t think the government belongs so much in our business and you know what? I don’t think businesses do either.</p>
<p>Do any of the news reports state that her employer instructed Ms. Harrell not to bring the child to work anymore? I got the impression that the girl’s time at McDonald’s was brief and ended with the theft of the laptop computer. Sure, bringing children to work is frowned upon at lots of places, but I’d like to hear more facts before condemning Ms. Harrell on that point.</p>
<p>By the way, McDonalds is a corporate behemoth, but it can be more community oriented that you think, as a franchise operation. The “home office” dictates the menu obviously, but McD franchisees can be a fairly autonomous bunch. Who knows, Ms. Harrell might have had the full support of her management (to ocassionally let the child stay in the restaurant during certain hours) for all we know.</p>
<p>Reportedly she was fired after the arrest. Now, her attorney says she’s back at work. They are refusing to provide details. But all reports say she was moved to the park because she got bored sitting in McDonald’s all day with no laptop.</p>
<p>Exactly. Our local McDonald’s is very community oriented. There are groups that meet there all the time and it’s very highly encouraged by them. We need to stop making rules and start being a part of the world again.</p>
<p>Hell, some of our ancestors got on boats and came over here without their parents at that age. I babysat groups of kids in the park at eleven years old. I really don’t get what is wrong with us anymore.</p>
<p>Then, the next thing is we should start a thread on helicopter parents and how the police find them so annoying. I mean, helicopter parenting is the law and in the meantime, let’s all try to make a living. It’s ridiculous.</p>
<p>Whether one finds her decision to send her child to the park instead of home to be poor judgment or even neglect, how is the child, the mother, or society well served by putting her in jail?! Would people so harsh on this mother like to see another child put into foster care at the expense of john q public? Make mom pay by losing her job and ability to get back on her feet ever? What is to be gained by any of that? Let’s refer these moms to social services, not imprison them.</p>
<p>Some of you are killing me on this board, as if it is so simple, “oh she shouldve secured childcare”, “she knew summer was coming”. It is quite clear that some of you have either never been poor, or havent been around people of lower socioeconomic class, so let me break it down for you. Yes, she has a record, but from all news accounts, she was a productive member of society and had been working. If you had been in the trouble she had been in, more than likely, “her friends”, probably were not doing anything productive with their lives, and she wouldnt have wanted them to babysit her child. Childcare costs a lot, and it appears wasnt an option. Or maybe it was an option, but she chose to let her child play in park everyday, with a TON of other kids, and meals being served! Now if you are lower income, sometimes there are daycare vouchers, but if you make too much money you dont qualify for them, and you would be surprised at the small amount "too much"is. So instead of sitting home on welfare, she is working doing the best she can, AND HER CHILD WAS DOING WELL IN SCHOOL. Now if she had been at home collecting welfare, some of these same folks would still be saying what an awful mom she was. </p>
<p>Since everyone is giving their view point about how to raise kids, what kind of rights people should have. I am going to chime in with an unpopular view with this crowd. I find a lot of neglect when it comes to parenting. People feel it is their God given right to have children, whether they have the means or time to have children. We give drivers test before we allow someone on the road, to protect the general public. We don’t do the same when it comes to little innocent children. So many of those little kids are left to fend for themselves because their parents think “why not to have babies” when they can’t even support themselves. </p>
<p>We decided to 2 children, 5 years apart, because we knew financially and emotionally that’s what we could handle. We didn’t expect the village to raise our kids. I know there are a lot of extraneous circumstances why families need help from time to time, but I do suspect more often not, there is not much thought given when people decide to have children.</p>
<p>I don’t like government to butt into my business, but if it means saving some children vs some parental rights being violated, I am going to side with the children.</p>
<p>“Let’s refer these moms to social services, not imprison them.”</p>
<p>There is no free daycare service in most communities. If there is it’s very, very limited. So, I don’t really know what this means. I still don’t fully understand why this particular child grabbed the attention of the busybody in the park or why this woman was arrested. The park was filed with unattended children. </p>
<p>FWIW, the free lunch program around here has nothing to do with how bad the neighborhood is. It was even offered in the part of town where we lived that had million dollar homes.I assume this is because parks are free and open to the public regardless of income, and that even in the best neighborhoods there might be some apartments and residents with a need for free lunch. It has nothing to do with “bad”. My job involves working with people with pasts that include drinking and drug convictions and worse. A great many of them have gone on to lead clean productive lives. But sometimes these people need some help finding appropriate services. That’s what the SC mom needs, not jail.</p>