Seven reasons why “we” hate it.
Society has gone nuts.
[Tuesday-morning update]
There’s something so disgustingly ironic about the fact that the only reason these “endangered” kids didn’t come home on time safely and their parents nearly had heart attacks is because the police and Child Protective Services decided to keep them from their parents for a couple hours without telling them. I wonder if someone thought they were teaching the parents a good lesson. Now, they’ll see what it’s like when their kids don’t come home. Good stuff, guys. There’s a word for this when anyone other than the state does it.
They are no doubt livid about this, but because they’re dealing with unpredictable people who have the power to take their children from them, they must stifle that anger and act in accordance with the state’s wishes. This includes never leaving their children unsupervised outside, which is antithetical to their parenting philosophy. Maryland law requires children be under the care of someone at least 13 years old, which would have made my babysitting of my brothers a punishable offense.
Tar. Feathers.
Idiots in Montgomery Country probably deserve what they get, but seriously: What would one do to force an organization like CPS to have some common sense? I think that videoing is having or is going to have a powerful positive effect on police behavior. But what is the strategy for something like CPS where the problem isn’t rudeness and violence, it’s insanity?
Uh, tar and feathers?
Lamp post. Rope. Bureaucrats. Some assembly required.
Well, the idea is sound. But how will it actually happen? I’m asking seriously.
According to this article, those parents in Montgomery County are going to sue the CPS and police. Good. Sue the hell out of them.
“Matthew Dowd, a partner with Wiley Rein, states: “The Meitivs are rightfully outraged by the irresponsible actions of Maryland CPS and Montgomery County Police. We must ask ourselves how we reached the point where a parent’s biggest fear is that government officials will literally seize our children off the streets as they walk in our neighborhoods. The Meitivs intend to fully vindicate their rights as parents and their children’s rights, and to prevent this from happening to their children again. The CPS investigations and actions here are premised on a fundamental misapplication of the law and are contrary to the constitutional rights of these parents to raise their children as they see best.”
The actions of Maryland CPS and Montgomery County Police violate the fundamental rights parents have in raising their children. In Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 75 (2000), the Court explained that “the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.” This fundamental, constitutional right of parents cannot be infringed simply because certain governmental employees disagree with a parent’s reasoned decision on how to raise his or her children.
Well, the Gen Xers were free-range, and look how those little ingrates turned out. If that’s not an object lesson I don’t know what is.
(FWIW I was a ridiculously free-range Gen X kids, and I’m ever so glad I had that opportunity to explore)
It was summer before first grade. I wore a blue superman t-shirt and left home to watch the new houses being built in my neighborhood. I short block away I found a new house already up in sticks and a bulldozer working over the front yard. The street had not yet been paved but the curbs had been laid. I stood back while the dozer operator went back forth grooming the yard before grass would be rolled down sometime later.
It got to lunch time and the man on the dozer stopped and offered part of his lunch to me. It was surely beyond range of my mothers call to lunch. She was pinned home with my little baby brother so could not go looking for me. She called the cops.
After our lunch break the operator of the dozer offered me a ride on what seemed a giant machine. Not long later a cop car rolled up with the old style bubblegum machine light on top. He asked my name and then said my mother was looking for me. He put me in the front seat riding shotgun. Home we went not more than a street away and less than a block. My mom was upset I’m sure but I don’t remember getting punished.
It was the best day of my life to that time. I rode a bulldozer and a cop car all on the same day.
How old are you?
Who, me? 23948 days on this planet.
Gen X here (though towards the tail end).
I distinctly remember time as a young child (under age 7, since that’s how old I was when we moved), walking to the end of the sidewalk (the neighborhood wasn’t fully built out yet), and yelling out my friend’s names to come out to play (Jeff, Scott, and Michael, I believe were their names). Mom worked graveyard at the hospital, dad had a 9-5, but we would have a babysitter a few days a week in the summer when mom was sleeping, or we would just get sent outside to play, which could have been at a friend’s house down the street, out in the field past the backyard, riding our bikes up and down the hill, etc.
In grade school we attended a summer camp designed around bicycling; we would meet in the morning, do some activities as a group, ride somewhere for lunch, take another ride, and end up every day at the municipal pool to end the day before going home. We rode our bikes to and from the start and end points of that camp every day, about 2 miles from home. We never wore helmets, either, though I believe nowadays that would violate municipal code. I rode my Schwinn everywhere before I got my driver’s license, and even then I would still ride to and from work if the weather was nice enough (though by then I had upgraded to a mountain bike).
In high school I remember visiting the subdivision where my friend’s parents’ new hosue was being built, climbing in and out of recently-dug basements, walking around inside barely-framed houses, throwing rocks into pools of water in the basements after a rain, and doing all sorts of other things that, nowadays, I would probably scold myself for doing.
I don’t know when my attitude changed, or if I was always the curmudgeon I tend to be now, but I’m also glad I got out of the insanity of the Chicago ‘burbs to a slightly-less-unreasonable Iowa (outside of Iowa City, of course).
Now get off my lawn!
I am surprised that the author missed the most obvious one, which is what used to be called “The Oprah Effect”. I big part of her empire in media was built in fear mongering parents about how dangerous it was for kids out there in the world. Maybe the tide is turning…
I heard part of an interview with the mother, she said she’s now convinced by the authorities that leaving her children alone like that is dangerous, because there’s no telling when the police will pick them up and leave them in a police car for hours on end, or take them away to some foster home where they’ll never see them again.
Mission accomplished, MoCo Child “Protection” Service!
Say, would the CPS drop the attacks if the parents paid “protection” money?
Oh, and the best part was when she said her husband was from the old Soviet Union, and she said he told her that bureaucracies are evil machines, there are no people there.
So people freakout in an alien world.
\Spacers are going to bitch about Earthlings for centuries.
Only solution would be to stay home.
Or Spacer will have to flee to the stars.
I found this article interesting. What would Mom do? Lock us outside and drink a Tab.
http://community.today.com/parentingteam/post/what-would-my-mom-do-drink-tab-and-lock-us-outside
I thank goodness that I’m not a child today. Between being screwed with the future tax bites they’ll have to pay (assuming they can get a job in the first place) to support runaway entitlement programs, student loan debt, and Child Protective Services as uber parents, they’re screwed. I seriously worry for my grandchildren’s futures.
Had today’s rules been in effect, may parents would’ve ended up in jail and I would’ve been put into foster care, all in the name of “protecting” me. I wouldn’t swap my childhood with my grandchildren’s at all. I’m the youngest in my family and my next older sibling was over 4 years older than me. While they were in school, it was Mom and I at home. If the weather was good, I’d be outside walking in the forest and climbing trees all on my own for hours every day from the time I was 4 years old. You can learn a lot of good life lessons climbing trees.