Is a 9 year old at a park alone neglectful?

[heavyaaron]

Interesting story. Mom goes to work at McDonalds. 9 year old daughter is dropped off at the park for the workday. On the third day the child is placed in state guardianship and the mother arrested.

http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/14/mom-j ... -9-year-ol

A couple of questions come to my mind because of this:

1) Was it neglectful? I personally can not see myself leaving a nine year old unattended any where for hours on end; even more so in public, but, depending on the nine year old and the environment, it does not seem necessarily unsafe to me.
2) I've seen a lot of advocacy for reform on this site that has suggested that children should be removed only if criminal proceedings are brought against the parents such that removals are part of a criminal case and not just a civil one. This meets that criteria; would such a reform make bringing criminal charges against the parents more likely as an unintended side-effect?

[treytrey1]

It is only my opinion, but yes it is neglectful. A child at nine is just that still a child and needs parental supervision. Anyone could have come and kidnapped
her from the park and the mother would never have known.

[LindaJM]

Yes, that sounds neglectful....... it also sounds like the mom has a low-pay job and needs a better child care alternative. I think the best solution is for social workers to do real social work by finding a better alternative for child care, something the mom could afford, so that the family could stay together.

The state could pay for that child care solution, and it would be a huge cost savings because the cost of having a child in foster care and all the "services" that go with it is much more than the cost of actually helping the family and keeping them together.

I hear of a lot of cases like that ... they come down to one major factor: poverty.

I don't recommend for children to be removed during criminal proceedings ... unless they are seriously being injured, and there are no other family members to help, of course.

What I recommend is that law enforcement should do investigations looking for violations of actual laws, rather than having social workers doing them on a subjective basis. Parents often just don't know what a social worker will decide is abuse/neglect as there are no hard and fast rules or guidelines.

Teenagers should be taught what is and isn't acceptable while parenting, and what could get their children taken from them. It is such a tragedy that they aren't told what to avoid doing as parents... they have to make a mistake before they realize they've done the wrong thing, and there's often no recourse despite the stated goal of reunification.

[heavyaaron]

" It is such a tragedy that they aren't told what to avoid doing as parents... they have to make a mistake before they realize they've done the wrong thing..."

That's a fair point. But the parents are, biologically at least, adults by the definition of parent. Do you not consider it reasonable that an adult should be responsible for learning what duties their responsibilities entail? I get the impression you dislike the nanny-state as much as I do, so I don't think you'd be suggesting that the state mandate parenting courses for expectant parents. So what are you suggesting here?

[heavyaaron]

[size=120]The state could pay for that child care solution, and it would be a huge cost savings because the cost of having a child in foster care and all the "services" that go with it is much more than the cost of actually helping the family and keeping them together.

No doubt that would be cheaper than foster care. Foster care expenses blow my mind.

But the costs of government provided childcare likely exceed her minimum wage job. In other words, it would actually be cheaper to *pay* mom her minimum wage just to watch her own child at home. Yet something smells bad about that arrangement. I don't have a solution here, I'm just saying the idea of paying for the childcare outright is economically inefficient.

You're right that poverty is a root cause here. But since I do not have a solution for poverty... well, yeah. I really wish people would choose to not have children they cannot afford; it'd solve a lot of the problems.

[LindaJM]

If parents didn't have kids they couldn't afford the population of the earth would probably be reduced in half - maybe more.

Yes, I think classes on parenthood should be a mandatory part of the high school curriculum, so that prospective parents will know in advance what types of behaviors would result in them possibly losing their children to CPS.

Of course, some situations are unavoidable (child falling out of crib and breaking a leg, for example) but general guidelines known clearly by all citizens would help.

Yes, parents should educate themselves about parenting, but if there are no clear rules, how can they? As the situation now stands, child abuse and neglect laws are vague and so social workers have the opportunity to subjectively judge each situation according to their own understandings.

The mother in that news story may have been raised the same way she parented. Maybe her mother expected her to spend hours alone playing outdoors either in her neighborhood, or in a park. She may not have realized that this was a risky situation. As it turned out, it was truly dangerous to her child, not because of a rogue child molester, but because of a government agent who abducted the child.