Free-Range Kids, Good, Bad, or I don't Know?

From Article:
"After the first incident, Montgomery County Child Protective Services investigated and found the senior Meitivs responsible for “unsubstantiated neglect.” "

I would say Yes, over-reaction. Unsubstantiated neglect??

From Article:

"The police incident report from Sunday referred to “a homeless subject” near the children who was “eyeing” them."

OMG a homeless person was looking at kids walking down the street. Yes I would say over-reaction.

From Article:

"This difference in perceptions matters, because CPS officers have a great amount of leeway in determining neglect. Laws regarding unsupervised kids are “intentionally vague, because there are so many contextual and fact-specific determinants” to each case, says Vivek Sankaran, who directs the University of Michigan’s Child Advocacy Law Clinic and the Detroit Center for Family Advocacy."

The law is deliberately vague to give CPS more power to step in. Why is this bad?

From Article:

“It’s an incredibly subjective process,” Sankaran says. “There’s a wide degree of discrepancy and variance in some of the decision-making you see in CPS.”

From Article:

"Low-income parents who can’t afford child care, or who struggle to arrange it around unpredictable work schedules, may leave their children unsupervised out of necessity rather than on principle.

Low-income neighborhoods can also have a higher presence of police and social workers, raising the odds that parents there get reported. As Sankaran notes, these parents are also far less likely to benefit from the presumption that they are making good decisions for their kids. "

So the poor/lower income are subjected to institutional bias (like the homeless person). Your poor therefore your decisions are incompetent (or even criminal). Yes I would say over-reaction.

I also grew up in a time when free range was the norm. The rule was "you have to be home before dinner". Well, not the only rule, there were boundaries that expanded as I grew older and circumstance changed. Living in minneapolis, I remember being allowed to play in the yard/sidewalk and the limit of my free range was the neighbor's yard on each side of our yard. Then it expanded to each corner on my side of the street, then expansion to the other side of the street (no going around the corners). When we moved out to the farm, I was more restricted (and it was horrible). But as I grew, that range expanded also.

The list of things I would not have been able to experience should I have been confined by these kinds of laws... I can still tell time by the suns position (within 10 mins) and I always know what direction I am headed via sun position and time.

 

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