Posted on 04/20/2015 9:14:41 AM PDT by No One Special
And the child could more likely be struck by lightning. The odds of any of those situations are astronomical and would not be affected one iota by the fact they the parent ran into a store. Paranoia is the drug of choice in liberal land—makes perfect grist for the absurd law mills.
You would seriously rather destroy a child’s life by siccing the state on the parent? That is not healthy concern; it’s plain evil.
This story isn’t about infants.
How many kids have you raised?
How did this get posted on Salon? The women there are changing course again?
From Wikipedia "Infant" page:
The term infant is typically applied to young children between the ages of 1 month and 12 months; however, definitions may vary between birth and 1 year of age, or even between birth and 2 years of age.
Most will agree with you that it is wrong to leave infants in a car.
However, some of these stories are about 8-year olds left in a car.
The difference today is every state requires children up to 4 years old to be in a car seat, and in most states children up to 8 years old are required to be in a booster seat in the back seat of the car. In some cases, the child has to be in a booster seat in the back seat of the car until they are over 4'9" in height.
Increasingly, booster seats for older/larger children which use the car's seat and shoulder belt are being supplanted by giant car seats with five-point harnesses for children up to 6 years old, and booster seats are being encouraged for children up to 10 years old.
We have lost the idea that a child can get into and out of a car on his or her own. And we have abandoned the idea an 8, 9, or even a 10 year old can "watch" their 5, 6, or 7 year old, even for a moment.
Two.
The youngest is 23. But even back then, we knew better than to leave them unattended in a car.
A family member of mine who worked in a retail store told this story about an apparently educated white woman who fainted dead away in the store. The child with her was 9 years old. The counterperson and cashier searched the woman for a Medical ID bracelet and finally went in her purse looking for some ID or an emergency number, but came up with nothing, while she remained out cold and the EMTs were still not there. They asked the little girl who to call, but she did not know. She said her father lived in a state approximately halfway across the U.S. The girl did not know her address or any home phone, because they were "staying with a friend." When the woman came to after about ten minutes, she said she had some sort of health syndrome and fainted away like this frequently — AND she was angry at the salesperson and cashier for having called the EMTs.
Unbelievable; magical thinking — "nothing bad will ever happen to me."
Parents have a responsibility to insure that their children are under continual surveillance by appropriate authorities. It would be best if children were continually under state surveillance, but the vestiges of the “traditional”, bourgeois family are still sufficiently strong to prevent this. The state has interest in such matters for two reasons. First, by making parenthood more difficult, the state accelerates the decay of the bourgeois family. Second, it conditions children to their adult future of continuous surveillance by the state.
It’s either that or Americans tend to be insanely fearful of remote probabilities. Maybe both.
“Im not sure what the purpose of this article is. Every summer I read horror stories about children being left in a locked car and dying from heat exhaustion and dehydration. I do not care if you parked your car in the shade with the windows down.”
So you’re worried about kids dying of heat exhaustion and dehydration, but you don’t care that these stories clearly don’t fit that pattern, so the kids are not in danger of that?
I think that’s called “hysteria”.
Regarding #3, I believe that the next couple generations of Liberty-loving Conservatives are being raised under the auspices of “I can’t let you do that, sweetheart; some Liberal will call the cops and the government will take you away from Mommy and Daddy”
Our lives have changed for the worse.
Two possible explanations. One, it was a moment of clarity. Two, Salon is a broken clock.
If you are a parent, have you ever left one in a car in your drive way while running in to get something?
No.
How about while going in to pay for gas?
No.
My mother used to leave me in a locked car on Friday afternoon: to buy booze! She was a pretty good mother when I was a kid and nothing bad ever happened in that car. But people weren’t busybodies that much.
Are you from rural North Texas?
I remember standing by the meter as a kid, lol! I had forgotten it until you mentioned it. A pack of nickels in my hand, scanning the street for cops and meter maids.
Since 1998 636 children have died in this country due to heatstroke from being left in a car. Nearly 40 per year. True the odds of your child being hit by lightning are astronomical. Does that mean you would send him out in a storm holding a shower rod? Why even take the chance that something could happen to your kid while you are away for even 5 minutes? You and so many others need to get your priorities in order. Trust me taking the extra few minutes to unbuckle your kid and take him/her with you is nothing compared to losing a child in some horrible way. 636 completely preventable deaths.
No. Why?
Are you trying to find fault with something?
If I lived around DC, I wouldn’t either, but I wouldn’t live around DC. In my neighborhood in my small town, hauling the kid in while I take 40 seconds to grab something from the kitchen would be a sign of paranoia. Unless someone is hiding in my neighbor’s rose bushes, they aren’t even going to be able to reach the car before I’m back.
The situations in the article aren’t quite as clear cut, but there are many situations in many places where one could rationally leave a child for a little bit in a car. One can quibble over what constitutes a child, and one could quibble over what constitutes a little bit, but busy bodies and the state are only going to make things worse.
Then I assume that your child has never been out of your sight for more than 30 seconds, ever.
And since I've read stories about children being abducted from their bedrooms in the night, I assume that you stay awake at their bedside all night long.
The fact is that, despite hysterical reporting to fill the 24 hour news cycle, child abductions by strangers are no more common now than they were 50 years ago, and in the vast majority of missing children cases it's a parent that's responsible.
Frankly, the better question would be if you've ever been out of sight with your child for more than 30 seconds.
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