Readers: This article makes me so angry, I’d love us all to start thinking what we can do to change a society where danger-hallucinating authorities persecute and prosecute those of us still sane. Suggestions welcome. This piece originally appeared in Brain, Child. By Bridget Kevane On Saturday, June 16, 2007, I was charged with endangering the welfare of my children, a criminal charge that, in the city where I live, Bozeman, Montana, can lead to imprisonment in the county jail. The Montana Code 46-16-130(3) states that a parent can be charged with this offense if she “knowingly endangers the child’s…
Author: lskenazy
Enjoy this. Lots of great signs warning of the obvious gathered by a group called The Manifesto Club and reprinted in England’s Daily Mail. These signs remind us that Britian is in some ways more advanced than the U.S. when it comes to worrying about non-worrisome things. Remember: It is England that requires anyone who wants to work with children — be it as a scout master, teacher or even class parent — to first get an affidavit from the police stating that he or she is not a convicted pedophile. Because, of course, everyone is unspeakably evil until…
Two moms, “5 Minutes for Books” managing editor Jennifer Donovan and her colleague Dawn, reviewed my book in tandem — then did a half-hour podcast with me. Both are available here. From their review: Jennifer: The more I read, the more surprised (and disheartened) I was at how much our parenting culture has changed in the last ten or twenty years. Yes, sunscreen and helmets are a good change that our children have adopted without even thinking about it. But the ever-present nature of parents — from driving or walking tweens and teens to school or to friends’ houses,…
Hi! If your family has let the kids drop some extracurricular activities in favor of more free time — or is considering it — TV is looking for YOU. A producer for one of the evening news shows is trying to figure out if this desire for a more old-fashioned, it’s-ok-to-be-bored childhood is a trend. I think it is! If you embody it, just add a little comment here and I’ll be able to forward your note to the producer. Or tweet me. Thanks! — Lenore
Hi, View fans — I’m so thrilled The View is airing a rerun of my visit with “the gals” today! It was a thrill to be on the show, of course (and, let’s be honest: scary). But how I loved hearing Barbara Walters say my book made her feel less guilty about not having spent every single second with her daughter when she was young. (That’s right — as my book says, with lots of science to back it up: Constant parental stimulation is not necessary to raise a decent kid!). And to hear Whoopi talk about how we…
The public bought the idea that they were essentially a danger to their own kids and had better pay money for advice, that they’d better try really hard to do a good job, and they’d still inevitably fail. (Even though, as Lepore points out, kids are actually safer now than ever. In 1850, more than one baby in five died before its first year, by 1920 that had dropped to one in 20, and today infant mortality is at one in 200.)
Readers, I hope you’ll allow me a weepy moment. New York City schools get out late. For us, graduation was Wednesday. That’s when I wrote this, which I also posted on the Huffington Post New York page: 10 AM. In an hour my younger son graduates from grammar school. He’s the “boy who took the subway by himself” last year and made headlines worldwide, but last night he was just a boy desperately poking me at about 3 AM, trying not to wake his father up. I followed him into the darkened living room and as we sat down on…
Would you believe they have charged some intern to walk him across the parking lot?! Geesh people. He’s TEN!
One reason Americans are so extremely terrified about child abductions is that whenever we turn on the TV or computer, there’s another one. As if these horrific crimes are happening 24/7, when actually the media is only too happy to fly across the country — or world — to set up camp wherever a cute, white girl has disappeared. Tight news budgets get thrown out the window for a story like this. But because that story then shows up on our screen at home, it feels like it’s happening right around the corner. All the time. What happens…
Perfect together, here, on their new “New York” page.