The prosecution of a South Carolina mother who left her 9-year-old child unattended in a park several days in a row while the mother worked her shift at a nearby McDonald’s has been widely covered and roundly criticized. The mother reportedly was charged as a result of the incident with unlawful neglect of a child, a felony under South Carolina law. I thought about that mother last night as I was reading Ramona the Pest, a Beverly Clearly classic, to my daughter at bedtime. In last night’s chapter, Ramona Quimby’s mother leaves Ramona at home alone one school morning and instructs her to begin walking to school at 8:15 a.m. Ramona is in kindergarten. Ramona’s mother is portrayed throughout the book as a reasonable and caring parent, and her decision to leave Ramona at home while she takes her older daughter to the doctor is written about as though it is a perfectly reasonable choice. I flipped to the front of the book to see the copyright date. 1968. That explains it, I thought. In 2014, I’m pretty sure that most people would consider it unreasonable to leave a kindergarten age child at home unattended, even without instructing the child to later walk herself to school. I’m less sure about the public consensus on the decision the South Carolina mother made. My guess is that nearly everyone would view it as not ideal; some might call it unreasonable; and an even smaller number might consider it criminal. In North Carolina, it [...]
Faculty Coordinators
