THE MORE I LEARNED, the more outraged and curious I became. I am convinced that parents who feel the same way have to hear about each other. In every chapter, you’ll learn all the ways government is interfering in the private lives of families, and you’ll meet the many other Captain Mommies and Captain Daddies who have been shocked by the invasion of the nanny state and who are fighting hard to get the government out of parenting. The reason they are so passionate is that we’ve all been mugged by the reality of the nanny state stepping between us and our kids.
My friend Lenore Skenazy, the godmother of all Captain Mommies, is highlighted in Chapter 1, “Arresting Captain Mommy.” She was attacked as the worst mother in America for allowing her nine-year-old son to ride the New York City subway by himself. And from that one act of unwitting defiance, she became the mommy of a movement. In her book, Free-Range Kids: How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry), Skenazy argues that children have to be left to do things on their own, and she focuses much of her work these days blogging, writing, and speaking on changing parents’ behavior. But she also recognizes that overbearing government and health and safety regulatory roadblocks do more harm than good.
One of Skenazy’s crusades is the defense of parents who are criminalized for leaving kids unattended in cars for reasonably short periods of time. She calls this type of worry—when the authorities react as if the worst-case scenario has actually occurred—“worst-first” thinking. For parents, the result is often trouble with the police, thousands of dollars in legal fees, and perhaps even jail. Just like Nicole Gainey.
What has changed about our notions of safety on the one hand and of allowing parents authority over their own children on the other? Why is the state choosing to criminalize behavior that was so recently commonplace, and when no harm has come to the child? Do we really demand that law enforcement prevent any bad thing from happening to anyone ever? Or that police punish those who make bad decisions that could have led to bad outcomes?
After a New Jersey mom was arrested for leaving her toddler in the car unattended for no more than 10 minutes,11 attorney Scott Greenfield explained the extent of the problem at his criminal defense blog called Simple Justice, and he explained why this is an issue for the justice system.
This isn’t to argue that parents should not do what they can to avoid risks to their children’s welfare. . . . Not leaving a kid in the car alone just isn’t that hard to do, and for the most part, parents aren’t inclined to do it. . . . This isn’t a matter of parenting “best practices,” but whether the failure to adhere to a bubble-wrapped vision of child-rearing forms the basis for criminal prosecution, for inclusion on the child-abuse registry, for loss of civil rights, perhaps career, home and even the right to remain parent to a child.12
For the “crime” of doing things that most of our parents did without incident at one time or another, and in cases when nothing happened to the child, more and more of today’s moms and dads are prosecuted every year.
This type of overreaction by authorities to potential dangers that haven’t produced harm is one of several themes running through No Child Left Alone.
There is a difference, after all, between parental anxiety about risks and dangers to our children and government safety policies. The latter, at least, are meant to be based on larger-scale, more objective calculations of risks versus costs.
The motivating force behind government intervention is an ambiguous and unworkable definition of what it means to keep children safe, healthy, and protected. Current definitions of hygiene and safety assume that private decisions, preferences, and behavior can and should be government mandated, all in the name of the public “good.” In extreme cases, parents have been criminalized and penalized for perfectly lawful, commonsense behavior.
In the 2014 best-seller All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenthood, Jennifer Senior chronicled the insecurity, anxiety, and stress among some of today’s parents beleaguered by chronic overscheduling, obsessing about the future, having too many expectations. But she failed to diagnose one major influence working against them: the anxieties of the nanny state. Parents have been harassed, threatened, and arrested for attempting to give their kids some level of freedom and independence.
The good news is that when some parents find themselves on the receiving end of a nanny-state lashing, they start fighting to change the status quo. After being threatened with arrest for allowing her kid to walk to soccer practice alone, a Mississippi mom I interviewed explained how she’d since become an advocate for safer streets and more sidewalks.
GOVERNMENTAL OVERREACTIONS to potential dangers and unreasonable standards for children’s health and safety will be discussed at length in Chapter 2, “Breast Is Best, or Else”; Chapter 3, “Daycare Nannies”; and Chapter 4, “School Statists.”
Government has become so convinced it knows the best way to feed a baby that employers are now mandated to encourage breastfeeding among their employees; government welfare benefits are enhanced and extended to low-income women who exclusively breastfeed; and formula is under lock and key at some public hospitals. Meanwhile, family traditions aren’t good enough in a world that requires an authoritative standard.
In some cases, people find themselves suddenly at odds with the nanny state. In response to a New York City breastfeeding mandate, a Chicago-area mother named Faten Abdallah said, “I would hate the government or hospital to mandate what I think is a freedom of choice.” Another Captain Mommy is born.
The health and safety stakes have become discouragingly high. Continuous monitoring is a hallmark of state-approved care for young children outside the home. High-level certification for daycare workers is becoming the norm. The result is that many parents who want to find a licensed daycare can’t afford the tuition.
Philip K. Howard has spent years decrying the rise of regulation and all the associated costs that come with those rules. His books chronicle the negative impact of all this bureaucracy and state micro-management: We have a system where even those in leadership positions do not have individual discretion to make decisions.
Daycare workers have little flexibility to set standards that work for the children in their care or their parents. Our tolerance for risk is so low that public policy is driven by exactly the wrong incentives. And the nanny-state way of mitigating risk at daycare means increasing the rules to eliminate any potential hazard and then falsely “guaranteeing” that the daycare can be made into a perfect utopia of safety and hygiene.
Often state rules have been adopted through federally funded groups meant to provide guidance and advice. But when local regulators need to write rules for local conditions, they often turn to what seems like an easy fix; they adopt wholesale guidelines with the federal government’s seal of approval. These then become the law of the land.
This disconnect between the rule-writers and the regulated has produced more and more precise, limiting, and proscriptive daycare rules, including banning plastic bags, mandating teeth brushing, and regulating how far apart coat hooks should be spaced. What, however, do any of these standards have to do with providing a safe, warm place for children while their parents work? Do these rules actually improve the quality of care?
Daycare workers are left with a series of checklists. Their primary task becomes to comply with state standards, rather than to care for small children. Not only does this hurt parental discretion and authority (Why can’t I ask my daycare to swaddle my baby? Why can’t I go down the street to find another daycare that will swaddle my boy?), it also has a negative consequence for those who are being regulated. “Rules are aides, allies, guides and checks,” argue Schwartz and Sharpe. “But too much reliance on rules can squeeze out the judgment that is necessary to do our work well.”13
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