and political scientist Kenneth Sharpe write, “Anybody who has raised a child . . . knows the limits of rules and principles.” They explain:
We can’t live without them, but not a day goes by when we don’t have to bend one, or make an exception, or balance them when they conflict. We’re always solving the ethical puzzles or quandaries that are embedded in our practices because most of our choices involve interpreting rules, or balancing clashing principles or aims, or choosing between better and worse.6
As the authors show, the problems arise when these rules are written and administered by government, which does not allow for individual discretion in balancing competing principles or applying the consequences and punishments associated with breaking the rules.
And from the legal realm there’s Harvey Silverglate’s Three Felonies a Day, in which the lawyer and civil-liberties crusader argues that the rules have become so complex and cumbersome that just about everyone breaks the law every day. “Wrongful prosecution of innocent conduct that is twisted into a felony charge has wrecked many an innocent life and career. Whole families have been devastated,” Silverglate says.7
Philip K. Howard, corporate lawyer, Common Good8 crusader, and author of such titles as The Rule of Nobody and Death of Common Sense, couldn’t agree more. “Instead of defining the edges of wrongful conduct, protecting a broad zone of individual empowerment, modern law sees its role as telling people what to do and how to do it.”9
Silverglate does have an optimistic view of the possibilities for reform, however, because the problem is so common, as we’ll see throughout this book. “Vague laws threaten Americans from all walks of life and all points on the political spectrum,” Silverglate contends. “Yet that depressing fact is actually encouraging, because it suggests the possibility of a broad coalition in support of much needed legal reforms, beginning with the basic principle that, absent a clearly stated prohibition, people must not be punished for conduct that is not intuitively criminal, evil, or antisocial.”10 To this argument I would add that parents must be allowed to raise their children by their lights, especially when there is no public impact on their private childrearing choices.
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
