I also love that every time I change his diaper his first move is to grab his junk.

If you're a bad liberal for making this comment then scoot over; I'm getting in the boat because (as a liberal) I agree wholeheartedly.. :o)

Maybe I'm just a bad liberal on this, but "cultural appropriation" criticisms are typically bullshit. Why can't someone be inspired by other cultures and use it to influence their own art?

I think we all know what the real problem is: nosy assholes who keep calling the cops every time they see a damn kid going to the park alone.

SO glad I grew up on a 7.5 acre farm in the middle of nowhere; the closest neighbors couldn't hear us if we were screaming bloody murder in the woods. My mom would be the exact kind of parent who would not flutter an eyelash if my brother or I wanted to walk to the neighborhood park alone. We lived in the environment…

Well, it was the other mom who got fired from McDonald's, for letting her 9 yo play at a nearby park unsupervised. But yeah. Point is, these two cases together seem like a similar weird phenomenon: random strangers having mothers arrested for letting their children be in public.

How are fines or social services' involvement useful? It still costs / stigmatizes people - especially poorer people - and is based on moral panic.

I grew up in the woods, basically. At any given time my mother had no idea where I was, but could call from the back porch and I'd hear. Around 5-6pm mothers and fathers could be heard in the neighborhood yelling for their kids to come home for dinner (we were often together). This was before cell phones, which would…

We've been reading the "Ramona" books with my nine-year-old, and Beezus walks 4-year-old Ramona to the library at age 9. Ramona walks herself to kindergarten.

I don't think that any progressive nor socialist would agree with that. At all.

And in this case, it doesn't even sound like a lack of child care, as in a kid spending all day in a park. It sounds like a kid going to the park by himself, with a way to get in touch with his mom any time he needed to.

I should add that if anyone was really concerned about kids playing alone in the park, they'd get working on making childcare more affordable.

When I was four I left the house unnoticed, walked to the grocery store, and came home with a bag of shoplifted bagels. The perfect crime!

Chances are, the concerned parent that spotted this kid, recognized him and doesn't like his mother.

So a source article says "there is no law that specifies how old a child has to be before he or she can go somewhere unsupervised. It's done on a case-by-case basis." But she had to pay $4,000 bond to get out of jail. For not breaking a nonlaw that doesn't exist. Hmm.

Is this the patriarchy's new strategy for getting women out of the workforce now that there's a recession on? Because when I was a kid (and the economic upturn meant that we needed women in the workforce), parents did way dodgier shit than this, including letting young kids go home alone to a latchkey, allowing kids…

So, serious question, but how are kids supposed to lead active lives if they need to have their parents supervising them 100% of the time? I mean, jesus, the kid is 7, not 2.

And then people complain that kids are inside all day playing video games instead of playing pick up games with their friends.

Your child is more likely to have a heart attack than to be abducted by a stranger.