Kim Brooks Quotes

That's why I hadn't talked to you for a while. But man, did I miss hearing your sweet voice." Sandy was surprised. Mark was never the type to talk about "missing" anything,

Are you afraid someone will hurt them?" I asked.

She lifted her fork, paused for a moment, seemed to be considering. "No," she said. "Well … I don't know. I guess it's other people. I worry that if I let them out of my sight, other people will see us and think I'm doing something wrong. I feel like it doesn't matter what I think; that if other people think I'm doing something dangerous, then it's dangerous. I suppose I can't quite tell where my own anxieties end and other people's begin. I don't know if I'm afraid for my kids, or if I'm afraid other people will be afraid and will judge me for my lack of fear.

Sarnecka summarizes the findings this way: People don't think that leaving children alone is dangerous and therefore immoral. They think it is immoral and therefore dangerous.

In trying to promote a spirit of acceptance, it has become common to say things like, "Every mom makes the best choice for her family." Maybe. Another way to look at it is that we each get to choose from a handful of lousy options, then we try to make the choice go down easier by telling ourselves that what we chose makes us unique and special, better than those who chose a different way.

Yes. Let's be honest. I'm a privileged white woman who left her kids in a $30,000 minivan watching Dora the Explorer to go in for a Starbucks. Is there any clearer picture of privilege than that? But no matter what color you are, no matter how much money you have, you don't deserve to be harassed for making a rational parenting choice."

It's funny, but in all the time that had passed, I had never thought about what was happening in quite those terms - as harassment. When a person intimidates, insults, verbally abuses, or demeans a woman on the street, in the bedroom, at the office, in the classroom, it's harassment. When a woman is intimidated or insulted or abused because of the way she dresses or her sexual habits or her outspokenness on social media, she is experiencing harassment. But when a mother is intimidated, insulted, abused, or demeaned because of the way she is mothering, we call it concern or, at worst, nosiness. A mother, apparently, cannot be harassed. A mother can only be corrected.

As Redleaf sees it, the biggest problem is that individuals, the people who called the police on Debra Harrell, are trusting a system that is inherently biased (as most systems are in this country) against poor people and people of color.

"There's an assumption," Redleaf told me, "among the general public, that it's always better to make a call, even if you're not sure what you're seeing, because these people are professionals and if there was no real neglect, then the system will sort it out. Well, what we find is, they often get it wrong when they try to sort it out. The caseworkers at protection agencies aren't licensed social workers. They often have minimal training. Police certainly aren't experts on parenting or childcare. So basically we as a society have entrusted people who have no real training or serious knowledge about children and families with critical issues involving children. And they are making decisions about who gets to be a parent and who gets to raise their children and whether you'll be labeled a child-abuser and unable to work.

How did you get through it?" I asked her. I was hoping she was going to recommend a book, a pill, some quick fix to make this feeling of inadequacy go away.

Instead, she looked at me kindly, quite earnestly, and said, "You know, I think after years and years, I learned to stop giving a fuck. If people I knew, friends or relatives or strangers or whoever, had an opinion about what kind of mother I was or wasn't, if they thought I was making mistakes, or doing things the wrong way, being too this or too that, being selfish by not giving all of myself to my kids, I eventually decided, fuck 'em. I'm doing the best I can in a culture that offers parents little material or emotional support. If people have a problem with the way I'm doing it, fuck every last one of them. And it's funny - that anger - that was what got me to a place where I could finally stop caring and enjoy the little monsters. That's when I started feeling better.