Maryland Mother Arrested for Leaving 8- and 9-Year-Old Home Alone While She Picked Up Takeout

Um, what? The next generation of kids are going to be so helpless they won’t be able to wipe themselves. The cops also acted like assholes. If they really felt like she was in the wrong, give her a stern talking to – not handcuffs. 

Maybe this woman needed a break and also got a coffee. (I would need All Of The Coffee Breaks if I had an 8 and 9 year old.) Maybe the restaurant took a long time with the food. Either way: if you can’t leave your 8 and 9 year old kids home for 45 minutes without having to worry that they’re going to burn the vacation rental down, you probably shouldn’t have had them. 

But she wasn’t worried. Maybe she wasn’t a helicopter parent – obviously, I mean, she wasn’t. It was the cops who needed to mind their own business. If she’d left them along for 6 hours, or a day, I could see someone saying something. But 45 minutes? GFY. She should’ve told them there was probably a 4 year old with a shotgun somewhere near by that was maybe more concerning, but she was south of the Mason-Dixon, so they probably wouldn’t have been all that concerned.

My brother, who will be 21 in December, came into the city on Sunday to grab lunch with J and I and meet Playbill (obviously this was more important lunch). He was taking the train to Penn Station and my mother (a very proud self-proclaimed helicopter parent, sigh; it’sawonderIturnedoutsowell) wanted me to meet him at Penn Station because she was worried that he wouldn’t be able to figure out the subway. The subway route, btw, is taking one train uptown for a handful of stops and getting out on my corner. 

I wanted to tell her that if he can’t figure that out then she shouldn’t take him back to school next week because there’s no hope. But I didn’t. I just said no, that he could figure it out. 

And guess what, the almost-21-year-old figured out how to taking one fucking subway by himself to a designated stop. Golf claps. Seriously, parents of America, calm the fuck down. European parents are laughing. 

Maryland Mother Arrested for Leaving 8- and 9-Year-Old Home Alone While She Picked Up Takeout

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Last week I finally procured a copy of Ramshackle Glam, the new book by Jordan Reid, a favorite blogger of mine for years now. I’ve met her a few times and she’s just as awesome in person as her words would have you think.

The weird thing is: this book has absolutely no relevance in my life. At all. I felt silly reading it on the train this weekend because I was afraid people would think I was pregnant. This is not something that’s true nor is it ever something that I plan to have happen (I’ve said it before: I don’t want kids, it’s just a personal thing!).

But nevertheless, I love Jordan’s writing and her book has a tone of “do what you love, eff what anyone thinks,” and it’s great. I like the recipes and the decoration tips (I’m taking the inspiration board advice for my future apartment). I love her writing because she writes with a ton of hyperbole. Which is both amusing and emotionally evocative. 

But one could say this book was a success, because it gave me a bit of insight of what mothers go through (most likely my own mother too!) and also made me super-duper-sure that I don’t want to embark on that endeavor. The specific moment when I was all, “Nope, definitely not for me!” was the following:

“The fact that my decision to shoot my very first style post was preceded by this exact thought: ‘Hmm… I wonder what I should do this afternoon’ Nowadays, that is not a question that enters my mind. Everrrr.”

Call it selfish or whatever you want but I don’t want to ever be so busy and have so many things on my to do list that it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I have enough anxiety as it is; no need to add another living being to it. I’m not sure I could add a pet cat to it. 

So whether or not you want kids, Ramshackle Glam is an amusing, insightful, and thoughtful read into Reid’s life and her experience as a mother. 

Radical morning thoughts: Having children is not a selfless act.

I was discussing with a friend yesterday the act of having children. He said it was selfless, I disagreed.  It’s an argument that a lot of people use for biologically procreating. Look: I’m not begrudging most of the human world for procreating or having the desire as it’s what we’re biologically programmed to do so there’s nothing wrong with that. I know people with kids and lots of my friends want kids. That’s totally cool! Great even! I’m just saying look at it for what it really is. 

Calling it selfish has an immediately negative connotation, right? But why? Selfishness is acting out of self-interest, says my friend, but isn’t 95% of what we do every day out of self-interest? And who are you having a child for if not for your own self (and your partner)? You’re not having a child for your friends, or your boss, or the mailman, or the dude that sits at the end of the bar at your favorite pub every day. You’re doing it for yourself. And presumably so you can raise a child in the way you think is right (more self-interest) and impress your set of beliefs upon him or her (self-interest?). 

If a person was really being selfless they would adopt one of the many of thousands (millions?) of children without homes. But most people make the (not bad or wrong but) selfish decision that they want a child from themselves who looks like them because anything but isn’t really their child. 

And they call it a selfless decision.