Some readers may have seen Lenore Skenazy's Reason article about how local authorities in Williamsburg, Virginia prosecuted Karyann Parkinson because she decided to let her five-year-old son walk by himself to collect goose feathers by a pond in a gated community. There is more to the story, but not anything that makes the government's actions seem any more reasonable.
I was at Ms. Parkinson's trial. She is a former student and neighbor. On this basis The Free Press asked for my thoughts on her prosecution and conviction. My article begins:
On a sunny day in June, Karyann Parkinson made a fateful choice that could affect her life for years to come: She let her 5-year-old son, Sam, walk alone to a neighborhood pond to collect goose feathers.
Nothing happened to Sam, at least not physically. But for her choice, Parkinson was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor, a first-degree misdemeanor in Virginia. In August, she was convicted by a local judge after a bench trial in the Williamsburg Juvenile & Domestic Relations District Court and given a six-month suspended jail sentence.
Knowing Parkinson—a then-neighbor and former student—and having attended the trial, it seems she was punished less for making a debatable parenting choice and more for refusing to come to heel when questioned about her decision. It's not so much that she let Sam collect goose feathers so much as that she did not genuflect to the proper authorities. That makes the case no less of an outrage. Parkinson has found herself in every parents' nightmare—hence why it made national news. So how, exactly, can a mother be given a suspended jail sentence for simply letting her son go for a walk?
