“My daughter Kaitlyn is a wonderful 18-year-old who is not guilty of anything other than a high school romance, but is being prosecuted for 2 felony counts of ‘lewd and lascivious battery on a child 12–16 years of age,’ because she has a girlfriend who is 15.”

This is the introductory sentence on a Change.org petition calling on Florida Assistant State Attorney, Brian Workman, to drop a case against 18-year-old Kaitlyn Hunt. Kaitlyn is currently facing criminal charges stemming from a relationship she had with a 15-year-old girl at her high school.

Kaitlyn — known as Kate — began dating another girl from the basketball team at the beginning of the school year. Both girls attended the same high school, but Kate was a senior and her girlfriend was 15 and in a lower grade.

According to Kaitlyn’s mother Kelley Hunt-Smith, when Kaitlyn’s girlfriend’s parents learned of the nature of their relationship, they went to the police to press charges — but first, they waited for Kate to turn 18. Cops arrived at Kaitlyn’s home on Feb. 16th, put the teen in handcuffs, and eventually charged her with two counts of felony lewd and lascivious battery on a child. The prosecutor later offered a plea deal of felony child abuse, with two years house arrest followed by one year probation.

Hunt-Smith wrote in a Facebook post:

(…) These people never came to us as parents, never tried to speak to us, didn’t try to get the school involved to speak to us and tell us they had a problem with the girls dating, not one single word. Instead, they set out their vengeance and had my child arrested on FELONY charges. (…) Those parents wouldn’t give up. They were out to destroy my daughter, they feel like my daughter “made” their daughter gay. They are bigoted, religious zealots that see being gay as a sin and wrong, and they blame my daughter.

She adds,

Today, the girls are 18 and 15. We will not discuss the specifics of their relationship or when contact took place between them for their legal protection. Kate’s girlfriend has taken no part in her prosecution and denies she is a victim, but the law grants her no rights in this matter. Kate has offered to permanently cease contact and leave the state if charges are dropped, but that offer has been rejected by the prosecutor and the girlfriend’s parents.

Kate’s family say that while they generally support age-of-consent laws,

… we believe it is ludicrous that a 23-year-old can date a 16-year-old, but two students in the same school and on the same basketball team cannot be in a relationship because of arbitrary age limits. The law needs to change, not only to protect Kate, but to protect the millions of teenagers, boys and girls, straight and gay, whose lives are regularly ruined because parents disapprove of their children’s sexual choices. We want justice for all 18-year-old high school seniors who have undergone criminal prosecution for exercising poor judgement in their dating life. Such students are not predators. They’re just kids.

Kate has been expelled from her high school, but her troubles have just started — if convicted, she could end up in jail or live under house arrest, will have to register as a sex offender, and live her life as a convicted felon. Kate’s family is hoping that public pressure will motivate the State Attorney to offer a different plea deal.

Over 40,000 people have signed the Change.org petition for Kate, and on Facebook, more than 13,000 people have joined the Free Kate group to support the family. It’s clear that a lot of people feel that the charges should be dropped or lessened, and I agree that in this case the punishment truly doesn’t seem to fit the crime.

Still, the fact remains that having sex with a minor is against the law. The ground movement to help Kaitlyn Hunt is clearly focused on the fact that she was in a same-sex relationship — witness the slogan: “Stop the hate, free Kate.” Does her sexuality matter? Would we feel as sympathetic towards Kate if she were an 18-year-old boy in a relationship with a 15-year-old girl? Does it matter that it was a consensual relationship, when one person was a minor? When the very definition of a minor is that they aren’t considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts?

Honestly, I have no answers to these questions, but it’s a scary case that all parents should be aware of. What’s happening to Kaitlyn Hunt and her family is worthy of discussion, if only to clearly outline how the law views young love … regardless of sexuality.

What do you think about Kaitlyn Hunt’s situation? Do you think the charges against her should be dropped?

Image via Free Kate/Facebook

Adam Holland’s image has become Internet famous. The widely-shared photo was taken in 2004, when Holland was 17 years old. It shows him holding up a piece of artwork he’d created while attending a class for disabled students at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. Holland’s smiling broadly for the camera, and it’s an infectiously happy moment that should have been treasured by his family.

Instead, the photo went viral when Tampa radio station WHPT-FM used it to call out the “Retarded News” page on its website.

Holland, who has Down syndrome, now knows that the nearly ten-year-old photo is making the rounds online thanks to folks who think it’s hilarious to add their own defamatory and obscene messages to his picture. A website called Sign Generator made it easy for people to modify the photo in its “Retarded Handicap Generator” section. A Flickr user in Minnesota repurposed Holland’s photo to include a sexual reference, and the image racked up over 31,000 views.

The extra-awful part about this whole story is that Holland was initially excited to see his image in his local newspaper. His parents had to explain to the best of their ability that the reason the photo was in the news was because people were making fun of him.

Holland’s parents have filed a defamation suit seeking $18 million in damages from three separate parties. It’s something of a legal long shot, since cases of images being turned into memes are notoriously challenging, but I can understand their desire to do something.

What happened to Holland isn’t exactly unprecedented: lots of people have become unwilling viral memes in recent years. Last year, the parents of another girl with Down syndrome endured a lengthy fight with Facebook to get the social media giant to remove cruel images of their daughter. And do you remember the infamous “Star Wars  Kid” whose 2002 video became an Internet sensation? That boy reportedly finished school in a mental health facility, thanks to the harassment he received as a result.

It certainly makes you think about the repercussions of sharing photos online, and how an innocent image can become a humiliating Internet fad. As Woodrow Hartzog, an assistant professor at the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University, puts it:

It’s difficult to square the interest that we have in not becoming an overnight celebrity with the rights of everyone in America being able to express themselves freely. The downside of being able to harness the power of crowds is that individuals that did nothing to seek any kind of publicity can become the subject of all of the cruelness that exists on the Internet. We don’t really have a good [legal] mechanism for combating that cruelness. (…)

Many would argue that [the lack of legal mechanisms] is a good thing, because it allows us to continue the unrestrained expression on the Internet that we’ve enjoyed thus far. But others have serious concerns about our reputation and ability to control our name, likeness and interest. It’s difficult to grab ahold of that on the Internet.

Do you ever worry about what might happen to the personal family photos you share online?

Image via eriwst/Flickr

Breaking news: your kids’ grandparents think you’re a dumbass for reading parenting books.

Okay, I’m paraphrasing a tiny bit, but a recent study done by a UK website revealed what many of us probably suspected all along: by and large, our parents think the modern trend of relying on books for kid-raising advice is a bunch of hooey. 62% of the surveyed grandparents said they never read a parenting book when their children were young (probably because they were too busy raising kids in the snow, uphill, both ways), and nearly a quarter believe the advice contained in such book is “no help” — and in some cases, “can actually be quite harmful.”

Not only do I totally believe these statistics, I can actually see how this sort of eye-rolling intolerance happens as time goes on and new parenting trends take place. Even though it’s only been five years since I had my last baby, I already feel sort of curmudgeonly about new-to-me baby-raising methods. Baby-led weaning? Why, back in my day we spooned puréed glop into our babies’ cry-holes, and they learned to like it. We didn’t indulge in this newfangled business of handing our babies a plate of organic crudité as if they were at a formal dinner party, by golly!

Constantly checking in with parenting manuals wasn’t very common when our parents were younger, so it’s no wonder they think the current glut of books on everything from sleep to poop is a little silly. Plus, grandparents often have the double advantage of experience and objectivity — they already know what it takes modern new moms a while to realize: you will go slap out of your mind if you try to adhere to all the parenting advice you read.

In fact, the surveyed grandparents tend to think that instead of buying parenting books, we should be turning to — who else? — our parents. That’s what they mostly did back in their day, after all. When they were young parents, their sources of advice came from:

• Their mother or mother-in-laws (64 per cent)
• Their own motherly instinct (46 per cent)
• A doctor (37 per cent)
• Other mothers or friends (28 per cent)

The founder of the site that conducted the study says,

(Grandparents) feel that new Mums are getting very confused and hung up on advice issued by the overwhelming amount of parenting books out there, not to mention the aggression they face on some parenting forums. We think it is important for mothers to be encouraged to discover their inner instincts - something that parenting books can overlook.

I agree that it’s important to develop your own parenting instincts, but I’m eternally grateful for all the advice — printed, online, or socially-shared — that was available when I was a scared new mom. While following every single piece of advice would be contradictory and confusing at the very least, more information is almost always a good thing. Eventually you learn to take what’s valuable and discard the rest of it.

Would I tell a new mother to toss out her parenting books? Absolutely not. I’d just say that it’s important to find some common sense among all those opinions and recommendations, and that’s not always easy for any mom … no matter what generation she’s born in.

Do you think parenting books are actually causing trouble for today’s moms?

Before I took my oldest son on a flight from Seattle to Washington, DC, I bought him a picture book about air travel. It’s a cheery, rhyming story that features cartoon animals enjoying a trip to wherever, and it was apparently published quite a while ago, because it depicts smiling furry stewardesses serving piping-hot food and handing out magazines and blankets.

I mean, come on. Food, blankets, pillows? I’m pretty sure that stuff disappeared from airlines at the same time as the non-plastic servingware, our ability to pack more than a thimbleful of shampoo in our carryon luggage, and our collective dignity in the security line.

9/11 forever changed how we fly, and narrowing profits continue to degrade the consumer experience. But the story of what happened to one family on a United flight from Denver to Baltimore might be the most outrageous example of how truly unpleasant — and inefficient — air travel has become.

Maybe you heard about this bizarre incident? Basically, a family is alleging that when they requested that the in-flight movie be turned off, the captain reacted by diverting their flight.

I know, right??

The PG-13 film was “Alex Cross,” and the parents felt it was inappropriate for their 4- and 8-year old boys. In a letter to The Atlantic Magazine, the family said,

Alarmed by the opening scenes, we asked two flight attendants if they could turn off the monitor; both claimed it was not possible.

Throughout these interactions the atmosphere was collegial, no voices were raised and no threats, implicit or explicit, of any kind were made. (…) More than an hour later the captain, [name withheld for now], announced that due to “security concerns”, our flight was being diverted to Chicago’s ORD. Although this sounded ominous, all passengers, us included, were calm. After landing a Chicago police officer boarded the plane and, to our disbelief, approached us and asked that we collect our belongings, and follow her to disembark. The captain, apparently, felt that our complaint constituted grave danger to the aircraft, crew and the other passengers, and that this danger justified inconveniencing his crew, a few of whom “timed out” during the diversion, and a full plane of your customers, causing dozens of them to miss their connections, wasting time, precious jet fuel, and adding to United’s carbon footprint. Not to mention unnecessarily involving several of Chicago’s finest, two Border Protection officers and several United and ORD managers, and an FBI agent, who all met us at the gate. After we were interviewed (for less than 5 minutes), our identities and backgrounds checked, we were booked on the next flight to BWI, and had to linger in the terminal for hours with our exhausted and terrified little boys.

A United Airlines spokesman confirmed the flight had been diverted, claiming that the crew had reported a disturbance involving a passenger. He said the airline had since conducted a review of its in-flight content.

I really and truly don’t know where to begin with this craziness. It’s the sort of thing that makes me even more reluctant to fly with my kids — and believe me, between the draconian security processes, the seemingly inevitable delays and cancellations, and the increasingly uncomfortable (yet horrifically expensive) accommodations, I wasn’t eager to do it in the first place.

I don’t think parents traveling with kids should receive special treatment that negatively affects those around them, but it’s incomprehensible that this family’s relatively simple request — one that their fellow passengers were happy to support — resulted in the plane being diverted. I can’t imagine what the captain was thinking. I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have been for all the travelers on board that day.

It’s just one more story that shows how much things have changed. Flying used to be fun, for kids and grownups alike. These days, it’s an ordeal at best. I wonder how many families are avoiding air travel altogether, simply because so few destinations are worth the effort to get there.

Are you less likely to travel with your kids these days?

When I heard about the federal judge’s ruling that the most common morning-after pill should be made available over the counter to people of any age — instead of requiring a prescription for girls under 17 — I thought about how I’d feel if I had a young daughter who was faced with the possibility of an unintended pregnancy. Would I want her to come talk to me about it? Ideally, yes. But if she wasn’t comfortable doing so, would I want her to have unrestricted access to emergency contraception so she can take measures to prevent that pregnancy from happening?

Absolutely.

Emergency contraceptives are meant for use within 72 hours after sex but are most effective if taken within 24 hours. That’s not a lot of time to see a doctor for a prescription … then potentially work around a pharmacy’s limited hours of operation.

I’d much rather my daughter — or my son’s girlfriend, as may be the case someday — be able to head off an unwanted pregnancy, rather than deal with the choices available once pregnancy’s occurred. While pro-life groups argue that the morning-after pill is the same as a chemical abortion, it’s not. The drug in Plan B, levonorgestrel, prevents pregnancy by disrupting the natural hormonal cycle and stopping fertilization or implantation. It’s most effective if it’s taken before ovulation, which is why it’s important to take the pill as soon as possible after unprotected sex. Once a fertilized egg implants, Plan B has no effect.

A poll at Today.com found that while nearly 70 percent of more than 9,500 parents who weighed in agreed with the judge’s ruling, some are vehemently opposed to the decision. As one reader put it,

No drug should be available to MINORS without parental consent. We are responsible for our children in all aspects and held up by society to take care of our children and all their mistakes.

Another reader said the unrestricted access will give young women a false sense of security, and that they should be talking to an adult instead:

If they are sexually active and have a scare and think they might be pregnant, that is the exact right time they should be involving a parent or an adult to evaluate their options. (…) It’s the same issue with drinking and drugs.

I agree that as parents we want our children to consult us when they’re in trouble or facing tough decisions — but if there was a pill that could prevent a hugely complicated, unwanted circumstance caused by drinking or drugs, I’d want my kids to have access to that too.

There are better ways to prevent pregnancy than by taking a $50 morning-after pill, but, of course, they don’t always work. Bad decisions happen. Contraception can fail. Girls can be forced into sex without their consent.  And at the end of the day, for those who are already in a situation where they need emergency birth control, making it difficult to access isn’t helpful for anyone.

What do you think about the morning-after pill ruling? Are you in favor of it being available to young teens without a prescription?

Jennifer Rowe Walters at The Huffington Post perfectly captures my feelings about the Steubenville rape case fallout:

When you get right down to it, it is pretty heartbreaking to think that we have to teach our sons not to rape and that we have to explain to them that women are their equal and are worthy of their respect — regardless of whether those women are drunk, sober, or something in between. It’s scary to realize that we live in a culture that subtly and insidiously teaches them otherwise.

Exactly. I have two young sons, just seven and five years old, and my brain shears away from the idea that they should be taught not to rape. I look at their innocent, sensitive faces and I cannot picture a reality in which they would ever participate in something like those Steubenville boys did. I can’t fathom what those boys’ parents must have thought when faced with the fact that their sons took disgusting advantage of an inebriated young girl. Like everyone else, I’m shocked by the evidence that dozens of people continued to violate and revictimize the girl after the incident through Facebook, Twitter, text messages, and cell phone recordings.

The details of the Steubenville case have been horrifying and maddening and I imagine every parent has had different reactions. I imagine parents of girls feel the fear of something similar happening to their daughters. I imagine I am not the only parent of boys who found herself thinking, but MY sons would never do that.

Of course, that’s probably what the parents of Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond believed. It’s uncomfortable to push past the point of believing your child to be incapable of an unspeakable act, but it’s our job. As Walters writes,

But it’s our reality. And, because of that, it’s our responsibility as parents to teach all of our children that actions have consequences and that even the brightest future isn’t worth more than the dignity of a fellow human being to remain whole and unharmed.

Madga at Ask Moxie wrote an amazing open letter to her sons about stopping rape, which reads in part,

Not everyone you know has been taught all the stuff we’ve talked about. You are going to know people, and maybe even be friends with people, who think it’s ok to hurt other people in a lot of ways. One of those ways is sex. I know you’re going to hear other boys say things about girls, or sometimes about other boys, that means they don’t care about those girls’ feelings or bodies. When you do, I need you to step in.

We can’t control our children’s actions, but we have the opportunity to influence. To teach, to talk, to listen. If there’s anything positive to come from the godawful Steubenville case, I hope it’s in the discussions that are happening now. And the powerful messages against victim blaming, like this one.

Has the Steubenville case influenced how you plan to talk to your kids about rape?

Image via YouTube

It happened on the last lap of a race at Daytona International Speedway: a horrifying 12-car pileup that sent chunks of debris flying into the grandstands. 16-year-old Tyler Anderson said of the crash, “I looked over and saw a hole in the fence, and looked behind me and saw a tire, a man under a tire and there were people screaming where’s my kid.”

Anderson, who was sitting in row 8, captured the moment of impact with his iPhone. In the video, you can see the tire that sailed into the crowd and landed on a man. You can see the people surrounding the injured and calling for help.

Thirty-three bystanders were hurt that day, with people being treated onsite and carried out on stretchers. A concessions worker said the crash sounded like an “earthquake,” and that she saw people running and crying and a girl completely covered in engine oil.

The fencing did the job it was intended to do, which was to keep the majority of the wreck on the track. Still, spectators near the collision were sprayed with pieces of that smashed vehicle, and when you see footage of the impact, it seems almost miraculous that no one died at the scene.

Injuries at car race events aren’t entirely uncommon. Three fans were kill in 1998 at an IndyCar race when a tire and other parts flew into the stands. Seven people were injured during a 2009 NASCAR Sprint Cup race from crash debris. In 2010, a woman was killed by a tire that bounced off a dragster at a National Hot Rod Association event.

Then again, it’s estimated that the average American has a 30 percent chance of being involved in a serious car accident in their lifetime. In other words, it’s WAY more likely that you’ll get injured driving to the grocery store than having a tire land on your head during a NASCAR race. So why does a racing event suddenly seem like something I’d never, ever take my kids to?

Our family isn’t wild about car racing, so it really wasn’t likely that was something we were going to make into a family activity any time soon. But if I suddenly had the opportunity, I don’t think I’d do it. Or at the very least, I’d want my kids in the highest rows away from the track.

As a parent, it isn’t useful to be paranoid of freak accidents happening. I’m reminded of the time I read an article about a toddler being killed on a beach when a log somehow became dislodged in the sand and rolled over him, and the comments section had a woman saying that this was why she never took her own toddler to the ocean. “The beach is just too dangerous,” she wrote, and I thought, really? What a fearful, cramped life she must have.

And yet I can’t help mentally crossing NASCAR races off my personal list of Risks I’m Willing to Expose My Kids To. Even though I drive them to the grocery store several times a week without a second thought.

What’s your take on the NASCAR accident? Would you take your kids to a racing event?

Image via Nascar

I was at the bus stop the other morning waving goodbye to my son when I noticed the face of the girl sitting behind him. She seemed oddly illuminated, and at first I couldn’t figure out why. Was there a light inside the bus that was shining on her? Had an errant ray of sunshine managed to penetrate Oregon’s February gloom? Did she have a tiny flashlight for reading purposes? It wasn’t until the bus pulled away and I got a glimpse at her lap that I saw what was causing the mysterious glow: she was playing with a cellphone.

Did I mention this is an elementary school bus?

My oldest son is only in first grade, and I supposed it’s possible that by fourth or fifth grade he’ll be a responsible individual to whom I feel comfortable gifting with a cellphone. I gotta be honest, though, it’s hard for me to imagine WHY I would do this. For emergency purposes? Something tells me that little girl furtively pecking around on her iPhone wasn’t practicing her 911 speed-dial skills.

Still, it’s a brave new world we live in, and the fact is, most kids have smartphones. Maybe not most elementary-aged kids, but I’d guess by middle school they’re nearly ubiquitous. It’s more than a little hypocritical for me to hope my children choose an analog lifestyle, too, considering how much time I spend with my snout buried in various electronic devices.

I’m sure managing my kids’ screen time will become more and more of an issue as they get older, and it’s particularly challenging to think ahead to keeping an eye on their online habits. I mean, my husband and I are pretty active on Facebook and Twitter, and it’s bizarre to think that all too soon there will come a day when we’ll have to decide how we want our kids to participate in social media.

It’s kind of depressing, actually. I guess because it’s sad to imagine a time when my kids will prefer the online world to the boundless Lego-studded imaginarium they currently live in.

Monitoring kids and social media is obviously a fairly new parenting challenge, and there was an interesting study recently that suggests that half — HALF! — of parents using Facebook signed up at least partly in order to keep tabs on their kids. 92 percent say they’re Facebook friends with their kids, and 43 percent admit that they check their kids’ Facebook pages on a daily basis.

Oh man. Isn’t parenting hard enough without the burden of tracking your kids’ tweets and status updates? Any what do you do if they publish something you think is a bad idea? Let them make their own mistakes, or swoop in to offer your unwanted opinion? GAH.

Of course, the alternative — not having any contact with your child on social media, and therefore having no idea what she/he is posting — is even less appealing.

As for me, I’d prefer to bury my head in the sand and take comfort in the fact that I don’t have to deal with this stuff quite yet, but spotting that little girl with a phone reminded me that it’ll all be happening before I know it.

What’s your take on kids and social media? If your kids are online, do you monitor what they’re up to?

Image via cnast/Flickr

A while ago I was dropping off my son at preschool and I noticed one of his classmates had a rattling cough — delivered, loudly and juicily, in the saliva-spraying method of a child who hasn’t yet learned to cover his germ-hole. Ugh, I thought. What kind of parent brings their OBVIOUSLY sick kid to school like that?

Judgmental karma payback is a bitch: a week later, I was the one trying to decide if I should send my coughing kid to class. And here it is nearly a month after I eye-rolled that hacking preschooler, and both my kids are STILL coughing.

We’d been on a great run healthwise, and I suppose it was only a matter of time until a virus descended and wiped out the household. My seven-year-old got it first, and he stayed home from school for three days while he holed up on the couch watching a near-constant stream of Ninjago episodes. The five-year-old got it next, and managed to parlay the original gunk into an ear infection and surprise pneumonia diagnosis.

Everyone seems to be on the mend now, thank god, but this is the third straight week someone’s been home from school. I’m royally tired of it — for one thing, every surface of the house is currently littered in crumpled tissues and coated in a sticky patina of amoxicillin and children’s ibuprofen — but I’m also insanely grateful for the flexibility of freelancing. Without my work-from-home job, we’d have been up shit creek by now … sans paddle.

A recent poll from the University of Michigan confirmed what most of us already know: One-third of parents of young children are concerned about losing jobs or losing pay when taking off work to care for sick kids. Another report found that over half of parents don’t get five paid days off per year to take care of a sick child.

My husband has a friend whose workplace assigns “points” for every sick day he takes, regardless of reason. Rack up too many points, and there’s no further discussion, you’re fired. As he told my husband, he’s constantly near his points limit — not because he’s not a dedicated worker, but for the simple reason that he has three children. “I haven’t taken a sick day for myself in years,” he says.

When I was working outside the home and both our boys were in daycare, dealing with the inevitable sick days was enormously stressful. My husband and I would play that oh-so-fun game of “Whose Job is More Important?” in order to determine who would take the day off, and sometimes … well, sometimes we dosed a borderline kid with medicine, sent him in, and hoped for the best.

In other words, it was stupendously hypocritical of me to judge Preschool Cougher’s parents. Maybe he had long passed the point of contagion, maybe he had a condition like asthma. Maybe his parents were stuck between a rock and a hard place that morning, and they were just doing the best they could.

The always-moving target of balancing family and work takes a major hit when someone gets sick, and there are no easy solutions — especially for single parents or those with rigid workplace policies. Ideally, we’d all have the time we needed to be with our kids when they aren’t feeling well, but speaking as someone who’s on week THREE of caregiving, I can’t quite imagine an employer who wouldn’t have questioned my time off by now.

How do you handle sick days in your household? Has taking time off for your kids affected your job in any way?

Image via anjanettew/Flickr