Child Protective Services

 

 

When I was a child it was quite common in those Depression years for a parent to send all of the children of the family as a group with a bucket to walk along the railroad track and pick up bits and pieces of coal that had fallen off the railroad coal cars and locomotives. Wood was scarce and coal was expensive, and the winters were cold. I never heard of a child being hurt while so engaged. The older kids felt a responsibility for the younger kids, and we carefully watched for trains; we weren't fools, even if we were young. The other day I asked my daughter, who used to be a Child Protective Services investigator, how CPS would view this practise today. She said they would probably seek to have the parent indicted for child endangerment, which carries a ten-year prison term. There is something wrong with the government through its agency determining what is or is not too dangerous for my kids to do. There aren't any coal locomotives today, and my youngest is thirty-six, but the decision of what is or is not dangerous for a child is in poor hands if the government is making it. That is the parents job.