A SINGLE working mother who left her nine-year-old daughter home alone for a day was charged and had to appear in court. http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2010/09/01/166971_news.html?utm_source=twitterfeed-sport&utm_medium=twitter

Apparently it is illegal to leave a child under 12 unattended in Queensland! There is no equivalent law in any other state.

How incredibly big-brotherish is this ridiculous law? Why is it apparently illegal to leave a child in the safety of their own home for a day but not to allow your kids to play in the street unsupervised or walk through a shopping centre or walk home from school? Or are all of these things technically illegal as well in Qld?

How on earth are we supposed to know about laws that we would never even suspect existed?

How many obscure laws there are out there, that we could inadvertently infringe, and get caught up in legal strife, at great expense and great embarrassment, and incur a badly damaged level of respect for the law for the rest of our lives?

This woman is by all accounts a good mother who did not realise that she was doing anything illegal. At least the magistrate was sympathetic. But it still stinks, in my opinion.

What do others think?

It's the way of the world

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/06/2945557.htm

DOCS will probably be round at my house once my kids start school.

They'll be walking to school.

I thought it was the law that you can not leave a child alone at home if they are under the age of 14 years. I never questioned this because I thought it was sensible and it is the rule I have applied and quoted to my children when they thought it was okay to be left alone at home for the day when still under 14 years. I don't think that a single-mother leaving her child at home for a day makes her a bad mother, but it is neglecting her responsibility of care for her child. A nine year old child would not generally be equipped to manage in situations of eg. a fire, a break-in, a stranger arriving at the front door, an injury of accident to themselves - sorry, but it's not okay to leave a 9 year old child at home alone for a day. They may have to go with mum to work, stay with friends for a day, be booked into child-care for a short day stay, or mum may need to take a day of carer's leave or sick leave if she has any available.

What dotto said.

Obviously, you haven't had much to do with raising kids. There's any number of things that can happen for which kids of that age are not prepared, nor should they be. Leaving a 9-year old child alone all day is quite a different thing to allowing them to walk to school.

I don't believe in 'helicopter parenting', but I don't believe in neglecting children either. This scenario sounds like the latter to me.

CJ Morgan, I don't quite understand what you have said. Didn't I say something similar to you? And by the way I have had experience raising my own children and did not leave them home alone for a day EVER before they turned 14. For the same kinds of reasons, my children have never walked to school until this year. My son is 14 and he now walks from the train station to school. No experience with children Hmfff! I made the deliberate choice to never even put my children in child-care! - and breast-fed one until she was 3 and the other until he was 4. This is not to say that my methods are best, there are many ways of being a good mother and this was just my way by my own choice, of doing things. But you are quite wrong in your assumption that I have not had experience in raising children CJ Morgan!

Actually, I think CJMorgan's agreeing with you, dotto and his latter remarks were aimed at Ludwig.

I agree with you as well. My kids are very able young people, but up until the last 12 months neither their mother nor I would have left them alone for more than a short while.

It's just demanding too much of them.