When Mothers Get Arrested for Mothering

This past June, a Virginia mother named Karyann Parkinson took a bike ride with her 5-year-old son and stopped by a pond inside their gated community to collect goose feathers from the grass. The two of them rode back home, whereupon Parkinson’s son asked his mother if he could walk back to the pond by himself to fetch a few more feathers. Parkinson, who was eight months pregnant with her fifth child, studying for the bar exam, and—perhaps most pressing—making lunch, agreed. The walk was relatively short, along a sidewalk 10 feet from the road and across two intersections with crosswalks, which Parkinson knew her son could navigate successfully (he had done so six times that morning). But on his way, the boy was spotted by a concerned passerby, who notified a community security guard, who in turn notified the police. Before long, several police officers were at Parkinson’s door, followed by Child Protective Services agents. Officials in the case decided to press charges against Parkinson, and last week she was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor and placed on Virginia’s child-abuse-and-neglect registry, where she will remain for seven years.