Great Moments in Parenting

This is a tough one. CNN.com has an article about a Mom who is charged with child abuse or endangerment for letting her kids get sunburned. Mark Shea views this as quintessential silliness on the part of the police. Here's an excerpt from the story:

Eve Hibbits was arrested a week ago on three counts of child endangerment, said Sheriff Fred Abdalla. She remained in jail Tuesday in lieu of $15,000 bail, and a preliminary hearing is set for Wednesday.
Abdalla said a deputy noticed her 2-year-old daughter and 10-month-old twin boys had severely sunburned faces at the Jefferson County Fair.
"She pushed her kids around the fairground all day last Tuesday, and it looked like those kids' faces were dipped in red paint," he said. "There was no sunscreen or nothing on these children."
The children had second-degree sunburns and were treated with cold compresses, said Trinity Medical Center West spokesman Keith Murdock.
Hibbits, 31, could face 15 years in jail if convicted of all three counts.

As a parent my usual reaction to cases like these is to wince. I can always think of ocassions when my parenting skills were not optimal. Could I forget to take a child out of the car seat on a hot summer day, or drive off with a baby's carrier on top of the car? Lord, I hope not. This case, though, strikes me as extreme - keeping children out in the sun until they are red and have second-degree burns suggests something more systemic than a momentary lack of attention. I know that the Widget, the Wadget and Boff get slathered with SPF 50+ sun tan lotion whenever we intend to spend a day in the sun, and I don't think that's purely a product of my Irish aversion to sunlight.