Here’s one of those crazy law enforcement stories that may leave you wondering if madness is just the new normal in our world. Over at Reason, Lenore Skenazy provides a summary of the story of Melissa Henderson, a Georgia single mother of five with a full-time job who had run out of childcare options when she was finally able to go back to work after the pandemic shutdowns in 2020. She tasked her 14-year-old daughter with the job of watching her siblings until she got home from work. While engaged in distance learning, the daughter briefly lost track of her four-year-old brother, who had run to go play with a neighborhood friend of his at a neighbor’s house. The neighbor called the police upon learning that the mother was not at home and Melissa Henderson was arrested, handcuffed, and taken to jail on charges of criminal reckless endangerment of a child. This legal battle has been raging for more than 18 months and Ms. Henderson is facing the possibility of a year behind bars and a serious fine. How on earth did this situation spiral out of control like this?

When COVID-19 shut down her children’s daycare in May of 2020, and Melissa Henderson had to go to work, she asked her 14-year-old daughter, Linley, to babysit the four younger siblings. Linley was engaged in remote learning when her youngest brother, four-year-old Thaddeus, spied his friend outside and went over to play with him. It was about 10 or 15 minutes before Linley realized he was missing. She guessed that he must be at his friend’s house, and went to fetch him.

In the meantime, the friend’s mom had called the police.

Now Henderson, a single mom in Blairsville, Georgia, is facing criminal reckless conduct charges for letting her 14-year-old babysit. The charges carry a maximum penalty of one year in prison and fine of $1,000. The arresting officer, Deputy Sheriff Marc Pilote, wrote in his report that anything terrible could have happened to Thaddeus, including being kidnapped, run over, or “bitten by a venomous snake.”

Two weeks after the incident, five police cars arrived at Henderson’s home. She was handcuffed in front of her children, loaded into a squad car, taken to jail, and placed in a cell. As far as the dangerous, cobra-ridden jungle where the Hendersons live goes, there are pictures of the neighborhood in the linked article. The house is on a small street in what is clearly a very upscale suburban neighborhood with beautiful lawns and trees. Many Americans would give their left arm to live there.

There are two aspects to what seems to be clearly wrong with this case, one involving legal precedents and the other boiling down to simple common sense. On the legal side, Skenazy notes that the state supreme court ruled in 1997 that charging a mother or father for a “normal parenting decision” was unconstitutional. On top of that, the state’s Child Protective Guidelines say that children can safely babysit at age 13.

While those facts alone make this case against Henderson dubious at best, there is also the common sense angle. I understand that the world has changed since I was a youth and there probably isn’t anywhere in the country that is 100% “safe” for children. (And to be honest, there probably wasn’t back in the 60s but the press didn’t dig into such things very much.) But I still recall my sister being tasked with babysitting my brother and I at an earlier age than that. And by the time I was 14, my parents both worked and both of my siblings had left home. I was one of those “latchkey kids” you often hear about. I was alone at home or out wandering the countryside hunting rabbits or fishing for many hours at a time. There was nothing unusual about it.

That’s not to say that we don’t have neglectful or abusive parents out there. We clearly do, and that’s a problem. But an otherwise functional home where teenagers are given certain family responsibilities if they prove responsible enough to take them on is not child abuse. And it’s certainly not something to throw a parent in jail over, particularly when she is a single mother and there is no other parent at home to step in.

This is just a crazy story. It’s maddening, really. And I hope there aren’t too many more out there like this.