Check out four things parents did back then that could get them arrested today.
1. Leaving you home alone. A lot of states have laws now that say you can’t leave a child unsupervised if they’re under 12. In some states it’s younger than that, and in Illinois it’s 14. (Check your state here.)
So you see stories like the one in South Carolina, where a woman got arrested for letting her 9-year-old play at a park while she worked at McDonald’s.
2. Smoking while you were in the car. A bunch of states are still in the process of making it illegal to smoke cigarettes with kids in the car. But six states have already done it: Arkansas, California, Louisiana, Maine, Oregon, and Utah.
3. Letting you ride in the car without a seatbelt. All 50 states now have laws that require car seats or seat belts for kids. New Hampshire is the only one where adults don’t have to wear a seatbelt . . . they just officially ‘suggest’ it.
In most cases you won’t get arrested for it, you’ll get a fine. But if you crash and they get HURT because they weren’t buckled in, you COULD see jail time.
4. Taking photos of you in the tub. It’s legal to take photos of your kids in the buff . . . but in 2008, a couple in Arizona took a roll of film to Walmart, and the person who developed it thought some of the bath photos were child pornography.
All the charges were eventually dropped. But both parents had to register as sex offenders until it was dealt with . . . the mom got suspended from her job at a school . . . and their kids ended up in foster care for a month.