From the Dallas Morning News: Report: Texas among worst in country for high numbers of teen moms, uninsured kids

Here's an example of how an advocacy group - a think tank actually, but they promote liberal causes - uses the media to highlight issues they'd like addressed. The organization is the Center for Public Priorities - which is the liberal counterweight to the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.

- You can see the report here: The 2016 KIDS COUNT Data Book.

- Click here for the article.

Texas has some of the highest rates of uninsured kids and teen births in the country despite progress in recent years, according to a report released Tuesday.

The Center for Public Policy Priorities, a center-left think tank in Austin, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked Texas 43rd in the nation for overall child well-being in their 2016 KIDS COUNT Data Book. The groups found that 25 percent of Texas children are living in poverty and 11 percent are uninsured.

Texas has more uninsured children than any other state by a long shot. About 784,000 Texas children had no health insurance in 2014.

Texas is tied with Alaska for the highest percentage of uninsured kids, but in Alaska, 11 percent amounts to 21,000 children. California had the next-highest number of uninsured kids -- 497,000, which is 5 percent there.

Success will be judged based on how many of their findings impact legislation passed in the upcoming session of the Texas Legislature.

From CityLab: The Murky Law on Free-Range Kids

This hits some of the themes the story about vaccinations discussed previously this semester hit. How much latitude are we willing to give parents in how they raise their kids, especially if the general public believes the choices parents are making put their kids at risk. Being an area where states have the ability to make this decision, the rules vary across the nation.

- Click here for the story.

On April 12, it happened again: Rafi and Dvora Meitiv, the “free-range kids” of Silver Spring, Maryland, were picked up and detained by police. The siblings, aged 10 and six, were playing unsupervised in their neighborhood when a man walking his dog spotted them and called the authorities.

Back in December, Rafi and Dvora made national headlines when police picked them up as they walked home from a local park. The children’s parents, Danielle and Alexander Meitiv, subscribe to the philosophy of “free-range” parenting, which holds that children develop self-reliance by exploring their neighborhoods or riding public transportation on their own, if their parents judge them ready. (Disclosure: the Meitiv children attend the same school as my son, though I don’t know them or their parents.)

After the first incident, Montgomery County Child Protective Services investigated and found the senior Meitivs responsible for “unsubstantiated neglect.” Now an attorney for the couple says they will file a lawsuit over their family’s treatment. In fact, the law is not clear on free-range parenting in the state of Maryland, or anywhere else in the country: states and cities generally do not specify the youngest age at which a child can play or walk outside alone.

A few states have laws stipulating the minimum age when a child can be lefthome alone. In Illinois it is 14, in Maryland, eight, and in Oregon, 10. Maryland’s law further stipulates that a young child left in the care of a person under 13 is “unattended.” Many more states offer home-alone guidelines, which vary as widely as the laws do (age six in Kansas, age 12 in Mississippi).

In North Carolina, the state fire code prohibits leaving children younger than eight home alone. Rarely, a city will have its own ordinance establishing the home-alone age, as Albuquerque does (the age there is 10). In most cases, whether such home-alone rules extend to outdoor spaces is something lawyers could argue either way.

Parental Rights vs. the Protection of Children

We discussed the case of Daniel Hauser in class today. He's the cancer stricken kid whose mother does not want him to have chemotherapy. She apparently wants him to have a natural cure and is heading to Mexico to get it. Child protective services in Minnesota had taken her to court to force her to allow her son to have the chemo. By not doing so she has been argued to be placing her child in danger.

So the question we considered was whether she was in fact doing so and whether the state was overstepping its bounds.

To make matters more interesting, the family is a member of the Nemenhah religion. This raises the potential question of free exercise violations if the state does not allow her to seek a treatment that is inkeeping with her religious beliefs. Precedence allows the state to intervent if religious practices place children in danger. The greater interest of society in keeping children safe overweighs the parents free exercise rights (sounds like the polygamy case from a year ago). The question is whether that is in fact what is happening here.

A warrant for the mother's arrest has been issued so I expect more on this soon.

Just one little word...

Another controversy has surfaced surrounding a peculiar word in a place where children might hear it. Librarians are lining up on either side of the issue, as are civil libertarians.

The book is a recent prize winner titled The Higher Power of Lucky.

Are people being too protective of children, or is the book continued evidence of the apocalypse?