Prometheus 6   

A disasterous lack of choice

There is so much I want to say about this. I've known many, many people who had to make similar choices; people with school aged children who needed two incomes to get by, single parents…

If, as the authorities suggest, this was arson, she may have been able to save her children or may have been caught in the flames herself, who knows? But she shouldn't have the grief of loss compounded by accusations of wrongdoing because she made the best choice she could.

Last Sunday, as her night shift neared, Kim Brathwaite faced a hard choice. Her baby sitter had not shown up, and to miss work might end her new position as assistant manager at a McDonald's in downtown Brooklyn.

So she left her two children, 9 and 1, alone, trying to stay in touch by phone.

It turned out to be a disastrous decision. Someone, it seems, deliberately set fire to her apartment. Her children died. And within hours, Ms. Brathwaite was under arrest, charged with recklessly endangering her children.

The investigation is continuing, and an arrest in the arson may soon overshadow the criminal charges against Ms. Brathwaite, who is not a suspect in the fire, investigators say. But she is now facing up to 16 years in prison for a decision that, surveys and interviews with experts suggest, cuts uncomfortably close to some choices made every day by American families.

Nationwide, parents themselves report leaving more than 3 million children under 13 -- some as young as 5 -- to care for themselves for at least a few hours a week on a regular basis, according to a recent study by Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization in Washington, D.C., that analyzed census information and other data.

And so the Brooklyn case highlights a much broader debate, one with few fixed legal guideposts. For state statutes typically set no age under 18 when a child is legally considered old enough to stay home alone. Thus parents are left with many case-by-case judgments, and prosecutors with vast discretion when something goes wrong.