I first heard about Ms. Taylor the evening of her arrest. I was in Scottsdale and it was all over the local news. I watched the news teasers between commercials and then asked Mr. Google to tell me what was going on. I read what Mr. Google had to report and then waited on the news to, hopefully, shine a different light on the story.
I was wrong.
The news simply told what Mr. Google said and...being that it was the local news there was a...hmmmm...shall we say...TONE about the reporting that I didn't care for.
The next morning I was discussing it with a framily member and I was like...it's the most fugged up thing I've heard in a long time.
And we know that's not really true because I know you, along the rest of us...have read some seriously disturbing ish about kids in the past week or so.
So the basics are that Ms. Taylor and her two children are homeless and she's been out of work. She is looking for a job and got an interview. She didn't have child care however. She went to the interview and left her kids in her SUV. Reports are that she left the car in the sun. It's Arizona. There is always sun. What if the building didn't have a parking garage? Truth be told...I've never seen many parking garages in Arizona and...I would think that if you were desperate enough to leave your kids in the car...you'd want to leave them as close to the building you're going to be in as possible. Probably somewhere you thought you could peek out a window and still see.
She probably did crappy on the interview too. I mean..I can't imagine being on your interview A-game knowing that, out of sheer desperation, you left your babies alone in your car.
But you do what you have to do and you hope, wish and pray...you do well and return to your babies with a job in hand right? That big thing you need to survive. To provide.
So...she's arrested. Her kids taken. Her vehicle is probably impounded. And she's homeless. Fucking joy. Where is she supposed to get the money to get her car out of the impound when she gets out. She can't get a lawyer without money so it might be a while. Car is damn near as good as gone now hell. And now she's homeless, without transportation, in a city where you NEED TRANSPORTATION and she has to try and get her kids back.
I hate this shit and what it was telling me. What's it's BEEN telling me about the very real ish that is the world we live in.
So yeah...I tried to stay away from it because for every story like this one you hear...there are many more going on right now that you don't hear about because it hasn't made the news yet or you don't know someone who knows someone going through it.
People all over the world have sent in donations to help her out and it made my heart smile. I read this and it pretty much summed up where my uneasiness came from:
Some might see this arrest as exclusively a child neglect issue, which, I will confess, was my first instinct. But I would urge you to consider how this story underscores the desperate situations parents are forced into in this country, either by poverty, lack of affordable housing, single parenthood or some combination of the three. Not everyone can afford a babysitter, daycare or a nanny; America really is a nation of latchkey kids (or in this case, babies) being left by themselves while Mom or Dad work. There are larger issues at play here: between the cost of childcare in this country and the cost of housing, a lot of parents who want to work have to make difficult choices regarding their kids. And be honest: Shanesha Taylor certainly isn’t the only single parent who has left young children by themselves while she was trying to put food on the table. But Shanesha was doubly unfortunate enough to be homeless, so the young children were left alone in public, in her car, and she was caught. It’s a sucky situation all-around.
Poverty is the problem here; poverty is what led to Taylor’s criminal behavior. We shouldn’t judge Shanesha Taylor so harshly for not having any resources she could rely on. The types of punishment the government is pursuing — taking her kids away from her or putting her in jail — don’t address that lack of resources. Punishing her could actually strip her of even more future resources. Obviously I don’t think that babies should be left alone inside hot cars, but we need to have empathy for the complexities of this situation.
That came from this article:
Homeless Mom Shanesha Taylor Charged With Child Abuse After Leaving Two Kids In Car During A Job Interview
I'm still feeling some kinda way about this whole thing and sad way deep down you know? I'm curious as to your thoughts about it? When you first heard it...what did you think? How do you feel now? Anybody ever been hit hard while trying to better their situation? Who did you feel you could turn to for help?
