Top-Heavy Coalmine Canaries

This is interesting: Woman accused of breast-feeding while drunk.  It’s pretty easy to imagine how a police officer might feel compelled to arrest someone for doing this – arresting people is often the default response for police.  It’s what they do.   On the other hand, I can’t see that such an arrest will serve as a deterrent.  To begin with, drunk people do bizarre and hazardous things regardless of the law or the risk involved; that’s what being drunk is all about.  It’s what drunks do.  Additionally, there has to be some limit on things that parents can be punished for when it comes to their children.  I don’t know what that limit is, but clearly we haven’t come anywhere near it.  As things now stand, a parent can legally fill their child’s head with bigoted, idiotic nonsense – will this become a criminal offense?  Will exposing a child to second-hand smoke become a form of child endangerment?  Or failing to have properly installed smoke detectors?  Leaving the life vests on the shore?  Under current law, parents can be charged with a crime for not using Internet content filters: exposing children to pornography is a no-no.  Helmets, seatbelts and suchlike are also well-known areas of enforced compliance.  But for a childless dimwit like myself, each new foray into the ambiguous limits of parental responsibility is actually quite worrisome.  It’s one of the many reasons that whenever I’m around children I’m paralyzed with fear: I don’t know all the rules.  None of us do.  Thankfully there are lactating drunkards out there risking the health of their babies so that we don’t have to.