NOWHERE TO GO BUT HOME ALONE

Brigid Schulte, a reporter for The Washington Post, is upset.

With the start of sixth grade this year, my son officially became a latchkey child. School lets out at 3:15. My husband and I both work and often don't get home until well after 6. [I]n elementary school, there were at least four different formal after-school programs that filled the gap between the end of his school day and the end of our workday [but] the little that [i]s available for his age group [i]sn't right for him.

Well, she and her husband both work - doesn't that suggest something?

I found smug comments lamenting parents' love of two incomes over the well-being of their children. (Anybody bother to digest the statistic that nearly 80 percent of women with school-age children work outside the home? That's up from 55 percent in 1975. And my guess is they all love their children very much.)

But did she think to look for data about what percent of women with school-age children had to work outside the home? Nope. She has a right to work outside the home, a right to have children, and a right to have the government take care of them.

[Ellie] Mitchell, director of the Maryland Out of School Time Network, argues, as does U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, that the school day is outmoded. "After-school is always seen as something extra," she said. "But I don't know why 9 to 3 is so much more important than 3 to 6. It's all just the time that kids are not with their families."

Doesn't she have a responsibility somewhere in all those rights?

[Update] It's illegal to be a good samaritan and do something liberals believe the government should be doing.