Recently there was a story in the news about a mother who is accused of putting her five year old daughter in a tanning bed. I don’t know if this woman is guilty or not but she certainly is fond of tanning.
As a single mother I’ve had to take Hailey lots of places that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. When I went to the emergency room, not only did she go with me, she had to drive me, with only a learners permit because I was in too much pain to drive myself. I will never forget how frightened she looked sitting beside my bed. I wish I could have spared her that.
I’ve also taken Hailey to work with me, many times late at night or on the weekend. When I managed a team in a call center I was on call twenty four hours a day. Sometimes that meant that if the system went down I was waking my child up in the middle of the night, bundling her in the car and then letting her sleep in my office while working on the problem.
Hailey has sat in the waiting room when I was at the gynecologist or the dentist. She has been to the lawyers office with me when I was filing for divorce. My child has been more places that she shouldn’t have had to go than I can name, but I’ve never taking her to a tanning salon.
First, I don’t tan, but if I did, I can’t image it’s a place for a child. There are many things we have to do as single mothers, many places we have to take our children, but sometimes we just need to make different choices.
There are places that are off limits, I think tanning salons would be one of them. Tanning is unhealthy, bad for your skin and, I believe, contributes to the body image issues that so many girls already have.
This mother is not a single mom so I’m not sure why she couldn’t tan when her husband was home. I watched a brief news clip and when the reporter asked her if she felt this was a witch hunt she said, “All my life there’s someone out there who doesn’t like me because they are jealous, fat and ugly.”
After hearing that comment from a married mother I wonder why everyone is so worried about the children being raised by single parents.
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