A concerned mother from Virginia can no longer let her children play outside. As it turns out, Child Protective Services might haul away her three children and put them into foster care if the kids are allowed to play outdoors. The mother, Emily Fields, has been accused by a social worker of neglecting her children after her four-year-old child tried to assault the neighbor’s cat by kicking a soccer ball at the animal.
Fields live with her three children in Pearisburg, Virginia. A social worker became very concerned with Fields’ children after the cat-kicking incident and urged the mother to sign over her children to Child Protective Services by signing a form disallowing her kids from playing outside without constant supervision due to their poor behavior. Fields’ children now include a six-year-old boy and two daughters, age eight and age nine.
Fields claims that the social worker lives in her neighborhood and has set a target on her back, trying to punish the mom for how she is raising her children without constant adult supervision, something many people would claim is wrong for an American parent in the twenty-first century.
The thread of her parenting began to unravel in May 2021 during the pandemic when her son kicked a soccer ball at a neighbor’s cat from across the road. Although he failed to strike the animal with his kick, he threatened it enough to warrant intervention from Child Protective Services.
Fields tried to apologize for her son’s terrible behavior, but the neighbors became furious and “began to scream and yell. They said that everyone in the neighborhood thought I was a horrible mother and that my children abused animals.”
The abusive incident happened while Fields had left her children in the care of her sister. The following day two CPS caseworkers arrived at Fields’s house ready to have her sign a “safety plan” to keep her children out of harm’s way. The family was now required “to supervise the children at all times when playing outside.”
The order added, “if the safety plan is violated, a protective order will be filed.”
Fields, who believes in hands-off parenting, did not want to monitor her children while they were running amok in the neighborhood.
At one point, her children came up with a scheme to make money from the neighbors, selling Easter eggs.
“At no point were they out of my sight,” she said. “And at no point did they go inside.”
However, the children knocked on the CPS caseworker’s door.
Fields has had a history with CPS that dates back to 2018 when they returned home to find two CPS caseworkers at her home. She often let her children outside alone despite their young ages.
CPS told her that her children had to be supervised by adults until they were thirteen – unless she wanted to forfeit them to the authorities.
Do you think this mother should be hounded by CPS as she has been?