Does Madlyn Primoff Deserve Her Place in Pop Culture?

Before everyone was panicked over swine flu, it seemed that the world was freaking out over Scarsdale resident Madlyn Primoff. As you've no doubt read all over the Internet, Primoff is the Westchester parent who kicked her 12-year-old and her 10-year-old out of her car, eventually leaving the 10-year-old alone on the streets of White Plains.

Now, everyone agrees that Primoff was wrong to abandon her kid. But, really, how wrong was she? When the story broke, half the world jumped on the Primoff-bashing bandwagon, and her name was right up there with Joan Crawford's in the Scary Moms in Pop Culture Hall of Fame. But then others spoke up and said that Primoff's vilification was sexist, classist, and blown out of proportion. Here's a sampling of what some of her defenders had to say:

"Cheryl Kessner, a social worker who raised five children, said Ms. Primoff made a mistake, but the girls were left, for however long, in a safe commercial district, not a dangerous neighborhood. She said the reaction was as much about the overly anxious, safety-obsessed standards of suburbia as Ms. Primoff’s flawed judgment. Not long ago, this might have led to a totally mortifying article in the Scarsdale Inquirer. Now, thanks to the correct coding (Scarsdale, Park Avenue, Columbia Law School), it hits the online jackpot. If she had been a clerk who left her kids at a Costco in Fargo, North Dakota, what happened in Fargo would have stayed in Fargo. Instead, everyone was weighing in."
—The New York Times, who says Primoff is "sort of a Susan Boyle in reverse."

"While Primoff's actions were obviously reckless, this story has sparked one of America's favorite—and most judgmental—conversations about 'Bad Mommies.' I don't support abandoning children on the side of the road, but I do know from personal experience and from those who 'fess up on my website, truuMOMconfessions.com, that the whole notion of 'Bad Mommies' is a fragile social construction. We receive posts every day that repeatedly prove to me that the intense and unrealistic pressure on mothers to constantly juggle work and family obligations has led to not-so-shocking outbursts from otherwise sane women. While most of our site's users have committed what we like to call 'Mommy Misdemeanors,' I'm sure that if Primoff were to have vented about this considerably more serious incident on truuMOM, she'd have received more than a few 'metoo' clicks of support from the community."
—HuffingtonPost.com

"Perhaps most egregiously, AOL chose to include Primoff's picture in a photo slideshow of abusive parents, including Shana Brown, who drugged her thirteen-year-old daughter so Brown's boyfriend could impregnate her. Does the Internet just flatten everything out, so that a parenting misstep gets the same outrage as child rape? Or is Primoff coming in for worse criticism because of her high-powered career?"
—Jezebel.com

"Moms as far afield as Australia are tut-tutting over the Park Avenue lawyer who left her ten-year-old daughter behind on a White Plains sidewalk as punishment for misbehaving with her twelve-year-old sister. Details are still scant on what exactly sent Madlyn Primoff into such a rage, but you can bet she had no idea she'd become, overnight, an instantly-recognizable symbol for bad parenting. The Post has been all over her—nicknaming her the 'Mother Chucker' and photographing her outside her office—and warped right-wing columnist Andrea Peyser, mother of a ten-year-old girl herself, naturally admits to ‘harboring some secret admiration for Madlyn, The Mother Who Means It.'"
—Gothamist.com

"It strikes me that the problem is less the fact of a ten-year-old and twelve-year-old alone in a neighboring town and more that it was a sudden, angry punishment. The writer Lenore Skenazy gained notoriety last year when she wrote about allowing her nine-year-old son to take the subway and bus alone in New York, and she’s now written a book, 'Free-Range Kids,' advocating the practice for kids mature enough to handle it. But that’s a considered decision that the child is in on, not a lashing out by a furious parent."
—The Wall Street Journal

So, what do you think? Were Primoff's actions an unforgivable crime, or can you sympathize?

Reader Comments:

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May 1, 2009 03:19 pm

Posted by parashoes

What makes what Ms. Primoff did any different from any parent leaving their child at the park, mall, zoo, bowling alley, pool club or library??? For some reason, everyone is holding this poor woman to a different standard because she was 'mad' when she left off her child. Typically, we are not mad when we drop our children off at other places and leave them there alone, having already judged them to be mature enough to be left alone. In these other cases, parents use these places as baby sitters and go and have a good ol' time for themselves figuring their kids are being taken care of by the librarian or zookeeper, when in fact, neither the librarian nor the zookeeper even knew they were being used for this purpose. I say, leave this poor woman alone...she went back and got her child which is more than can be said for other moms who take advantage of leaving their child in a 'safe' place and going and having their nails done or better yet, going for a drink!!

May 2, 2009 05:05 pm

Posted by TirNaNog

Personally, I don't think *enough* has been made of what Madlyn Primoff did. She does not deserve a place in pop culture, though--she deserves a place in the county jail!

And the fact that she was "mad" when she kicked her minor children out of the car does make a world of difference. It is a parent's responsibility to keep his or her children *safe*--regardless of whether the child is misbehaving, regardless of how angry or outraged or frustrated or tired the parent is. She left her children alone--told them she was leaving them, and drove off. It doesn't matter if she was rich or poor, if she worked for a "white-shoe" law firm or if she was a welfare mother, or if the children were thrown out in White Plains or Chappaqua or Kalamazoo. What matters is that, regardless of her reasons, what she showed her children is that keeping them safe and cared for is not her first priority. If you can't trust your mother to keep you safe, who can you trust??

Children mature at different rates; we have no way of knowing how emotionally mature those children are. But when a child is left like that, maturity goes out the window. It wasn't "Honey, I'll be back in an hour"--it was "Mom's speeding off down the thoroughfare without me!"

As the mother of an 11-year-old son--a mother whose patience has been tested, who gets tired, mad, and frustrated, like every other mother--I can tell you that I would DIE before I would willingly put my child in a situation where he might have the slightest chance of being thrust in harm's way--no matter what he had done.