Mothers - Safety and Security

Home from college one summer, I remember my mother saying with pride, “none of my children have ever broken a bone.” Throughout a childhood of fun, sometimes reckless, in Zanesville, Ohio, then in northern Ohio - Williamsfield, dairy-farming country - not one of my four brothers, three sisters, nor I suffered a broken arm, broken leg, broken anything.  Mother’s pride-filled claim held throughout her lifetime. 

I’ve thought, also with pride, “none of my children have ever been fingerprinted.”  Didn’t actually speak the words, and likely only acknowledged the thought while watching the fingerprinting of culprits on TV.  Raising my kids I hoped and prayed they would act in accordance with their quality upbringing.  I was a working mother.  I relied on their moment-to-moment good judgment in choosing what they did and whom they did it with, and also on them not being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  In those years, as far as I was concerned, there was no good connotation related to my child being fingerprinted.

It’s all changed. Fingerprinting is now used for security purposes.  Parents are encouraged to have young children fingerprinted. Employees in certain industries are fingerprinted.  Some Boards of Education require their elected members to be fingerprinted.  Many of those Board members reject the requirement as an unnecessary invasion of privacy.  (I tend to agree and will be attentive to how the conflict is resolved.)

Recently I learned of a major bank requiring fingerprinting in order to cash a check, written on that bank, but presented by a person who did not have an account with them.  “I had to pay $6 and be fingerprinted,” complained my obviously devastated daughter that evening in a telephone conversation.

No longer can this mother claim, "none of my children have ever been fingerprinted".