Entitled Moms and their Hungry Children.

File this one in the "I can't believe you're doing this!" folder:
After a pregnant woman, and her husband, are arrested for eating food in a grocery store and neglecting to pay for it at the register, a pretty, white woman who writes for the WaPo* chimes in with her eating-while-shopping tales.

I might never again grab a granola bar for fuel during the grocery-shopping-with-kids trek. Not after reading the chilling story of a pregnant mother who, with her husband and daughter in tow, ordered two sandwiches at Safeway and ate one while she shopped. She ended up being arrested for shoplifting and temporarily losing custody of her toddler for an entire night.
...
I have found myself in this situation countless times. I am that mom. Cart full, aisles crowded, trying to remember if we need breadcrumbs or if I’m on snack duty this week while half-paying attention to my whiny and grabby girls.

I try to appease them with snacks fresh off the shelves and do my best to save the wrappers for checkout. Sometimes I grab a snack for me, too. (We do it so often, the girls even know which store offers which shopping treat: In Trader Joe’s it’s the fruit strips; in Target it’s protein bars; in Safeway it’s rice cakes.)

Plus, many of us who’ve been pregnant know those intense hunger pangs can come on fast and vicious. If food doesn’t come quick, than a fainting spell will.

Lady, every time you "lose" the wrappers off of food you've eaten while shopping, and neglect to pay for it? That's STEALING.

Same as if you would have sneaked the salami sausage under your jacket, and exited the store without paying. And now, it's become a habit?? One you are teaching to your children? And justifying it with your unorganized style and "pregnant mommies get hungry and irritable" argument??

That's stealing, sister.

How about:
1) Feeding your children BEFORE you take them into the grocery store? No time? Try stopping at a McDonalds' drive through before parking in the grocery store lot. The kids could probably bring the Happy Meal boxes into the grocery cart, and consume their food there if time is so pressed in your busy life. Your lack of planning, and "need" for immediate food is not the grocery store's problem. You can make it to the register first. (Just like, if you forget to use the bathroom before shopping, and then make wee in the aisle, it's kinda ... not the grocery store's fault for not putting a toilet right there for you in aisle two, and making you walk all the way to the front -- or the back -- of the store first.)

2) Putting the kids in the cart, wheeling down the aisles to get them their favorite "treats", and then heading straight for the checkout lane BEFORE you do your full grocery shopping. Then, the "meal" is paid for, you can easily toss the wrappers, and you won't fall into the habit of stealing food, which can cause the overall prices to rise for all the PAYING (100%, all the time) customers.

Are you kidding me though, trying to JUSTIFY this behavior? Because you're a mother? Spare me. Every time you choose something off the shelves, open it without paying for it, and even though you're "doing your best" not to discard the wrappers before payment, lose them before those prices get rung up, YOU ARE STEALING.

(I emphasize the word because I think this store-snacking mama really doesn't get it. Or else, she'd be too embarrassed to put this in print, as an acknowledged thief.)

You're not entitled to eat in the store before paying, just because you haven't had the time -- or common sense -- to feed your children, by putting their immediate needs FIRST. (common amongst affluent parents, I hear) Nor can you sweetly giggle (whoopsie me!) or charm your way out of shoplifting consequences because of the cuteness factor in your cart, the claims "the children were so hungry!" or the "I swear I kept the wrappers here somewhere!" excuse.

I think what bothers me most with this admission: it's not an emergency situation, being caught without food and having to take the kids out hungry to the store, where they need to eat before checking out.

It's the ENTITLEMENT mentality, stupid. What if every mother with youngsters operated this way? Brought the kids into public hungry (which likely means whiny and tired too) and broke the unofficial grocery-shopping rules. ("You don't own it or consume it or rip off the wrappers or tags until you've purchased it at the store register.")

To make a practice of this, and then to try and justify it in print... please tell me this woman has someone in her life smart enough to intervene and teach her basic parenting skills. You'd hate to have to have someone's children spend the night in foster care while the parents are arrested for shoplifting, but sadly, if that's what it takes to get through to some of the affluent entitled people that what they are doing is clearly wrong ...

ADDED:
Compare my advice with what this white woman advises the grocery store:

Lesson one: Walk a mile in a pregnant mom’s grocery-shopping shoes and see if you don’t forget a thing or two.

Lesson two: Have a child and when she’s a toddler watch officials come and yank her away from you for the night. See if remorse doesn’t turn to rage.

Unless the rage in Lesson Two is directed inward, anger at the self for putting yourself and more importantly your child in that position, it seems embarrassment would be the more logical response. The store is simply enforcing their rules -- for single ladies, pregnant ladies, organized moms, and those who consistently "forget" to feed their children ahead of time.

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Join Janice D’Arcy, longtime journalist and mother of two, in exploring how we raise our children today. Janice will write about the news, ideas, trends, people and opinions shaping our experience as parents. Read more about Janice here.

ADDED: Some seem to think that because the couple spent $50 on groceries, they could not possibly be shoplifters, just "forgetters". Sorry.

Statistics show that plenty of people whom you don't expect -- ie/the elderly -- consciously choose to shoplift. Even when they have the money in their pocketbooks to pay for the small item. Once it becomes a "habit", it becomes necessary to have a zero tolerance policy on whom you arrest and prosecute. If you start "excusing" the pregnant, elderly and mothers who choose to shop with hungry kids in tow, then you're practicing discrimination against others. When did we become such a lawless society anyway, and why do people like this columnist feel entitled because they are mothers to defend or excuse petty theft? Those are important CHILDREN you are raising, and they need YOU to teach them right from wrong. Practiced daily.

The defense attorney at the trial:

"So you are saying my clients bought $50.00 worth of groceries so they could steal two $5.00 sandwiches?"

Slam dunk

Don't go there Safeway even if you win you will lose

ADDED: Funniest comment in the thread (wait for it...) :

jade39339 wrote:
I had my son and daughter riding in the shopping cart this weekend and screaming. They reached over and each grabbed a banana that was in the cart and ate one each without me knowing it. I found out later after I got them out of the cart and into the car. Should they now cart me off the jail.

I don't think so.
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inhk wrote:
How could you have two screaming children sitting in front of you and not notice they were eating bananas?
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mcnalchr wrote:
jade - you should have gone back in and paid for them. Basic ethics. Yes, I am a parent. Yes, I have been there.
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dottie_b wrote:
Maybe the kids didn't grab the bananas. Maybe another shopper stuffed them into their screaming mouths.

Heh.