Emily Fields, an embattled mother from Virginia, can no longer let her kids play outdoors. Child Protective Services has threatened to take away Emily’s three children and place them in foster care if she fails to keep the little ones inside their home. It all began when her four-year-old child attempted to kick a soccer ball at the neighbor’s cat – this resulted in Emily being accused of neglecting her children by a social worker.
Emily Fields resides with her three children in Pearisburg, Virginia. After one of her kids was caught kicking the family cat, a social worker expressed deep concern and urged Fields to sign over guardianship of them to Child Protective Services by signing a form that prevents unsupervised playing outside due to their misdeeds. Her brood consists of a six-year-old boy and two daughters, ages eight and nine.
Emily Fields believes that the social worker is targeting her due to living in their neighborhood, attempting to chastise the mother for raising her children without persistent adult monitoring – a parenting style that many would condemn as inappropriate within a modern American context.
As her parenting style unraveled during the pandemic in May 2021, she had to face Child Protective Services when her son attempted to kick a soccer ball at a neighbor’s cat from across the road. Despite his failure to strike the animal, he still posed enough of a threat for intervention.
Fields desperately tried to apologize on behalf of her son’s misbehavior, but this only served to agitate the neighbors further and they “began to scream and yell. They said that everyone in the neighborhood thought I was a horrible mother and that my children abused animals.”
After Fields left her children in the care of her sister, an abusive incident occurred. The next day, two caseworkers from Child Protective Services showed up at Fields’s home with a “safety plan” that she was required to sign in order to keep her kids safe and secure. The family was now obligated “to supervise the children at all times when playing outside.”
This additional order ensures that “if the safety plan is violated, a protective order will be filed.”
Fields is a strong proponent of hands-off parenting and thus did not desire to keep tabs on her kids while they were out playing in the neighborhood.
At some point, her kids formulated a plan to make money off the local community by peddling Easter eggs.
“At no point were they out of my sight,” she stated. “And at no point did they go inside.”
Nevertheless, the children persistently knocked on CPS caseworker’s door.
Since 2018, Fields has had a tumultuous relationship with CPS when she was surprised to find two caseworkers outside her door. Despite the tender age of her children, she would often leave them unmonitored in their backyard for extended periods of time.
CPS mandated that she had to find an adult guardian for her children until they turned thirteen, or she risked having them taken away.
Do you believe this mother should continue to face scrutiny from Child Protective Services?
