Nanny State Redux?

Discovered (via Right On Red & Say Anything) this story about a woman jailed for smoking in front of her kids.

I have mixed feelings about this story - it's not as simple as mere nanny-state nitwittery. Some details:

A Virginia mother was sentenced Thursday to 10 days in jail for defying a court order not to smoke in front of her children.

The sentence is the latest development in a bitter and long-running custody battle between Silvius and her former husband, Steven Silvius, over the care of their children, ages 10 and 8. But the restriction on smoking has captured far greater attention.

"It is within the court's powers to jail somebody for criminal contempt, but she's not happy about getting 10 days," said her attorney, Tucker Henley. "Virginia is such a big tobacco state, it's kind of surprising. I've never heard of a case where you restrict behavior this way."

Her ex-husband's attorney, Mark Murphy of Fredericksburg, said the measure was necessary to protect the health of the children, who live with their father and often visit their mother on weekends. The Silviuses have joint custody.

The bottom line is that this restriction was part of an agreement for the mother to have visitation with the kids - therefore, if she violates that agreement, she should either have her visitation rights terminated or - in this case - do some jail time. It's not as cut-and-dried as "woman jailed for smoking in front of her children."

Another angle of this story that should be considered is the unlikely situation where the father got primary custody of the kids. Our court system is heavily biased towards awarding custody to the mother in situations like these. Without knowing much about the situation, you'd have to figure the mom is a pretty serious scumbag to lose custody to the father.

As a parent, when I see people smoking in front of their kids - particularly in an enclosed car, I have an urge to pull them over and perform a Reginald Denny on them. However, at least for the time being, this is a free country and people are free to be assholes if they like. Some kids just lose out to the luck of the draw in a lot of these situations.

If I'm the father in this case, I try to get the sentence extended to more than 10 days.