It was a rarity for a working mother of two — a meal enjoyed in peace and quiet.

Inez Louzonis, 33, still fondly recalls the time she and her husband were driving to a restaurant and both her children fell asleep on the way. The Boston-area couple found a table looking directly out the window into the car — and let her toddlers stay snoozing while they dined.

“The kids were perfectly safe,” she insists. “They were in full view. We could see if anyone went near the car instantly. We checked on them every 15 minutes.” Still, she admits, not everyone approved of her decision. “My husband’s sister and brother-in-law were appalled.”

In the aftermath of the high-profile arrest of the Illinois mom who left her napping toddler in a car parked outside a Wal-Mart while she donated change out front (charges were later dropped), parents are left wondering whether their own small misdeeds could land them a nasty scolding from a meddling busybody — or even a charge of neglectful parenting by the authorities.

“I think every mom does stuff like that — they just may not tell other moms,” says Los Angeles comedian Stefanie Wilder-Taylor, author of the new book "Naptime Is the New Happy Hour."

“We all live in fear of being judged,” she says.

If there are rules of perfect parenting, Wilder-Taylor, 41, admits she has probably broken most of them. She lets her 3-year-old daughter eat things that have dropped on the floor, she doesn't brush her teeth every day and she locks her in the car while she hits the ATM. She has even accepted a ride home from a nearby park without a car seat — twice.

Sweating the big stuff
Wilder-Taylor says she is careful to sweat the important stuff, like rushing her children to the doctor at any sign of illness. “Just because I don’t put hand sanitizer on her every second doesn’t mean I’m not a great parent,” says Wilder-Taylor. “The time I don’t waste on that other stuff, I tickle my daughter, play with and read to her.”

Of course, there are some behaviors clearly unacceptable at any times — abandoning a child home alone for hours, leaving a child unattended in a bathtub or by a pool, exposing an infant to a choking hazard, not locking up poisons, storing unsecured guns around the home.

But what about everything else — the small, guilt-inducing shortcuts that every parent is tempted to take?

Are there really parents who haven't popped in a "Dora the Explorer" DVD and let the TV play babysitter in order to dash off an e-mail? Or dropped a child at day care with a runny nose, knowing they might infect the other tots? Or bribed their kids with candy to get them to please, pleaasssse behave in public?

With laws on what constitutes neglect varying among states, today’s parents must constantly negotiate the fine line between acceptable and too great a risk. Is it really so wrong to leave a child alone in the house for a minute or two to run out to the mailbox? Or in an apartment to pop down to the laundry room?

And ambiguities abound: While a dozen states have laws against leaving a child unattended in a car, there is no ban against the common, yet undeniably risky, practice of letting a child ride without a car seat in a New York cab.

‘Bad mom moment’
Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile, co-authors of the new book “Dirty Little Secrets from Otherwise Perfect Moms,” urge parents to stop judging themselves as failures for having a “bad mom moment.” 

“There’s a tremendous amount of pressure (for women) to be what they think is a ‘good mom,’” says Nobile. “The expectations we have set for ourselves are insanely high. No matter what we do, we feel like we can’t live up to that.”

While moms are often the big worriers in the family — and the ones usually more likely to be judged — dads can feel the pressure to be perfect parents all the time, too.

“It is awful when someone can judge you by a single moment,” says Jaret Eccleston, 35, a single dad of a 3-year-old son in Anthem, Ariz. “We do the best we can as parents and have to make decisions on the spot. It is very hard these days with what the world expects from us, and the time we have to do it all in.”

And parenting standards today are indisputably more exacting. While European parents still leave babies in strollers parked outside shops, the days when a “respectable” American mom or dad can let the kids play unattended around the neighborhood are long gone. A writer in New York recently stirred a debate when she allowed her 9-year-old, at his request, to ride the subway home alone, a common practice in generations past.

When asked to offer examples of ways today's parents go wrong, Debra Holtzman, a Hollywood, Fla., mom of two and author of the book “The Safe Baby: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Home Safety,” produced a laundry list of no fewer than 44 no-nos.

To name some of them: forgoing tick inspections, neglecting to wash hands before every meal, not using a meat thermometer, not scrubbing fruits and veggies before serving, sampling cookie dough batter, failing to keep up on toy recalls, letting a child eat in the car, propping a baby bottle.

Holtzman accuses parents of slacking because they feel a time crunch. “We are in a hurry,” she says. “No time to wipe down the handles of the shopping cart, no time to put sunscreen on the children.” She also blames grandparents, who are quick to roll their eyes or say, "We didn’t do it this way."

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