There are so many laws and statutes in America that I suspect that if you were devote yourself to one hour a day to reading of such, that at no point, would you ever succeed in reading every law in America. This means, in short, that most people are woefully short of knowing and certainly of comprehending all of the laws in America, and the less that you know about laws, the more vulnerable you are to being in danger of committing a violation of law. While you probably won't find an argument with just about anyone that adults, especially parents, have an obligation to do right with their children, this parental authority is under assault each and every day. For instance, it is one thing for the State to wish to assist parents that need assistance with the mentoring and parenting of their children in a positive and constructive manner but it is entirely a different thing again for the State to use their authority and their laws to wrest from parents or to punish parents, for their supposed abuse of their own progeny.
One of the most insidious things about laws in America is that prosecutors like to pile on as many dubious charges against a particular person as possible, so as in aggregate to create a situation in which the penalties of such are so great, that these particular unfortunates will have to plea bargain these charges down to something reasonable. While the prosecutorial arm of justice may or may not see this as being the right thing to do, it is both highly effective as well as punishing against those that are accused. To make matter worse, most adults of a certain age have children, and the fact that the government is wont to use a parent's own children against them so as to threaten parents with additional punishment, or to take away their biological children is highly irregular and unfortunate.
For instance, DUI laws are forever changing, so that the blood alcohol level of someone that is presumed DUI can be as low as 0.02% for those that are under the age of 21, 0.08% for those that are 21 and older, 0.04% for a commercial driver, while back in the 1950s the DUI presumption was above 0.15%, later to fall to 0.12% and then to 0.10% and now at 0.08% in most States. The fact of the matter is that the definition of a DUI has continually changed not because authorities know so much more about drinking and driving but rather that authority simply want to arrest and punish more people that have had a drink with a DUI. This leads to the point that if by virtue of the fact that you are considered to be driving under the influence and further that you also have a child in your car, that can easily be construed to be a prima-facie case of child endangerment, even though in actuality, there is a significant possibility that the DUI charge against you is functionally spurious.
While it certainly has merit to want to protect a child from unattended firearms, from drug trafficking and manufacturing, from any and assorted things that are specifically adult related and not child related, the fact of the matter is that these child endangerment laws are really used as a form of coercion to lay upon the adult to force them to conform or to punish them for non-conformance with the child used against the parent as the "whip of the law". Not too surprisingly, those often accused of child endangerment are exactly the people that don't have the resources to fight the law to begin with, to which although often imperfect parents, love their children, and instead of the State providing brotherly aid and assistance for them, want them instead to bow to State authority or suffer the unending consequences of their non-compliance to arbitrary law.