SVU's Benson Under Fire for Her Parenting Choices in Season 24
Captain Olivia Benson's route to parenting hasn't been straightforward. In Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Benson (played by Mariska Hargitay) first took on a guardian role in Season 12 when she was named as the legal guardian of Calvin Arliss.
The young boy's mother named Benson as guardian, and he lived with her for a while. Eventually, the guardianship is revoked, and Calvin is sent to Vermont to live with his grandparents much to the devastation of both parties.
Benson and Noah
The next time Benson took on a parenting role was at the end of Season 15 when she became the custodial guardian of an orphan called Noah Porter. This is initially a trial period of 12 months. This first year isn't plain sailing due to her job demands and his health issues but the pair develop a bond, and the formal adoption gets underway. Parenting an adopted child comes with a unique set of challenges and there are often mistakes made. With Law & Order: SUV, audiences have pulled up Benson for parenting decisions. Let's see what it's all about.
Criticism of Benson's parenting decisions
Though her fortitude has been strong in her work life (and fans love her for this), Olivia Benson's personal life has seen a lot of criticism. Of course, this is a drama and events are often exaggerated but generally, an audience wants to see things from a realist perspective. This is where it gets tricky for some of the viewers – there have been occasions when Benson has parented bizarrely.
Let's take Benson's final episode into consideration – Season 24, Episode 9, "And a Trauma in a Pear Tree." Benson chooses to leave her son with a family she barely knows so that she can go to work. The criticism by fans is that this is far-fetched. For someone in her line of work, it's very unlikely that she'd make this decision.
What happens in S24 E9?
When Noah finds out he has a half-brother and it's his friend, Benson allows him to stay at their family home overnight. She does run checks on the family but it's still quite an unbelievable moment. Fans of the show just can't understand why Benson would allow this at all – especially knowing how Noah was almost kidnapped by his maternal grandma in the past.
So fans aren't wrong. It is a bizarre decision for Olivia Benson to make – not just as a mother but because of all the things she has seen in her line of work regarding children. Producers don't always get everything right and perhaps this was one of those things! Oops!