Wouldn't the inherent value of the item, whatever it may be, change the given context?
no, it's more like when your brain goes on auto-pilot for a few minutes. If that happens, then you totally forget everything that was unique to the situation - like if you click in to auto-pilot as you get in to your car and forget your phone on the roof. It might be 4 hours later that you actually think of your phone because of some other trigger.
By every definition, it is. It's why "criminal negligence" exists.
actually, a critical component of criminal negligence is the reasonable-person standard. What the science says is that a reasonable person could, given the right set of circumstances, forget that their kid is in the back seat. We also have to remember that a significant number of these deaths are from positional asphyxiation, so it's not like you have to forget the kid for 6 hours.
I prefer the presumption of innocence as the foundation of our justice system, so absent any evidence of premeditation, I don't think justice is served by further punishment of the parent.
That's self harm as oppose to harming someone else. If you hit my thumb with a hammer, you could certainly be charged.
If you accidentally kill you kid, living with it isn't going to be easy, and it's going to be unbearable for a very long time. Watch some of the videos of parents being questioned, it's heart-breaking. As a society, we don't treat every incident of unintentional death as a crime, and that's what this is.