Whenever my wife and I get together socially with other parents our age – or older – we inevitably end up talking shop about parenting. One common feature of those conversations has to do with how much more freedom and independence our parents allowed us when we were growing up than we allow our kids today. Almost without exception, the parents I meet and talk to tell the same stories that my wife and I do: that when they were younger, their parents threw open the door and let them (nay — forced them) out to play with other kids in their neighborhood. That there were no adults who scheduled these “play dates,” let alone supervise the play itself and that, amazingly, everyone turned out ok. No kidnappings, life threatening injuries or other traumas to speak of. This was certainly the case when I was growing up — in a suburban neighborhood with probably 20 or more kids around my age. During the warm weather, we played games like hide and seek, kick the can, baseball (and pickle) and touch football until dark (or dinner time). Heck, after dark we’d play flashlight tag, which is basically hide and seek with flashlights. War (played in an adjacent meadow) was always very popular. These games were totally kid run and kid initiated.It was like The Dangerous Book for Boys – only there was no instruction manual. It was just how you rolled when you were a kid in the suburbs.
Three decades later, I can’t imagine letting my girls roll out the door with destination unknown. And even when I know the destination, I find it hard to fathom letting them go play somewhere without knowing that a grown-up’s watchful eye would be on them when they got where they were headed. Frankly, though, I’m not sure how to account for the huge change between my parents’ generation and my generation. Now a new book (and blog) Free Range Kids, tries to explain that cultural change and to encourage parents to, in essence, free their kids. Salon.com has done an interview with the author, Lenore Skenazy, about the book, in which she argues that the media has basically fueled a national hysteria about child safety and child abductions when, if you look at the data, these events are no more common today as they were in the 1970s. Skenazy is an interesting character – a syndicated columnist who attracted national scorn after she wrote about allowing her 9 year old to ride the subway alone in 2008.
She raises interesting questions about child rearing, about human psychology and about how fear influences the decisions we make. After all, auto accidents are the leading cause of childhood death, but most parents are able to balance the relative risk of that activity (which is much higher than child abduction) with the reward (mobility, greater engagement with your world/community). But would that change if — parallelling the child abudction coverage –the headlines on the evening news every night were gruesomely detailed accounts of kids killed in auto accidents — wherever they happened to be in the U.S. ?
There are also some really interesting scholarly work being done on how fear influences our judgements and decision making. In lab experiments studying reactions to the 9/11 tragedy, researchers noted that fear-inducing clips made subjects “less optimistic about their own future, the country’s future, and the world’s future.” Food for thought.
Great info Paul- it makes me feel good about our decision to move to Belmont- we do exactly what this author suggests, and what your parents did and my mother did when we were kids- we push them out the front door and say-”go find some kids in the neighborhood to play with!” We are lucky- we live on a side street near Chenery that is loaded with kids spanning in age from newborn al the way up to 7th grade- and every single grade in between is represented. There is another great book that I recommend for all new parents- it is called “Mittenstrings for God”. It basically gives all of us permission to slow down and be with our children. To stop and look at a bunch of ants instead of worrying about being late for lunch. She also talks about kids creating forts under bushes in the backyard instead of signing them up for “playtime” at a local gymboree gym. (I have to admit that the whole tick thing made that last one hard for me though!). Anyhow- thanks for the write up!
Thanks Kim. I'll pick up a copy of Mittenstrings. Sounds really interesting.
Yeah…factoid from the article: your child has a 1: 1.5 million chance of getting abducted, while the risk of your child dying in a fatal car crash is some 40 times greater than that — though still very, very remote. Funny that Lynn F. wrote on her FB wall today about allowing her son to walk to the library alone for the first time. (She was going to meet him there shortly after). We could all do with some letting go. I like Skenazy's idea of a “take your kid to a park…and leave them there” day.
This post reminds me of the revelation I had when I read a review of Sebastian Junger's book “A Death in Belmont”, which stated that the book explored the one and only murder that ever took place in Belmont. This may or may not be true, but think about it! There is ample scientific evidence that a shortcoming of human cognition is an inability to rationally consider the risk of an event whose probability is very very small but whose consequences are very very dire.
I think the subway riding issue is especially to the point in light of the statistics about teen drivers (16-18). Those statistics scare me. My kids are only 9 and 5, but when they are teens, I'd rather have them riding the bus/subway than driving around in a car.
I wouldn't let my 9-year-old ride the bus or subway alone right now, but I think I would start to give her more freedom to do so in the early teen years–age 13,14. I lived in Berlin, Germany for a year between high school and college. I had graduated young and was taking a year off before going to college. I was 17 and took the subway all over the city, sometimes alone sometimes with others. The contrast in freedom with how it was the US suburbs–where teens were always having to be driven around by their parents–was amazing to the point of being life-changing.
I agree with Karen- I grew up here in Belmont, but went to high school in Newton. The freedom we had to go to Boston on the green line to shop, get lunch, go to concerts on the Common was also life changing. To some degree the experience was probably a little bit risky, but we learned to be street smart and aware of our surroundings.
I think kids are cheated of this part of growing up in the car focused world that we live in. I hope my kids will use the bus to go to Harvard Square and Boston in High School. I take tham on the bus now, rather than drive, to help them feel totally comfortable with the amazing public transportation we have here.
I agree with Karen- I grew up here in Belmont, but went to high school in Newton. The freedom we had to go to Boston on the green line to shop, get lunch, go to concerts on the Common was also life changing. To some degree the experience was probably a little bit risky, but we learned to be street smart and aware of our surroundings.
I think kids are cheated of this part of growing up in the car focused world that we live in. I hope my kids will use the bus to go to Harvard Square and Boston in High School. I take tham on the bus now, rather than drive, to help them feel totally comfortable with the amazing public transportation we have here.
I agree with Karen- I grew up here in Belmont, but went to high school in Newton. The freedom we had to go to Boston on the green line to shop, get lunch, go to concerts on the Common was also life changing. To some degree the experience was probably a little bit risky, but we learned to be street smart and aware of our surroundings.
I think kids are cheated of this part of growing up in the car focused world that we live in. I hope my kids will use the bus to go to Harvard Square and Boston in High School. I take tham on the bus now, rather than drive, to help them feel totally comfortable with the amazing public transportation we have here.