Lisa Duggan looks back at the legend of the free-range childhood and reminds us that it takes a village to raise a kid.
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In a January 14 article in Slate Hanna Rosin wrote of the case of the Maryland couple currently under investigation by the state’s Child Protective Services agency for allowing their kids to walk home unescorted. As she reported, in late December 2014 Danielle and Alexander Meitiv allowed their ten-year old son, and his six year-old sister, to walk home from a playground located about a mile from their house. Someone called the police who, after stopping to question the kids, drove them home. The parents have not been charged, and The Washington Post reports that the family has a meeting scheduled for next week at CPS offices in Rockville, Maryland.
Rosin is outraged at a society that doesn’t recognize the value of creating self-reliant children, and at a police state that dares to question parents about such innocuous behavior as walking home.
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It is not clear from her article if Rosin interviewed the parents. I assume that she drew her information from the same newspaper sources I did, although The Washington Post doesn’t include a lot of information about the daily life of these kids in their reporting. What is clear, however, is Rosin’s stand on the matter: She’s outraged at a society that doesn’t recognize the value of creating self-reliant children, and at a police state that dares to question parents about such innocuous behavior as walking home. Furthermore, she wants us to share in her outrage.
But is her outrage, or ours, warranted here?
Perhaps we should save our anger for the story of Debra Harrell, the South Carolina mom, who in July of last year, made headlines when she was arrested for leaving her nine-year-old daughter alone in a park while she worked at a nearby McDonalds. Harrell was charged with “unlawful conduct towards a child” and is now in jail, and her daughter in the custody of social services. The Meitevs are Caucasian, Ms. Harrell is African-American. These two stories are troubling and noteworthy, not in the least because they appear to highlight a double standard on the part of the city and state authorities in assessing a parent’s competency based on race.
But these stories also highlight another double standard — or outright paradox — of contemporary culture; our simultaneous disdain for helicopter parenting and our headline-generating alarm over children left to play, walk, or take the subway home alone.
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But these stories also highlight another double standard — or outright paradox — of contemporary culture; our simultaneous disdain for helicopter parenting and our headline-generating alarm over children left to play, walk, or take the subway home alone. Damned if we do and questioned or arrested if we don’t, modern parents are given wildly different messages about how and when children should act independently.
At the end of her article Rosin asserts that the solution is simple:
‘We are frightened and confused,’ [the Meitevs said]. So are lots of American parents, for different reasons. They are frightened of phantom dangers, confused about why their children are living childhoods that are so much more restricted than their own. The solution, however, is relatively simple: Parent more like the Meitevs, from a place of trust and not fear. Assess the risks in a reasonable way. Value independence alongside safety. For starters, teach your children to walk to the playground alone.
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Rosin’s recommendations fail to acknowledge or consider the radical change in our communities and the way in which today’s families choose to live.
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On the surface Rosin’s solutions do appear simple to install and reasonable to aspire to. A closer look reveals they are not simple, but simplistic, and this is why: Rosin’s recommendations fail to acknowledge or consider the radical change in our communities and the way in which today’s families choose to live.
I’m not suggesting that childhood is inherently more dangerous than thirty-something years ago when I roamed free, or that families have deviated so far from the deified nuclear model of the 1950’s. Statistics prove otherwise. Families are still groups of people organized around and bound by the love and desire to raise children, no matter who is leading the household, and objectively there is a greater awareness overall as to how to keep kids alive by their teen years. This is evident in the multitude of safety devices and policies centered around kids, as well as our increased understanding of what constitutes emotionally healthy parenting.
Teaching my kid to walk home alone is not where I start fostering her independence; it is the end result of a conscientious, collaborative effort to create a safe space in which she can walk.
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But there is no denying that our villages are decidedly different than my 1970’s vintage model. Teaching my kid to walk home alone is not where I start fostering her independence; it is the end result of a conscientious, collaborative effort to create a safe space in which she can walk.
Rosin and the Post report that the Meitevs consciously subscribe to the “free-range” movement made popular by Lenore Skenazy; “Usually, their mother said, the children carry a laminated card with parent contact information that says: ‘I am not lost. I am a free-range kid.’” It’s reported that the children didn’t have the card with them on the day they were questioned by police.
In principle I’m a fan of Skenazy, a journalist and author of the book and website Free Range Kids, and her research and reporting on the modern cocoons we’ve built for our children. Her work sheds light on what is lost when we eliminate opportunities for our children to learn about their strengths and weaknesses firsthand—when we severely reduce the number of situations and settings where they may discover their own abilities and test their own limits; situations where they may mediate relationships and interactions with other kids (and adults) on their own, outside of school, and settings where they may learn, through trial and error, the simple laws of cause and effect by say, allowing their gloves to get soaking wet on a freezing cold day.
The truth is this: there was an entire village of moms, and dads, and neighbors, and extended family watching the kids when I was a child.
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But Skenazy’s work also gives credence to the persistent myth of the “unwatched child” who roamed the urban and suburban landscapes of the sixties, seventies and eighties. This original “free-range” child is often summoned forth by today’s parents with a nostalgia for their own childhood, or used by grandparents to point out what contemporary parents are doing wrong. That child is a myth! It’s an entirely false memory being used to indict today’s parents and promote sales of retro board games. The truth is this: there was an entire village of moms, and dads, and neighbors, and extended family watching the kids when I was a child.
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Who remembers being busted by another parent for doing any number of unlawful or unsafe things several blocks from your own house?
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In 1975 there were multiple pairs and of eyes and ears assisting “stay-at-home parents” in doing their job which, back then, didn’t even warrant a special term—we just called them ‘moms’. These perpetually occupied neighborhoods afforded us the chance to roam around seemingly free and unwatched. But we were watched, constantly. Who remembers being busted by another parent for doing any number of unlawful or unsafe things several blocks from your own house? And knowing that a call to your mother—or worse, your father—was forthcoming, after the thorough tongue lashing of the neighbor who caught you in the first place. Who can remember some strange mom appearing out of nowhere like an angel, with a cold wash cloth and band aids, when you painfully wiped out on your bike on the gravel driveway?
Simply put, people were home back then.
This is in no way meant to indict working parents. My husband and I are working parents. There are many reasons for the change in the way we parent and the way our kids live, and many of them are good. They reflect our progress as a culture. But in creating new and better societies we lost some of the good parts of our old way of living. It used to be that your community came with the three-bedroom house you bought or the five-room apartment you rented. Your village came with your backyard, or front stoop, or alleyway, and that village often included grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. And simply by virtue of location one could assume that you and your neighbors shared a certain set of values, block by socio-economic block.
Now, when mom and dad need a break there’s no relief in sight that doesn’t come with a fee. Today’s parents are required to build their villages from scratch and quite frankly, community building is hard work.
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There was daily and weekly contact with your neighbors, too, and kids played together in the street without adult mediation. Now, it’s not unusual to live many miles away from where you were born and raised. Or for your siblings, parents, or extended family to have moved far away from you. Now, when mom and dad need a break there’s no relief in sight that doesn’t come with a fee. Today’s parents are required to build their villages from scratch and quite frankly, community building is hard work.
Particularly when the previous, traditional points of community contact—the school yard, grocery store, church or temple—won’t do anymore, because both mom and dad are working, or because five kids on any given block attend five different schools and a multitude of different after-school activities. It’s hard to feel connected when your next-door neighbors are having very different, daily experiences. Even getting your entire family together in the same place at the same time, more than one night a week, seems impossible.
These increased choices as to how and where we live, and to where our kids attend school, are changing the very nature of our villages. An increase of choices in how and where we work has changed our village, too. Many moms and dads now work from home, and it is their children that do the commuting. But even working from home is no guarantee that you’ll know your neighbors because it’s often a single, solitary affair punctuated by trips to Staples or the post office in your car.
The changes in the way we live have disconnected us from our communities. It has made us strangers living on the same block—and that strangeness creates fear.
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The changes in the way we live have disconnected us from our communities. It has made us strangers living on the same block—and that strangeness creates fear. And that fear makes a person call the police, rather than stop to talk to two little kids walking home.
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I applaud the Meitevs and other parents who want their children to learn self-reliance the good old-fashioned way, by earning it. But you can’t arm your kid with a laminated card and a parenting philosophy. You have to take the time to get to know the people and places along the route home from your child’s playground, and more importantly, you have to ensure that the people on that route know you and your children.
We also cannot chastise the police when they’re called to check on a child’s safety. In the absence of these established networks, we have increasingly asked the state to determine what is safe and reasonable for our children. When stories like that of the Meitevs or Debra Harrell’s make the news, we need to distinguish between what the law has determined is necessary to keep kids safe, and what ideal environments we aspire to create for our kids that are both safe and enable their self-sufficiency.
There are enough examples in the family court system as well as the newspapers to remind us that common sense is not that common. Adults and parents continue to demonstrate a lack of understanding about child safety and their responsibilities as parents. In the Meitevs’ case, the Maryland CPS will have to look for guidance to state laws about leaving children unattended, which say, “… Children younger than 8 must be left with a reliable person who is at least 13 years old.”
Together, I believe, we have a central problem to solve; if our villages are mostly empty from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm, how do we expect our kids to live there?
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We assign an impossible task to today’s mothers and fathers; to be everyone and everything, all the time, to their children. To parent in solitary confinement. Together, I believe, we have a central problem to solve; if our villages are mostly empty from 9:00 am to 7:00 pm, how do we expect our kids to live there? How do we square the new circle where mom works, and dad works—and children still need care? We cannot put the burden on our children to navigate these empty streets alone.
Photo courtesy of author.
There are many ways to approach this new world we live in, and I’m not suggesting mine is the best. However, being a fan of Skenazy and the free range ideas I felt the urge to comment. I’m a single dad of 3 who works full time, sometimes more than 40 hours a week. It’s absolutely true, we can’t be everywhere at once, and in my opinion you have to trust your judgement even if it seems others will condemn it. Therefore I decided several years ago that my kids were ready to stay home by themselves, when I decided… Read more »
Thank you, everyone, for reading and taking the time to comment on my post. I in no way meant to invalidate the individual experience of anyone’s childhood and I recognize that there is and was a variety of experience; but I feel confident in asserting that women were mostly home. The number of women in the workforce was 38% in 1963, compared to 2012 (http://www.dol.gov/wb/pcswinfographic.pdf). Women were systematically discouraged to work and even in lower-income, working class families women did not return to work or begin work until their youngest child was above age three. I also do not advocate… Read more »
Part of what we need, over the din of debating views and opinions, is research. There are 7 billion people on this planet. There is such a variety of approaches that “work”, and such a range of “effective” and “nurturing” behaviors, that we need more information before we make hard conclusions. If you look back over the process of industrialization, there has been more of a shift of ranges. In some ways, kids are MORE free than they have been in olden times. It depends on where they lived. Some were made to work in mines “back in the day”… Read more »
I was definitely a free-range kid – literally on the edge between suburbia and open ranchland (we lived next door to the last house on a gravel road). Occasionally bad things happened and kids got hurt, but staying within the basic rules: have a buddy, be home before dark, give folks a vague idea of where you are – they worked pretty well after the age of 7 or so. My mom was around, but she was doing her own thing: housework, gardening, reading, swearing at the TV. The walk/bike ride home from school was about a mile. Not a… Read more »
Your suggestion that the theory of ‘free-range’ parenting is simplistic may have been accurate, but your contrary perspective is equally so. That things are different these days is true, but your counter argument is over-generalized and vaguely cynical.
Granted … I don’t live in the USA, nor did I grow up there. From where I sit, your insular society has tried to create villages inside gated communities with armed guards. Naturally, that will put people on edge, negating the nurturing efforts of parents.
I’m sorry – but while your idea of a Village of elders looking out for kids is quaint, it has no basis in the reality of my childhood. I was on a bike cruising the neighborhood from about 6 on up to the day I moved out. I was never “Busted” by a neighborhood /mom/ who gave me a tongue lashing or called my mom. People kept their nose to themselves and kids had fun. The difference between yesterday and today are HIGHLY nosey people and paranoia in the face of declining crime rates in most places (I know there… Read more »
Great article, Lisa. Full of interesting ideas.
I like Lisa Hickey’s take on the issue of danger and kids. Its not that the risks are higher now than in the good old days. We’re just more aware of them. Pesticides? In my free range kid days, we never missed a chance to ride our bikes behind the fuming white fog cloud of the mosquito spraying truck as it slowly ambled through our neighborhood. And don’t get me started on swimming in the grey brown waters of Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. B-B gun wars, anyone? Yeah. Good free rangin’ times.
I agree with a few points in this article. It seems like some people no longer know or help their neighbors. That is unfortunate. This author is making assumptions about this mom. She may have talked to her kids about safety. They may know their neighbors. Maybe if the kids were in trouble, they could stop at a neighbor’s. I am not best friends with my neighbors. We know each other and help each other out. I have accurate memories from my childhood. There were no helicopters mom in my neighborhood. We played all day without adult supervision. We weren’t… Read more »
I do like this reflection of are changing times, and the “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” problems of parenting. However, in some cases, I think we are simply more aware of the dangers that were always there. As a child, I did feel like a free-range kid where, as kh says, “the only curfew was the streetlight. But…as a kid, I also never wore a seatbelt. It would be easy for me to say today “well, I never wore a seatbelt and I turned out just fine.” But I’ll tell you, I wear one now and so… Read more »
“Take the time to get to know the people and places along the route home from your child’s playground .” Seems unclear from your re-reporting if the Meitevs failed in this. It’s a one mile walk. A lot of people. Lessons on safety and sensible behavior go farther than any fact-checking that’ll go out of date as soon as we’re finished. As a child of the Sixties, independence was no myth to me. We were watched – and escaped the monitoring as often as we liked.
I was reading right up until you called the memories of my childhood as “false memories” after that anything you had to say became irrelevant. From age three on, i was free to roam. The only cufew was the streetlight. And no, there was NOT some interconnected “village” keeping tabs on the kids. My experience started in the 50s. Everthing changed when that boy was beheaded down in Florida in the 70s. From then on the media pumped this fear into everyone, and fear became part of the national political dialogue. Sorry, but you are misinformed.
Absolutely true. I was a “free range” child from 9 on. Both in Europe and in America. I went out at 9 and returned at 5 or 7 depending on the season and school schedules. Most days there were hours when my parents knew I was in town (a city in Europe or a suburb in America) but not the precise location. There was no cellphone. I had to navigate the streets and the people. It made for a competent, independent child who grew into a successful adult.