How the Federal Government Became the Worst Helicopter Parent
The adults and the kids lose trust in the people who are charged with keeping us safe and healthy, and the kids are kept from developing necessary life skills like self-reliance, creativity, intuition, and grit. The overreaction of the nanny state to young people who are allowed to operate independently feeds the already overly-developed anxiety of too many parents regarding their kids’ freedom. Moreover, look at any bookstore’s shelf of current titles on education, child development, sociology, and public policy, and you’ll see one analysis after another of why deficiencies of these characteristics in our children is hurtful to us all.
In 2007 Lenore Skenazy caused an uproar when she wrote a newspaper column about allowing her nine-year-old son Izzy to ride the subway by himself. After her initial decision to let Izzy off his previously tight parental leash, she endured numerous phone conversations with the police to defend her choice. And as she explained it to me, she now believes that society is “criminalizing things that used to be perfectly OK, such as punishing parents for trying to raise independent children, [something that] used to be a value and now is worth a hefty fine or a stint in lock-up.”
