Free-range kids used to be the neighborhood norm
Finally someone put a name to my carefree childhood of the 1960s. I was a free-range kid. We all were back then.
From the time we were old enough to attend school, we roamed our neighborhood and rode our bikes and played games — all outside the view of our parents who loved us but didn’t hover over us in constant fear.
By the time my wife and I were raising our own kids in the 1980s and ’90s, we were feeling a growing vague sense of peril that called us to keep our kids closer and in organized sports leagues.
Today, an unattended child is likely to result in a call to the police. In a recent high-profile case, a Maryland couple who allowed their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter to walk home alone from the park were investigated by Child Protective Services.
Last week, the agency issued a directive saying they need not be involved in cases like this unless the kids have been harmed or face a substantial risk of harm.
That’s good news to journalist Lenore Skenazy, founder of the free-range kids movement that was born several years ago when she wrote a column about letting her 9-year-old son ride the subway alone in New York, where she lives.
“Two days later I found myself decried as ‘America’s worst mom’ on the ‘Today’ show, MSNBC, Fox News and NPR,” she wrote in a column earlier this year. Skenazy has written a book, “Free-Range Kids,” and hosts a reality show, “World’s Worst Mom.”
On Friday I called Skenazy, and found her busy defending herself from charges that she made up a nightmare scenario faced by free-range parents in Florida. Her viewpoint on kids has made her a lightning rod.
