When I was a before-driving-age suburban teenager, I rode my bike into the city to horse around all day, or if they were feeling generous, my parents could drive me to the mall and drop me off, relying on me to get a ride home before dark. These days, 1. there's no mall or fun places for teens to horse around, and 2. helicopter parents won't let their kids out of their sight for more than five minutes at a time, let alone the entire day.
It's not just helicopter parents. I'd love to let my kids have more freedom. But there are roadblocks at every turn:
- There aren't as many kids, and other parents don't let their kids out these days, so your kids are often the only ones out there.
- Without other kids being out there, it's much harder to estimate what is safe. There is just no data.
- Because there are no other kids out there, things that used to be safe no longer are. Our roads don't have sidewalks. Because there are very rarely any kids, people fly down the curvy residential roads at 40+ mph. Even I feel uncomfortable walking carefully on our local roads because people they are so curvy and low-visibility and our neighbors drive so insanely fast.
- Because there are no other kids out there, people who see kids by themselves treat it like it's an emergency. I literally had someone run out of a restaurant and grab one of our kids and ask if they are OK, because I wasn't walking close enough to them. Then she treated me like I was the crazy one.
- Their teachers tell them its not safe to be out without parents.
- Their public school doesn't allow them to be by themselves at the bus stop and won't drop them off without an adult present.
- If you send them into a store by themselves, people treat them like aliens or like something is wrong.
- Even just leaving your kids by themselves in a temperate car for a reasonable time to go into a store has resulted in a child protective services action in our area.
There aren't as many kids any more so people just can't tell what is safe and what is not, and so they assume everything is unsafe.
When I was a kid I rode my bike all over town and had free reign, and there were kids everywhere. Now as an adult I have to work hard just to find things that my kids can do without us that won't get the police or child protective services called on us. What is going to happen to the people who grow up this way?
