With a kid on the way I’ve been thinking a lot about my own childhood and the way I was raised. In particular, I’m kind of floored at how few freedoms modern children have. I think a large part of the person I am today — fearless, independent, improvisational, and yet careful and relatively cautious — is a direct result of the latitude I enjoyed as a young person.
New York Post columnist Lenore Skenazy recently let her 9-year-old ride the subway home from Bloomingdale’s, a surprisingly newsworthy event. She described it on NPR as being the equivalent of “Nine Year Old Makes Toast”
the following is crossposted as a comment on Lenore’s website, Free Range Kids.
My young childhood was in rural Nebraska in the 1970s, and I had parents of the “be home for dinner” parenting philosophy, so I enjoyed a lot of freedoms from a young age. These included such mad behavior as riding stunts on our bicycles, building treehouses, swimming in irrigation ditches, and shooting BB guns — all of which I’m sure are roundly verboten to 7-to-10-year-olds in 2008 America.
When I was 10, the family moved to the “big” city of Lincoln, where we lived in a relatively urban neighborhood near the agricultural college. Luckily I was just at the age where climbing trees was becoming less interesting than things like movie theaters or shopping malls.
I don’t remember having any strict boundaries of any sort in either environment. I certainly got in trouble for “running off” but that was because I hadn't told anyone where I was going beforehand.
When I was 11, I rode my bike to Gateway Mall, about 2 or 3 miles distant from our house. I remember vividly that I had three dollars with me, enough to buy a soda, play a video game, and (fittingly) purchase a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book.
None of this behavior was worthy of comment. All the kids I knew lived this way, and many of them were “latchkey kids” so beloved by after-school specials.
The fascinating thing to me is that the world has in most ways become a much safer place since that time. Child abductions are down, violent crime is down, street gangs are quieter, and so forth.
Case in point: I started delivering newspapers when I was 12, just one year after a sensational case where a paperboy in my town was kidnapped, tortured and murdered. I don’t recall anyone saying to me or anyone else that kids shouldn’t deliver newspapers. It was just regarded as this weird and awful fluke thing that happened, but it didn't have anything particular to do with “us.” (I’m sure my mom will remember this differently and chime in on the comments. Also, Mom: what was that kid’s name?)
Should such a heinous thing happen now I'm sure it would be swiftly followed by laws forbidding 12-year-old boys from going outdoors before 6 am or after 6 pm.
You know, “for our safety.”
Axoplasm is also 
I had my morning paper route
I had my morning paper route when I turned 13 I believe. Nobody thought anything about me being gone for a couple hours in the morning through the dark streets of Lincoln. When I was 11 and my brother 9 we made a few trips on foot from Havelock to East Park. Once we got reamed for being a half hour late getting home, but trips like that weren't uncommon. I don't believe I ever got a ride to school from grade school until I graduated high school.Gabe turned nine this year. There is no way in hell I would let him have the freedom we had as kids. Part of it is just the way that he handles himself but the other part is this fear that been shopped around. Last month we had a flier dropped off at our doorstep about a pedophile and registered sex offender whom lived a couple blocks away and had recently been reported to the police for following the school bus that goes through the neighborhood.Is it that we and our parents were blind to all that was going on? Or is it now that we are hyper-sensitive to all these scare stories the media likes to highlight daily? Or is it that it's really not that bad, but we don't want to be labeled as the uncaring parent because we let kids out of our protective fold every once in awhile?
The boy's name was Danny Jo
The boy's name was Danny Jo Eberle, and his attacker/killer was John Joubert. At the time, we did make some changes with regard to your paper route: we handed out more lectures about safety with strangers (I felt like I was nagging all the time), and we made note of when you left on your bike from home in the afternoons to go deliver papers. On Sundays, when the delivery was pre-dawn (that was when Danny was abducted by Joubert), we drove you around the route. A scary time, but I do remember the fear; I probably won't ever forget that. I could imagine predators everywhere, something that probably motivates modern-day parents to be more diligent. I also remember the day when Joubert was executed, and experiencing no particular relief from that; but on that day, I certainly remembered the strength of the fears we dealt with when Danny Eberle's death was still unsolved. Mom
Thanks Mom. I figured you
Thanks Mom. I figured you would have different memories of that episode. I don't remember any lectures about strangers (prob. because I knew it already and I was all like "geez Mom I know this already"). I do remember getting rides on my Sunday routes but I thought you were just being nice and letting me sleep in.For what it's worth there was practically no danger on my afternoon deliveries. That neighborhood had a lot of eyes on the street b/c it was near East campus and that's when everyone was getting home from work or class. I saw a lot of my customers every day, and other regular neighborhood characters.Interesting to think about: if you asked almost anyone in America which place was safer, New York City or Lincoln, Nebraska most people would say Lincoln. Which is probably true for property crimes. But I can think of at least two horrible abductions in Lincoln from 1982 to 1993 ... Eberle and Candy Harms. The last child abduction (by a stranger) in New York was in 1970. The crime rate in NYC today is about the same as in Boise Idaho.This was Skenazy's big point: our perceptions of crime, safety, stranger danger etc. are totally skewed by sensationalism, the media, violent cop shows on TV, etc.
Bravo. A thoughtful defense
Bravo. A thoughtful defense of the idealized childhood. Today, kids spend most of their time ingesting franchise TV and movies, thrill-kill video games, corn-syrup solids, and capitalist uberconsumption. Bring back books (good ones that don't involve mass merchandising), outdoor activity (in which one exerts one's physique), challenges of independence and courage, and shit like gardening and helping neighbors. There may be hope for us after all.
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