Yesterday NPR’s Here and Now re-aired an interview with Lenore Skenazy, once labeled the “Worst Mother in the World” by public critics across the country. What does a mother need to do to garner such virulent disapproval across America? She dropped her nine year old son off at a department store in New York, and challenged him to return home safely.
At his pleading, Skenezy left her son inside a New York City Bloomingdale’s. He wanted the challenge of finding his way back, alone, one subway ride and a bus connection from their home. Mom gave him a subway map, a Metro card, a twenty dollar bill and some change for a phone call. She told him what to do if he got lost. Then she returned to their home and waited. He found his way back without incident, mother and child both thrilled by his accomplishment.
When Skenazy mentioned the event to friends and acquaintances she was met with unrestrained condemnation. She was reminded of a recent abduction of a young girl in Florida.
“How would you have felt if he didn’t come home?”
“I don’t want to be the one on TV explaining my daughter’s disappearance.” And that was before Skenazy put it in writing. As an opinion columnist with a typically humorous slant, she hardly expected the massive reaction that was coming when she documented it in her weekly New York Sun column.
As the controversy grew, Skenazy started a blog and message board where opponents and supporters gather to debate. Some visitors embrace her parenting decision completely, some agree philosophically but are unable to engage in the practice, and others outright condemn the experience as criminal.
The debate spawned a new parenting approach; or rather, a return to an old one. The Free Range Kid Movement was born. Despite accusations to the contrary, Free Range Parents don’t discourage bicycle helmets, car seats, or airbags. They don’t encourage running with scissors. They want a return to the lifestyle that existed before the information age—including the risks that come with it. They believe it is essential to training children’s independence and decision-making abilities. Free range parents allow their pre-teen children to walk to school alone. To ride their bicycles to the library. To play in the woods unsupervised.
Free Range Parents also come armed with their own counter-statistics. That a child is 40 times more likely to die in a car accident than be abducted. That, contrary to statistics broadcast on the Today Show, the US Justice department shows a decline in child abductions since 1988. And since 1980, death rates dropped by about half for children between the ages of five and fourteen.
Even for parents that agree with the philosophy of the movement, they don’t find it quite so simple to practice. “I think there is a generalized feeling that the open spaces are wonderful in a supervised situation, but that unsupervised there is too much potential for a predator to be lying in wait, whether it be one of the human or animal.” Says Heather Quaal, a mother in Ventura California.
Natasha Morisawa, a Bioterrorism and Emergency Preparedness Analyst, remembers walking her dogs for hours with her sister. They toured local parks, learning the neighborhood along the way. “Not just our street or block, but details about the blocks between our house and the park; details that we would never know if we rode in the car.”
Still, she recognizes fears for her own children. “I think I would like to be more of a ‘free range parent.’…But for now, I will acknowledge my vulnerability and do what I can so that I can raise these boys in the best world I know.”
One side will argue that the reason the numbers are down is because their children are better protected from the threats. The other side will argue that the threats never existed in the first place. With many parents, the risk is too great or too frivolous. Some make little distinction between free range parenting and the criminally negligent.
