Here's a link to an NPR article on the subject, citing cases of parents in trouble for letting children manage on their own, at home or in the neighborhood, according to which my home state has the highest "age below which it's illegal to permit your kids to be at home alone." Age 14 -- wow, that's nuts!
Why? How did it happen that children, even middle-school children, are expected to need constant supervision.
Yes, of course, a part of it is the all-out-of-proportion worry about child abduction, starting with the Adam Walsh case.
Here are a couple other guesses:
Is it a consequence of the suburban life with lots of scheduled activities? -- which means that your kid is less likely to be roaming the neighborhood with a pack, because everyone's got soccer or basketball, and, if you're going to allow them to roam, it more likely means roaming alone.
Did it ironically get worse when cell phones came into common use? Yes, I know that's counter-intuitive, but I wonder if they generated an expectation that we can -- and should -- be able to know where our kids are at all times.
Is it because, in the suburbs, parents drive their kids everywhere, and, in many neighborhoods, there just aren't many places a kid can get to on his own, so that the very notion of a kid being on his own becomes foreign?
It is true that one difference we noticed quite clearly between the US and Germany is a different perception of risk. There was no obsessive fear of "stranger danger" and, starting at gymnasium-age, kids travel significant distances on public transportation to get to school. There was not the same fear of drowning as in the U.S. -- public pools generally didn't have lifeguards, and non-swimmers were expected to put water wings on and hop in, regardless of pool depth. At the same time, there was a much greater fear of chemicals, so that organics were much more common, and advertised even at Aldi-type stores.
What do you think? At what age would you let your kid be home alone, or out and about?
Did it ironically get worse when cell phones came into common use? Yes, I know that's counter-intuitive, but I wonder if they generated an expectation that we can -- and should -- be able to know where our kids are at all times.
ReplyDeleteI would say: yes. For some parents, the ability to instantly communicate with their child seems to imply they must be in constant contact with them.
Our son is nine and autistic, and in our neighborhood there are mostly college students and no children his age to play with, so we don't let him wander about freely (he has little interest in doing so, anyway). I am less worried about the neighbors themselves that I am the traffic.
But this past summer, while we were in my wife's home country of Tanzania, we let him go wherever he wanted. The culture in Tanzania is very different from the US: everybody knows everybody else and neighbors look out for each other's children. We were in the countryside, and it was quite safe to let him roam all over the place with the neighborhood children. Everyone was quite protective of him.
"At what age would you let your kid be home alone, or out and about? "
ReplyDeleteIn the local neighborhood (around 400 houses), this was about age 7-8. At that age, my child was permitted to walk about 100 yards across our complex to play with one of his friends. Amusingly/sadly, the friend's mom would not allow her 10 year old the same freedom.
Around age 10-11 my child was walking the mile or so to our local downtown to go to the library, hit the local used bookstore and, occasionally, have lunch at a favored restaurant.
-Mark Roulo