"... that it was splashed across the pages of The New York Daily News.... HB 567 enjoyed bipartisan support, sailing through the Texas Senate unopposed, and winning the House with a vote of 143 to 5. The statute enshrining childhood independence is part of a bigger children's services bill ensuring Texans that the state will not intervene and remove kids from their homes unless the danger is so great and so likely that it outweighs the trauma of entering the foster care system.... In other words, it prevents poverty from being mistaken for neglect.... 'If the mom misses that bus, she gets to work late and loses her job. How does that help the child, if now she can't pay her rent? So she leaves her child home alone for 15 minutes.' .... [T]he bill also helps folks who choose not to helicopter parent, like Austin mom Kari Anne Roy, whose case made headlines in 2014. Roy was at home while her six-year-old played within view of the house for about ten minutes. A passerby marched him home and called the cops...."
ADDED: I haven't written much on the topic of "free-range" children, but let me quote something I wrote last year:
When I walk (or drive) around my neighborhood and beyond, I often think or say out loud, "Where are the children?" Are they inside looking at big and small screens? Are they chauffeured to adult-run activities? It's so sad! Even in the 80s when my sons were little, the neighborhood had kids outdoors, playing randomly with each other. But back in the 1950s, when I was little, the neighborhood was a constant festival of kid-dom. So much active, inventive play. It was endless. Nobody wanted our parents to scoop us up and take us anywhere. The place was completely alive and completely kid-scale, and none of it had anything to do — as far as we could tell — with preparing for a prestigious and remunerative career. I can't imagine any parents barging in and trying to leverage things for the advancement of their offspring. We were, to ourselves, on our own.
Ah, I see — I was reacting to an article questioning whether "expensive activities" for kids were a rip-off.
Today's article, about the Texas law, is about the economics of childcare too, but it focuses on relieving low-income families of the burden of accusations of child neglect. The older article was about whether high-income families should be seeking to buy extra advantages for their children. The "free-range" idea works from both ends of the economic divide to equalize the life of children.
If children are left alone to be self-reliant and to invent their own modes of playing, then rich and poor kids might have very similar lives. More or less.
Could we all — from both ends of the political divide — agree on that?
Of course not! We must disagree. We cannot have political peace. How would we live in political peace? The adults don't know how to play well together, even those of us who grew up in free-range American utopia.
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11 comments:
Lucien writes:
"After “America Held Hostage” cable news stations had lots of air to find content for, and danger to children from abductors in vans to satanic day care centers (fueled by faces on milk cartons). Local stories could become national and “safety-ism” flourished. Even though we may conflate the trend with helicopter parents scheduling play dates in between soccer practices, the burden of constant child supervision falls more heavily on people with fewer resources and child care options. This has been exacerbated by the safety-ism of teachers and their unions: in person schools provide child care, and closed or remote schools don’t. “Safe” itself is a weasel word. The question should be what is reasonably safe, which requires thinking about and balancing risks and benefits. Women and minorities hardest hit — but with such good intentions."
Lloyd writes:
"U've had this conversation with many people. Not only did boomers as children play freely, not far from home, constantly improvising games and rules, kids coming and going for various reasons, but they would wander fairly far from home. With long hours of daylight, probably one rule was "be home for supper" (of course with no "class" issue of supper vs. dinner). But you would wander a long distance with your friends, and kind of forget, and it might even be getting dark. Rural areas, urban areas, I don't think it made much difference. Bikes could travel a distance. A woman I worked with said she was always fairly confident that if she called home, her dad would come and get her, but he might complain half-jokingly: well I'm watching the golf, but OK.
"No assumption of dangerous predators hovering everywhere. No assumption that somebody running a program for kids, or parents with flash cards, is always better than what kids come up with on their own. Leave It to Beaver, which has probably been attacked in women's studies programs and what not, actually conveyed the 50s attitude. June would say: Ward, what are we going to do? and Ward would say: what we always do; sit tight, and wait for the explosion."
RB writes:
"I'm sure you've heard the old maxim about kids staying out "until the streetlights came on." It's true (or was true!) Growing up in the 1950s in Sault Ste. Marie MI, kids were everywhere, and I can't remember any restrictions on where we could go in town once we were, say, 11 or 12 years old. Most of us had friends spread all over town and were free to visit whenever. Different times, different places..."
All our parents would have been arrested.
Gregg writes:
"Ann- we are about the same age, and even though I grew up in a Midwestern prairie metropolis, and you grew up in the Northeast, I’d imagine the general outlines of our respective upbringings were similar.
F"irst, we walked to school, grade school anyway, and often would detour on the way home to do various and sundry things. There were organized sports back them, but for those of us not good enough to make the school teams we still played pickup: football in the fall, hockey in the winter, and baseball in the spring. (As an aside, IMHO one of the great sounds of winter is the cacophony of skates, sticks, pucks and boards echoing through a cold winter night). A buddy of mine from Western New York told me there was as much pick-up lacrosse as there was organized. Not to mention the various “after supper” games like kick the can which often involved the whole neighborhood. We played until the streetlights went on.
"We rode our bikes all over the city, and often did things our parents would not have liked, such as walking across the Mississippi on the catwalk under the RR trestle. (It was an early test of one’s manhood- or boyhood, I guess) I rode the bus downtown by myself as early as 4th grade.
"I’d argue we learned a lot from such independence- how to use our time, how to settle disputes, how to get along. Much if not most of that is gone.
"I dunno if this is off topic, but another part of a boy’s childhood was fighting- I wasn’t a tough kid, not by any measure, but, from time to time you’d have to defend yourself, adults largely uninvolved. Fighting back was required- didn’t matter if you got beat, but that you stood up for yourself. One thing I noticed among my boy pupils (I’m retired from teaching high school now) is that hardly any of them had ever been in a fight. Not to mention that asshole kids were in my day often effectively dealt with by other kids- these days the kid who punches the asshole gets the same punishment as the asshole. Different worlds."
Pete writes:
"When the pandemic lockdown started last year, in my walking/running in my neighborhood in suburban Connecticut, I noticed more families playing outdoors with their kids, and more bike riding by families - and by kids alone. Now that things are more back to normal, that has stopped, and gone back to the old ways of little yard playing and bike riding."
Tom T writes:
Unstructured time with random neighbor kids was great for the kids who were dominant and outgoing. For them it was self-reliant and inventive; for those of us who were quiet or bookish, it was just another arena where we were told what to do. Certainly no one ever *said* they'd rather be doing something else; they're wasn't much else to do, and we'd have been ostracized if we had.
My son loves computer class. It's inventive and interactive among kids who share his interest. He does fine in the park climbing around with other kids, too, but building worlds on the screen is where he comes alive. Why wouldn't I want him to have that?
Besides, it's a trope as old as Norman Rockwell that kids in the old days were pulled away from outside play to practice the piano or the violin. Little League was huge; kids weren't all in sandlots. Even back then, parents structured their kids' activities more than you may recall now.
Finally, kids could roam around the neighborhood because their mothers were at home. Once both mom and dad went out to work, child care had to change.
"Finally, kids could roam around the neighborhood because their mothers were at home."
It wasn't just mothers protecting their own children. It was all the mothers in all the houses. They didn't seem to be vigilant. My impression of my mother is that she did almost nothing. To this day, I don't understand why she wasn't bored out of her skull. But the women were in there, in all the houses, and I guess if anything abnormal happened, it would be seen.
FWBuff writes:
"Even though I also grew up in the era when kids had less adult supervision during the day, I had a different experience as a farm kid. Summers and the hours outside of school weren’t spent playing with friends. Instead, from the time I could put an egg in a basket, bottle-feed an orphan lamb, or carry a hoe, the daylight hours meant work on the family farm. And there was always work to do. Occasionally, if it had rained and we couldn’t work in the fields, I was allowed to ride my bike into town a few miles away and play with my school friends. Their world of running around the neighborhood, going to the swimming pool, watching television indoors, or playing pick-up games of baseball was very far away from my daily existence. I’m not complaining, though. I learned how to work hard and efficiently. I learned the importance of teamwork and responsibility. I also had the privilege of working alongside my parents and grandparents and siblings, and was blessed to have a strong and loving family. So we farm kids didn’t go home when the street lights came on, but we got to go inside when the sun went down!"
A reader writes:
"Our kids are having very close to the same experience of childhood that my husband and I had, except that they spend less time in front of screens during leisure hours than we did. Screen time is strictly limited, and we agreed with other parents on the street that kids weren't allowed to play in each other's houses. This keeps kids off of electronics and engaging with one another. When new or visiting kids see other kids outside, they're drawn out. Get two or three kids outside, and the center of gravity of the neighborhood shifts to the outdoors. There are no streetlights on our street, so we call the kids home in the evening with a loud whistle, though the neighborhood kid pack is usually congregated somewhere in our yard."
Great idea for making the outdoors enticing!
Eric writes:
"I'm a big fan of "take your kids to the park, and leave them there", letting them walk home for themselves. This year we did Everglades. Next year, we plan to do Denali. Assuming the kids are back in time..."
Lloyd writes:
"Picking up on your comment on "Free Range Children": one of the funnier episodes of Seinfeld, comedians in cars, is Sarah Jessica Parker. Jerry picks her up in an old woody station wagon, and they head off to the neighbourhood where he grew up on Long Island. She asks persistently: what did your mother do all day long in this quiet house? Jerry: I don't know."
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