Let Children Grow

[ndrosen]

I remember when I was about ten years old. My family went to Annapolis, Maryland, and my father visited with someone, I think a professor at some local institute of higher education; for a while, I was left under the supervision of this person's daughter, who was just a couple of years older than I was. She refused to let me go even a short distance to see any local sights, because we might be kidnapped and murdered by evil men. She admitted that this was unlikely, but she wasn't willing to take the slightest risk of it happening to me. I was used to walking around parts of my hometown, at least within a radius of multiple blocks, and I thought she was bizarrely overprotective.

The nuttiness of a bossy girl in the mid-Seventies has become the standard practice of middle class parents, and I agree with Lenore Skenazy that this is a change for the worse. Among other concerns, she's probably right that overprotected, constantly supervised children tend to grow up to be college-aged crybullies -- and, Heaven help us, voting-age adults -- who think they have a right to be protected from hearing any opinions and any inconvenient facts outside their comfort zone. They've never had much opportunity to develop resilience, or to build self-esteem from overcoming obstacles and facing dangers, and now they want an infantilized world.

There's also an interview with Ms. Skenazy at Reason online, which I recommend to my online friends' attention.