Point of Convergence: Would you let your nine-year-old child ride NYC subway alone? "America's worst mom" says yes

A New York City columnist has ignited a firestorm of controversy with the proud revelation that she lets her nine-year-old son ride the New York City subway alone.  Currently featured in Newsweek magazine, she is making the talk-show circuit and has launched her own blog, called "Free Range Kids," to defend herself.  She urges parents to loosen the cord a bit and let their children walk the streets alone at much younger ages than they do now.

Critical parents accuse her of being everything from tragically misguided to engaging in child abuse.  Yet, others agree with her that the current generation of parents has become "helicopter parents" who unnecessarily hover around their young children and treat them like fragile and delicate objects that must be watched and protected at all cost. 

Among those who agree with the columnist, some recall being allowed to run errands at seven and eight years of age without incident.  Among those who disagree is a father of three in California, who cites dangerous traffic that makes letting a nine-year-old navigate the streets alone a risky proposition.

Do as I did, not as you say

So the controversy rages on, fueled by clever buzzwords, beloved by the media, like "free range kids" and "helicopter parents."

At the end of the day, however, it is obvious that nothing will get resolved.  Personal experience may be the best teacher, but it's not always the best argument for following one course of action over another.  As some child experts note, there is no such thing as "one size fits all."  Every child is different and parents need to honestly assess the level of maturity of their children, to determine the degree of freedom they can be allowed.

A road to freedom, or highway to hell

As a parent of a young child myself, I would like to point out to the New York columnist who sparked the controversy, Lenore Skenazy, that she needs to be careful about breezily advocating a concept that may have the best intention - but is based on a fundamentally flawed argument.  Even free-range chickens have fences to prevent them from wandering off, and to protect them from predators.

For children, it's not always a question of their level of maturity, but of their ability to intelligently resolve an unexpected development.  Skenazy's son may be mature enough to handle an uneventful ride on the subway, but it is highly unlikely that he could handle an atypical ride.  Something as simple as a train delay, for example, could throw off a nine-year-old and have tragic consequences.  As a veteran subway rider, I've dealt with delays that have been so massive that I've found myself wandering for hours, fighting thousands of other frustrated commuters, trying to find another way home.  Can she honestly say that her nine-year-old child would handle that situation?

She could say, "I've taught my child to find a policeman and ask for help," but she is then also expecting the police to be her babysitters.  They already have enough on their hands controlling frustrated crowds and keeping adult tempers from flaring without watching after unsupervised young children.

This is actually the mildest of potentially unpredictable scenarios.  I'm sure many readers can cite worse.

Home on the range?

Skenazy speaks of how "ecstatic" her nine-year-old son was to arrive home, flushed with a sense of his independence from riding the subway alone.  She considers this self-evident proof that she is right to criticize parents in the U.S. for being overly protective of their children.  She writes on her blog of "the good old days" when young children rode their bikes to school, walked to the store and rode the buses all by themselves.  "At Free Range Kids," she writes, "we believe in safe kids... We do NOT believe that...school-age children...need a security detail" when they go outside.

A quick glance at the history books would reveal that there was never such a thing as the "good old days" for children.  It has only been in recent years that children in the United States have actually begun to enjoy their childhood.  In the "good old days," children were seen as "little adults" and were put to work to help out in the family as soon as they could walk.   During the industrial revolution, child labor was rampant, with eight and nine-year-olds working alongside adults around dangerous machinery.  They were exploited in much the same way children are exploited today in third-world countries.

In the "good old days" of the fifties and sixties, most mothers stayed home.  Parents let their children play on the streets and freely roam the neighborhood because mothers were everywhere and knew which child belong to whom.  Today, there is no such thing as a "neighborhood" because both parents work in most households.  We're lucky if we know the people next-door, let alone the strange kid riding his bicycle down the block.

But perhaps the best defense for being a "helicopter parent" is that you do not get a second chance to raise a child safely into adulthood.  How often do you hear of children who are walking down the street with their parents and, suddenly, for some unknown reason, they bolt into traffic and get struck by a car?  How often do you hear of parents in a swimming pool who take their eyes away from their children for a minute - and return to a lifeless body in two feet of water?  A story last year recounted how a 41-year-old man kidnapped an 11-year-old boy and kept him as a sex slave for several years until neighbors became suspicious and called police.  He had prevented the boy from running away by threatening to kill his parents if he escaped. 

These incidents may have a million-to-one chance of happening to a child, but as a parent, one-in-a-million is still too great a risk for me to take with my child's life.  I'd rather err on the side of being overly protective.  It's dangerous enough as an adult to walk the streets of any neighborhood alone - whether in a small town or a big city. 

 As a parent, I am constantly reminded by news stories that, when it comes to your child, a single moment of carelessness - or one split second of distraction - can result in a tragedy that could forever destroy your world.

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Mario's column, Point of Convergence, published to Gather Essentials: Politics, looks at the American political landscape and the people and events that make the news.  Mario is a culture trend expert who frequently speaks on cultural, political and social issues that impact modern life. Keep up with Mario's other postings and Gather activity by joining his Gather network.  Just click popculture and select the orange "Connect" button on the left side of the page.