The Opinion Pages | Contributing Op-Ed Writer -- New York Times
BETHESDA,
Md. — ON her first morning in America, last summer, my daughter went
out to explore her new neighborhood — alone, without even telling my
wife or me.
Of
course we were worried; we had just moved from Berlin, and she was just
8. But when she came home, we realized we had no reason to panic.
Beaming with pride, she told us and her older sister how she had
discovered the little park around the corner, and had made friends with a
few local dog owners. She had taken possession of her new environment,
and was keen to teach us things we didn’t know.
When
this story comes up in conversations with American friends, we are
usually met with polite disbelief. Most are horrified by the idea that
their children might roam around without adult supervision. In Berlin,
where we lived in the center of town, our girls would ride the Metro on
their own — a no-no in Washington. Or they’d go alone to the playground,
or walk a mile to a piano lesson. Here in quiet and traffic-safe
suburban Washington, they don’t even find other kids on the street to
play with. On Halloween, when everybody was out to trick or treat, we
were surprised by how many children actually lived here whom we had
never seen.
A
study by the University of California, Los Angeles, has found that
American kids spend 90 percent of their leisure time at home, often in
front of the TV or playing video games. Even when kids are physically
active, they are watched closely by adults, either in school, at home,
at afternoon activities or in the car, shuttling them from place to
place.
Such narrowing of the child’s world has happened across the developed world. But Germany
is generally much more accepting of letting children take some risks.
To this German parent, it seems that America’s middle class has taken
overprotective parenting to a new level, with the government acting as a
super nanny.
Just
take the case of 10-year-old Rafi and 6-year-old Dvora Meitiv, siblings
in Silver Spring, Md., who were picked up in December by the police
because their parents had dared to allow them to walk home from the park
alone. For trying to make them more independent, their parents were
found guilty by the state’s Child Protective Services of “unsubstantiated child neglect.”
What had been the norm a generation ago, that kids would enjoy a
measure of autonomy after school, is now seen as almost a crime.
Today’s
parents enjoyed a completely different American childhood. Recently,
researchers at the University of Virginia conducted interviews with 100
parents. “Nearly all respondents remember childhoods of nearly unlimited
freedom, when they could ride bicycles and wander through woods,
streets, parks, unmonitored by their parents,” writes Jeffrey Dill, one
of the researchers.
But
when it comes to their own children, the same respondents were
terrified by the idea of giving them only a fraction of the freedom they
once enjoyed. Many cited fear of abduction, even though crime rates
have declined significantly. The most recent in-depth study found that,
in 1999, only 115 children nationwide were victims of a “stereotypical
kidnapping” by a stranger; the overwhelming majority were abducted by a
family member. That same year, 2,931 children under 15 died as
passengers in car accidents. Driving children around is statistically
more dangerous than letting them roam freely.
Motor
development suffers when most of a child’s leisure time is spent
sitting at home instead of running outside. Emotional development
suffers, too.
“We
are depriving them of opportunities to learn how to take control of
their own lives,” writes Peter Gray, a research professor at Boston
College. He argues that this increases “the chance that they will suffer
from anxiety, depression, and various other mental disorders,” which
have gone up dramatically in recent decades. He sees risky, outside play
of children among themselves without adult supervision as a way of
learning to control strong emotions like anger and fear.
I
am no psychologist like Professor Gray, but I know I won’t be around
forever to protect my girls from the challenges life holds in store for
them, so the earlier they develop the intellectual maturity to navigate
the world, the better. And by giving kids more control over their lives,
they learn to have more confidence in their own capabilities.
It
is hard for parents to balance the desire to protect their children
against the desire to make them more self-reliant. And every one of us
has to decide for himself what level of risk he is ready to accept. But
parents who prefer to keep their children always in sight and under
their thumbs should consider what sort of trade-offs are involved in
that choice.
At
a minimum, parents who want to give their children more room to roam
shouldn’t be penalized by an overprotective state. Cases like the
Meitivs’ reinforce the idea that children are fragile objects to be
protected at all times, and that parents who believe otherwise are
irresponsible, if not criminally negligent.
Besides
overriding our natural protective impulses in order to loosen the reins
of our kids, my wife and I now also have to ponder the possibility of
running afoul of the authorities. And we thought we had come to the land
of the free.
Clemens Wergin is the Washington bureau chief for the newspaper Die Welt.
