decisions is creepy enough. That the consequences for the “wrong” decision are criminal is downright scary. It doesn’t benefit these kids in the least to give their parents a criminal record, smear their parents’ names in their neighborhoods and communities and make it more difficult for their parents to find a job.20
In their book Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing, Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe raise a similar question about who should decide when a risk is too great and who—if anyone—actually has the power to use their independent judgment to override the system, which has inserted itself into decisions that used to be made by parents and guardians without outside interference.
Schwartz and Sharpe tell the story of a father who took his son to a Detroit Tigers game. The seven-year-old boy asked for lemonade, and the father bought him a Mike’s Hard Lemonade because that was all the concession stand had and he didn’t know it was an alcoholic beverage (he’s an archeology professor at the University of Michigan). A security guard saw the boy sipping the hard lemonade and called the police, who in turn called an ambulance. The boy was rushed to hospital where they found no trace of alcohol in his bloodstream. The story should have ended there as an example of overzealous concern on the part of police and ballpark security. But no. Instead, “police put the child in a Wayne County Child Protective Services foster home,” where he stayed for three days. “Next, a judge ruled that the child could go home to his mother, but only if his dad left the house and checked into a hotel. . . . After two weeks the family was finally reunited,” Schwartz and Sharpe explain.21
The authors note that at every stage the authority figures—the police, the judge, social workers—spoke of how they hated having to follow the rules but insisted that they had no choice; it was procedure. Shouldn’t these people have the independent discretion to decide whether in each individual case the rules are actually being applied to protect kids or whether, as with the hard lemonade example, a parent made a mistake that should not be punished by breaking up his family? But commonsense judgments aren’t allowed, argue Schwartz and Sharpe. “The policemen, the social workers, and the judge who took [the boy] away from his family, and then forbade his father to see him, were following rigid procedures that assumed that the judgment of these officials could not be trusted. As institutional practices like these become calcified, we lose our bead on the real aims and purposes of our work and fail to develop the moral skills we need to achieve them.”22
NANNY STATE VS HEALTHY COMMUNITIES
Threatening parents for letting their kids learn independence is not just a waste of precious resources that police and social-service agents really don’t have to spare. It harms our understanding of what it means to be part of a healthy and helpful community.
Children’s book author Kari Anne Roy was visited by police and child services personnel in Austin, Texas, after her neighbor “returned” Roy’s son to his house and informed police about her having allowed her six-year-old son Isaac to be outside unsupervised down the block from his house.23 If a visit from a policewoman, who didn’t file any report, it should be noted, wasn’t bad enough, Roy then had to deal with a Child Protective Services agent who came to her house, interviewed her kids, and did file a report. When writing about this experience for the Dallas Morning News, Roy stipulated that she understood why child services workers have a hard job and even why some of the procedures the agent followed were necessary. But even with that understanding, the impact of this experience is not without a serious cost to her and her children.
My kids reported that she asked questions about drugs and alcohol, about pornography, about how often they bathe, about fighting in the home. And again, I understand the need for these questions. I understand CPS investigators have an incredibly difficult job. But the conflict I feel is immense. My children were playing outside, within sight of the house, and now my 6-year-old and 8 -year-old and 12 -year-old have seen their mother spoken to—multiple times—as if she, herself, was a child being reprimanded. They have all been questioned, by a stranger, about whether they’ve ever been shown movies of other people’s private parts. And no matter what I say, I can tell that they think they’ve done something wrong.24
Roy was also bothered, and rightly so, that the woman who originally called police cannot be held responsible for causing trouble. “The neighbor can call CPS as many times as she wants. If she truly feels there’s neglect, she can’t be prosecuted for making false allegations. We could try to sue her for harassment. We could try to press charges for kidnapping if she approaches our son again and tries to get him to move from where he’s playing. But in all reality, when children are involved, the person who makes the complaint gets the benefit of the doubt. For parents, it is guilty until proven innocent.”25
Tracy Cutchlow, a mom and journalist, wrote for the Washington Post identifying the reason there are more and more stories like this one of adults calling the police because they see a child alone—either in a car, at the playground, or walking.26 “We can’t rely on our neighbors to help look out for our kids, and that’s why our neighborhoods don’t feel safe enough. When you let a 10- and 6-year-old walk home on their own, it feels scary because they’re fully responsible for their own safety. What’s missing is the sense that we’re all responsible for everyone’s children,” she explained. Everyone has heard the African proverb about bringing up our kids. But the conditions that underlay that folk wisdom are not always readily present. According to Cutchlow, “to reclaim any sense of the village it takes to raise a child, we need to start with knowing our neighbors. I don’t know half of the people living in my condo building, let alone on my street. How about you?”
ANOTHER TYPE OF STORY that has become too common is about parents who choose to leave their children in a car unattended in order to run a quick errand and are found guilty of a crime by the nanny state.
Kim Brooks wrote in Salon of her ordeal (100 hours of community service, lawyer bills, conviction for contributing to the delinquency of a minor) because police were given a recording of her son sitting alone in a car.27 Brooks had to run into the store, and her four-year-old son didn’t want to tag along. She decided to let him wait for her in the car. How did the police get involved in the first place? Why didn’t they tell the busybody recording this nonincident to mind her own business because they have other things to do?
New Yorker Alina Adams made sure that the law couldn’t come after her before she admitted in print that she lets her six-year-old daughter stay home alone for short stretches of time. And just like every other time she’s loosened the parental leash on her three children, this change came about by necessity. But as a matter of principle, Adams rejects the need for laws defining when children can be on their own. As she explained it to me, “I’m not a fan of arbitrary guidelines. I’m against mandatory minimums for kindergarten or retirement. [I’m] against government making that decision because it is an arbitrary rule without seeing what’s going on.”
Adams believes that every child is different, making each situation different as well. But that’s not good enough for nanny-statists who are convinced they are “saving the kids” by pushing for these laws. The one-size-fits-all solution is the only one government can handle, and so we get rules and regulations that interfere with parents’ choices rather than supporting them.
How did we get here? Skenazy is right that raising independent children used to be a value that society embraced. Indeed, television used to depict this independence as part of normal life. Take a look at the first few episodes of Leave It to Beaver, for example. The narrative is repeated in several episodes. The Beav goes off alone to walk to school, or into town to get a haircut, and some innocent trouble ensues. The first episode aired in 1957, when the Beav was supposed to be eight years old, and at that time the show’s writers took it for granted that a kid that age could and would go places alone. Now, you may be thinking, well, that was the time before crime rates exploded
