The culture of safety and overprotection

Between freedom and fear. Is the world really that more dangerous?

I was six when I first tasted independence. My pack of first grade friends and I walked three quarters of a mile unchaperoned to a busy intersection in our neighborhood in Queens, traversing alongside a busy multi-lane boulevard. Instead of heading straight home from school, we headed to the mall in the opposite direction and didn’t tell anyone.

I don’t remember the details of this surreptitious joy walk, just the visceral memory of walking on the sidewalk next to a rush of cars, our little heads buzzing with electricity from the thrill of feeling like such big kids.

I’d like to imagine that we were a gang of six year olds colluding something mischievous, but I think we were just curious to test the very edges of our independence by breaking the rules for an afternoon. I have to laugh at the memory now because we weren’t meddling, defiant teens—just curious six year olds.

Upon reaching the mall, I called my mom (who was decidedly not laughing) from a payphone in the entrance of Alexander’s (shoutout to anyone who remembers that old school New York department store). I’m also impressed that I had coins in my pocket to even make that call. Maybe it dawned on me that I was in trouble. Maybe I suddenly realized that she might be worried. On the other end of the phone, my mother was both livid and relieved.

It’s sort of hard to believe that we were allowed to walk home from school by ourselves at that age to begin with. By the time we as parents were comfortable letting our children do the same at age 11, we were already latchkey kids doing our homework in front of the T.V. in an empty house.

While reading the book, The Coddling of the American Mind, last week, my head was swimming in a constant tug of war comparison between the freedoms I enjoyed as a child and the more constrained ones my kids had. Meanwhile, I kept questioning whether I was the one imposing those restraints.