Stephanie Murray on parenting at The Atlantic today

Balancing childhood independence with childhood safety has been much on parents’ minds lately, as evidenced by the recent Reasonable Childhood Independence laws that have been passed in seven states in recent years, including Virginia, Illinois, and Connecticut in 2023. Yet making personal judgments about the matter is complicated by everything from social confusion over what to do if you’re worried about an unaccompanied child to infrastructure problems such as lack of sidewalks. 

Stephanie Murray brings together several parent and expert perspectives from different directions (including a story of my childhood year in Paris, which I discuss at greater detail here; you can also read my perspective on this issue as a parent here) in her striking piece today at the Atlantic, The Gravitational Pull of Supervising Kids All the Time. A taste:

The helicopter-parenting norm is exacerbated, too, by a common uncertainty about the role we should play in the life of a child we don’t personally know. Even capable kids are still learning. For them to participate in society without a chaperone requires some buy-in from everyone else, not only in the form of tolerance for childlike behavior or confusion, but also in a readiness to help or direct a child if need be. Tim Gill, an advocate for children’s play and the author of No Fear: Growing Up in a Risk Averse Society, suspects that many of us aren’t accustomed to this sort of social contract, given how absent children are from much of public life. “We’re in danger of giving up the notion that it takes a village to raise a child,” Gill told me.

Dixie Dillon Lane, a writer and historian based in Front Royal, Virginia, told me that when she moved to Paris at 11 years old, her parents allowed her to roam the city as she pleased, which was common among her peers there. Lane thinks such autonomy was possible in part because, at least at the time, Parisian adults seemed to have few qualms about instructing an unfamiliar child. On one occasion, when Lane slid into a seat that opened up on a crowded bus, a man standing nearby told her to let an elderly lady sit down instead. In Lane’s experience, many Americans are less certain about the authority they have over a child that isn’t their own. Brussoni said something similar: Bystanders, and especially men, are often wary of interacting with children they don’t know, lest they be suspected of ill intentions. Parents don’t trust strangers, and strangers know it.

This “social anxiety about children and their place in society,” as Gill put it, is tricky to walk back. But improving urban infrastructure—narrowing streets to slow down cars, placing family-oriented spaces within walking distance of homes—can make the public realm more child-friendly, Brussoni said.