Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone
Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone: “
This is awesome, only because it’s so rare to see sanity in these matters:
Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn’t strike me as that daring, either. Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.
No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn’t want to lose it. And no, I didn’t trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn’t do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, ‘Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I’ll abduct this adorable child instead.’
Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.
Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I’ve told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It’s not. It’s debilitating—for us and for them.
“
(Via jwz.)
Jeremy on Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone on Apr 13, 2008 at 12:22 PM
Great story! I don't blame parents for being worried about their children's safety, especially in this day and age - but I do blame them if they let their own worries trump a child's development and sense of self. To hold your child back because you simply can't stomach the uncertainty of near-impossible odds is pathetic. And it's instructive that this parent's critics can only offer one irrefutable argument against her decision: she's a child abuser. You can't argue with jail. I wonder, though... when you have a nation of adults that has grown dependent on an intrusive, paranoid, control freak government that seeks to abolish risk entirely and assume the responsibilities for all life, can you blame parents for thinking that same brand of paternalism is what's expected of them as parents?
Jim Van Fleet on Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone on Apr 13, 2008 at 11:08 PM
I believe that there is demand from the voting populace to "abolish risk entirely." That politicians suggest they can (and are) doing so, I personally find insulting, but I understand why they say it. The benefit of doing so is too clear. I think that the government is playing catch-up with the "mommy" community in the public on this particular issue, but that's not a judgement of particular relevance, value or quality.