Are We Overprotecting Our Kids?

Getting around unsupervised used to be part of normal childhood. It could be scary, but it also taught independence. For most children, those days are gone.

Writing in the Washington Examiner, Meghan Cox Gurdon looks at the trouble with over-protective parenting:

Getting around unsupervised used to be part of normal childhood. It could be boring, and sometimes scary, but it taught independence. City kids penetrated the mysteries of mass transit, and learned how to fend off weirdoes on the subway. Rural children got used to walking along the side of roads, and learned how to fend off weirdoes in cars.

Most of the time, though, no weirdoes were involved, and children did just fine. They became competent because they were allowed to develop the capacity to navigate the world, without grown-ups constantly hovering. For most children, those days are gone.

You don't have to be a free-range fanatic to find something insufferably suffocating about the way children now live: Carried from the confines of home to the cocoon of school and back again, with a stop or two at an enclosed facility in which athletic or academic enrichment is delivered (after payment is received).

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