We’re contemptuous of ‘lazy’ poor mothers. We’re contemptuous of ‘distracted’ working mothers. We’re contemptuous of ‘selfish’ rich mothers. – Motherhood in the Age of Fear
I’m a big proponent of free range parenting. But it’s something I’ve shied away from writing about in the last year. Not because I don’t want to but because I’m afraid of someone reporting me to a child welfare agency. Sound irrational? My neighbour in Vancouver was reported for letting his children ride the bus alone.
The day Adrian told me what was happening with him and the ministry I decided I did not want to be put in the same position. Not only have I not wanted to write publicly about the independence we allow our kids but I didn’t want to speak privately about it either.
It didn’t feel unsafe to leave my capable almost eight year old home alone for thirty minutes while I picked up his brothers. But it felt unsafe to tell anyone in the neighbourhood about it.
Adrian’s story should have been a rallying cry for parents. And it was for some. For many others it was a warning. If you’re allowing independence and some autonomy for your capable kid, if you’re ‘free range parenting’, you’d better not let anyone find out.
Free range parenting isn’t a thing in our small town.
If a parent gasped at a gaggle of well versed and mature siblings taking a public bus without an adult by their side, they would keel over from the free range parenting happening in our small town. Except here it’s not called free range parenting. It’s just called life. Young children walk home on their own from school and bike to swim practice solo at age eight.
At the beginning of the summer, a group of kids eight and under, along with a toddler sibling, were roaming my neighbourhood with a wagon selling lemonade. They told me they lived a twenty minute walk from our house. To get back home they would have to cross a busy street. I watched them trolly around the streets quite capably. Neighbours waved to them. They were fine. In another city, in another neighbourhood, the police would be called.
There’s less fear in our small town. The smallness of this place, the familiarity of most faces even after just living here for ten months, breeds it. There’s also less money in our small town. Many parents can’t afford an after school program. That’s one of the things this great article, Motherhood in the Age of Fear, brings to light.
“In a country that provides no subsidized child care and no mandatory family leave, no assurance of flexibility in the workplace for parents, no universal preschool and minimal safety nets for vulnerable families, making it a crime to offer children independence in effect makes it a crime to be poor.” (NYTimes)
Many families in our small town rely on a patchwork of friends and grandparents for childcare. They also rely on the independence of children. It is not a vote for free range parenting that they are making but, rather, a necessity for their livelihood.
As the NYTs article points out, all parents are not judged and punished equally. Women of colour and lower income women are judged and punished more harshly than middle class white mothers. And fathers that allow their children independence? Often they are not judged at all.
Fathers are not judged in the same way mothers are.
My husband gets so many kudos for being a father.
When we lived in the city and he was out alone with the kids, pushing a double stroller with another kid close by on a scooter, people literally stopped him to tell him what a great job he was doing.
Recently he took the kids away for three days on his own. If a standing ovation could be heard through iMessage that is what he got as people were blown away by his parenting. When I do those thing the reaction is quite different.
I’ve spent several stretches of my almost nine years as a parent without a partner at home. The type of work my husband has done has required a lot of travel.
What is the reaction from strangers when I’m on my own with my three children? If they are misbehaving or having a meltdown there is no sympathy but rather a “your problem, your fault” attitude. “You’ve got your hands full” is said quite often and often the tone isn’t one of sympathy or celebration. The tone is contemptuous as Kim Brooks, the writer of Motherhood in the Age of Fear, so succinctly points out.
What does any of this have to do with minimalism?
The weight of parenting in an age of fear hurts not only our kids, it deeply impacts the parents. We have less time to ourselves. The emotional labor of motherhood becomes an even heavier mantel to bear. If we must constantly be with our children, and our children must constantly be with us, there is little time to meet our own needs.
This summer has marked a turning point in our family. For the first time in almost nine years I don’t have an infant or toddler in diapers. My kids are becoming more independent and playing well together and alone.
I realized something had changed in the late spring. We were at a soccer tournament with the whole family. My husband was coaching our oldest son’s team. I realized I had subconsciously been dreading the tournament because I imagined our younger kids would be trying to run onto the playing field or out into the parking lot. It was going to be a lot of work to just be there.
Instead, my three year old and five year old mostly amused themselves. They played on their own, near enough to the soccer pitch that I could see them but far enough that they didn’t disrupt the game.
Free range parenting and giving children independence can give parents more time.
Parents are desperate for time, even moments, to themselves. We are around our children, watching them, supervision them, chauffeuring them, more than any other generation. We need a break. A new study shares that parents get just 32 minutes a day to themselves.
Our experiment last summer with removing screens for eight weeks showed me that my kids can play independently for long stretches. And I am revelling in this new found space for myself. To know the kids are fine and don’t need me hovering. Is it selfish to enjoy this time for myself? I don’t think so.
Independent children are making me a more present parent. I have more energy and attention for my kids when I’m with them… because I don’t have to be with them all the time now.
I’ll note that one of my children is also not as independent as other children his age due to his disabilities. That fact has made the independence he and his brothers have around our home and yard, that much more needed.
For now, free range parenting simply means that our kids are not supervised around our house and yard at all times (a parent is home – just not always in the same room as them or outside with them). My oldest now walks to a friend’s house that is three blocks from our house on his own.
These are small things that have greatly impacted me: I can workout in our basement without having to have all the kids down there with me. I can sit in the backyard reading a book while the children run, play and are often out of sight from me. I can cook a meal without having to turn a television on to get them all to sit in one place so I can keep an eye on them.
Free-range parenting doesn’t just liberate kids – it liberates parents.
Do you consider yourself a free-range parent?
I think this topic is fascinating.
I think I was raised as a free-range kid…before that was a thing. As others have commented- staying outside until dark, not necessarily checking in, parents not always sure where I was, etc etc. I mostly remember that with fondness and a good bit of pride (kids these days and their helicopter parents, and so on), but if I am honest it also had it’s downsides. I think I would have benefitted from a few more boundaries than I had as a kid. There’s security in knowing where the fence is, you know? Kids need to know how far they are permitted to go. My childhood version of free-range’ness let me wander wherever, for however long. But sometimes that was unsettling and I would have liked my parents to keep closer tabs on me.
Not sure if that makes sense, but I guess I don’t want to glorify the good old days too much. I like the free range version of parenting…with boundaries.
That really struck a nerve for me. I have always been the main care giver for my children because my husband works long hours. We also have a child on the Autism spectrum, one with ADHD, and one with severe food allergies and asthma and eczema. Just typing that out makes me tired. LOL I was always tired, some days I didn’t sleep at all for 24 hours straight. There was never an option for me as far as leaving them alone or letting them walk to the bus stop. When I started homeschooling however, our bond deepened and they began to mature, thank God! This year they are all teenagers and I have finally been able to leave them alone. When I had surgery over the summer, their Dad came with me and they stayed home all day. It sounds like a little thing, but for us, it was huge! I definitely feel kind of jealous of parents who can free range parent, but then I just have to be thankful for my journey.
Misty – I feel for you. This is a different journey for our family with a kid with special needs. If things were different, by next year the kids would all be walking to school together without us and their older brother would be in charge of meeting the youngest at the end of the day. But that’s not the case. I’m thankful for some of the freedoms we do have like the recent ability for our oldest to make it to a friend’s house a short walk away (with a confirmation text from that parent that he arrived).
I wrestle with free-range parenting … not because of the kids, but because of the parents!
As the recipient of some neighborhood free-range kids, I find that I am often shouldered with their parents’ responsibilities. For liability purposes, I like to meet the parents and make sure they know that their kids want to come into my house and backyard.
If I don’t welcome these kids in, I’m labeled mean and unkind, and not just exercising my boundaries. (I’ve been yelled at by a parent, who threatened to call the cops after my husband asked their kid to stop sitting in our window sills, peering in, and told him it wasn’t a good time to play because we had family visiting from out of state!) I guess we better get comfortable being the “mean neighbors”.
I’m all for fostering community and neighborhood kids playing together. I want my own daughter to learn independence and gain confidence navigating our city on her own. But as a parent, I urge other parents to also do the work — meet your neighbors and establish some basic ground rules with your kids –Where are you going? Who are you going with? When will you be home?
So, yep, I’m a little wary of free-range parenting because of the personal risk I put myself in as an adult around minors.
This is really interesting and I’m thankful you shared your experience with free range parents. We expect our kids, and their friends, to make sure an adult is aware they want to play/hang out and that it’s okay. I’ve had to send kids home before and we have experienced kids just showing up unannounced. I’m comfortable letting them know if it’s not a good time for us and sending them on their way. It’s too bad the kids and parents in your neighbourhood aren’t respectful.
Excellent. Yes. It’s all just one more way to punish women for being women by setting unmeetable standards.
I was a latch key kid in the 70s from about the age of 9, when my single mother could no longer afford regular childcare. Was this ideal? No. No, we flooded the house, and set the weeds on fire, and broke the kitchen table. We hunted bats in the storm drains and played in vacant houses and construction sites (and stepped on the occasional rusty nail). Daylong stretches of unsupervised time for kids that young are…unwise, but sometimes there’s just no choice. But as a result I know that at ages 7 and 8 my kids are perfectly capable of crossing the street and going around the corner to swing on a neighbor’s tree swing, without me, together or even individually. When we go to the park I settle in for a chat or to read my phone and every 5 minutes or so I look around to see what they’re up to, but I don’t feel a need to hover or supervise their play. They climb trees and play on tall monkey bars (first broken arm this summer!) and drink out of public drinking fountains and only use hand sanitizer after visiting a porta-pottie. I let them go to the bathroom at restaurants without me. I *gasp* leave them in the car at Trader Joe’s when I go shopping (the plus side of that is I stay on task and am less likely to get seduced by the demo or bring home a bunch of random junk food.) They use real knives to cut food. They stir pots on the stove. NONE of this should be considered radical or revolutionary, and yet… Fortunately, most of the parents and neighbors we know see this all as totally reasonable and normal. Do I still worry about the call from CPS? A little. But not enough to chain myself to them every minute of the day and keep them from developing their independence.
We were also latch-key kids for long stretches. Single mother, six kids. Today my suburban childhood would be viewed as dangerous and punishable by law in some areas. So true, the burden and the cost and the punishment is all on women.
Can you tell me more about how you trained your kids to be aware of their surroundings and the people around them? I grew up in the country. We regularly biked a mile to the neighbors house, and 5 miles to our grandparents. I will be raising my kids in a town of about 30,000. We were 15,000 8 years ago and then the oil boom hit and we grew in a crazy insane way over the next 3 years. So now we have settled down. But we still have over a dozen registered sex offenders on a bulletin board at our library. I don’t want to raise my kids with fear but with situational awareness.
I’m trying to live by actual risk factors – not perceived risk. My kids know not to take things from strangers, go with them, etc. They know the correct names for their body parts and that no one should touch them. Can I ensure a sex offender won’t scoop them off the playground while my back is turned or as they are walking home from school with a friend? No. But it’s more likely they will get hit on their bikes by a car – so teach road safety – than that they will get abducted.
Statistics tell me I should be more concerned with the home that has a pool a few blocks away than registered sex offenders. I’m also more concerned with sexual assault from one of their peers, older kids or a known adult. That is much more frequent and likely than an abduction by a registered sex offender. Again, I teach my kids about their bodies, what inappropriate touching may look like and what to do in that situation. And, above all, that they can tell me anything.
It is so refreshing to see someone using actual quantifiable risk of danger to determine how to protect their children. A near-death incident with my toddler in a parking lot when I was pregnant and too crippled to stop him from running off due to severe sciatica caused me to evaluate whether it was safer to leave my son in the car at pre-school pickup or to brave taking him inside for five minutes. The numbers are clear – there is far greater risk of injury or death to take him out than to leave him safely buckled and locked in a car with the air conditioner running. After that terrifying experience, I realized I was taking him in purely due to social pressure. Even if there were no parking lot risk (2 children die per week being hit in a parking lot or from a car backing up) he would literally be more likely to be killed in a school shooting than to be kidnapped. I will never put my own concerns about peer pressure over my children’s safety again.
Parking lots are extremely dangerous for children, especially shorter children and preschoolers. My children did not have a lot of parking lot experience before we moved away from the city. They visited stores that were sidewalk adjacent and on foot and we didn’t have a car for many years. I’ve had to teach them parking lot safety and still, it doesn’t feel like enough. I turn into a helicopter barking parent in parking lots, demanding hand holding. My oldest is now taller but has some disabilities that leave him vulnerable to not being aware of his surroundings. I completely agree with you: parking lots are a real danger for kids.
I know people get all amped up about registered sex offenders, but if you check the registry, often the victims are teenagers (like the guy was 20 and girl was 15). It’s important to look at those details. That calmed me down a lot since very, very few are young child related.
Yet another excellent post. You know, from my perspective as a person who is child free by choice, this whole idea that children must be kept under lock and key until they’re … I don’t know how old, 15? Well, anyway, it really looks like societal psychosis from my perspective. I honestly don’t know how anyone survives parenthood without losing their mind. And when I compare it to my childhood experiences, the craziness of it all becomes even more stark. I mean, my mother walked me to school the first day of kindergarten, and after that I was on my own. I was 5 years old. By the time I was in the 2nd grade, my mom had gone back to work full time, and was taking night classes, and my brother and I were latchkey kids. I look back on it now, and think geez – these days you’d get hauled off to prison if you allowed your children anything close to that level of freedom.
Perhaps it’s not fair for me to have an opinion on this since I don’t have kids, but I have to believe that all of this emphasis on “safety” is really misplaced. What, exactly, are people trying to keep their kids safe from? I mean, statistically speaking, violent crime levels have never been lower. And I think you have to look at the whole child – how are kids supposed to learn to do anything for themselves if they’re never allowed out of their parent’s sight? And don’t EVEN get me started on the childhood obesity epidemic. I have to believe that society’s general refusal to allow children to go outside and play has something to do with it.
Anyhow, a while back, the movie E.T. came up on Netflix, and I decided to watch it for old time’s sake. Holy Kazoli! The general childhood freedoms portrayed in that film look very much like what I remember as a kid. Being left home alone when you’re sick, no parents around until dinner time, kids roaming the neighborhood and any wild places they could find on their bikes, trick-or-treating without an adult in sight.. etc, etc. Watching it really made me sad for today’s kids. I’m so heartened to learn that sanity still prevails in small towns like yours.
We watched E.T. with our kids and I was floored by the 80s freedoms. An eight year old at home all day sick with no parent!!!
Thank you so much for taking on the stigma and silence surrounding this topic. We moved countries and I feel more liberated here to be as free range-y as I’d like – partially because the people who judged me for it aren’t around. Thankfully my partner and I are on the same page and our girls get along really well. I think it’s one of my most important jobs as a parent to help my kids learn to be independent and self-reliant. I relished my independence in childhood and want the same for my kids. I also want and need more than 32 minutes for myself because it makes me a better mom for them. It’s a win-win, but needs to be out in the open more. Thank you!
I know re: 32 minutes. No wonder parents – and kids – are stressed out and anxious.
That’s great that you’ve found more freedom for your family with a move. We’ve also found it with our move. Not that there aren’t free range parents back in the city – there are. But you are constantly defending yourself and dealing with stranger comments. Our kids would be scooting ahead of us and people would literally yell at us from their cars that we were bad parents. Ugh.
I had a lot of independence and responsibility as a kid. I grew up in NYC and we walked or used public transportation.
I’m raising my two kids in the suburbs. We are walking distance from the elementary school and our “downtown” but I don’t let them walk there unaccompanied yet. It’s because of the cars. First, my older child isn’t tall yet (he probably will be because my husband and I are, but for now, he’s among the shortest of his peers) and drivers just won’t see him easily – especially if the car is an SUV. Second, it doesn’t matter if the driver is at fault, it’s my child that would be injured. I’m not a free range parent – I’m sure I’ll grant a lot of freedoms later than other parents. But I don’t want to be the maid, the chauffeur, the cook, & the secretary until they go to college, either.
Once the kids are in middle school or high school, school bus transportation is provided. Based on the the location of the combined campus, no one walks to school after elementary school.
My kids are ages that I think I should be able to send them to the corner store, or the library, or our small movie theater without me accompanying them. Certainly they should be able to be in our home alone. I have a bit of a net with that – my husband works nights and sleeps during the day. So while I’m working the kids might be home sort of alone – they have to manage for themselves but they can wake dad for an emergency. But we are also in an apartment, and there’s always THAT NEIGHBOR that minds everyone else’s business and not in a helpful way. So I also keep our “independence” as private as possible.
Independence is definitely going to look different depending on your specific environment. Our rural cousins aren’t able to go to town on their own until they are old enough to drive, because of the distance. But my kids could never play outside unless another adult was with them, because we have neither a park nearby nor our own private property, and the common area of our building is mainly a parking lot.
Oh – I hear you about the “kudos for dad” thing, too. I think my husband is a great dad! But he gets credit for just being there – like points for spelling your name right on the SATs.
Our apartment building wasn’t set up for independent play either. It was actually a shame because there were a lot of families and a few small changes could have made for an amazing situation for all the kids.
So true that independence looks different depending on where you are. The rural kids here have no freedom to go in to town or meet up with friends. But… they do have freedom to explore the acreages they are on and I know some of them get to drive farm equipment at a young age 🙂
Great article.
Thank goodness my sons grew up in the 70’s.
We lived in the Fairview area of Vancouver. Big old houses, lots of character.
Free Range Parenting was not something considered special or to be kept secret then – it was normal life. Kids played out, unsupervised. Today I hear terms like ‘Play Dates’ – wow kids used to just knock on the door and say can (insert kids name) come out to play. Nothing was prearrange by parents.
My kids went to school from grade one, alone, on the bus. They visited friends, biked around even crossed the road to buy ice cream on occasion.
Often my sons would be gone for hours on end, 2 blocks away playing at Chocolate (Choklit) Park – before it was sanitized – it was a real adventure playground then.
The only rule was to be home before dark – but more often came earlier as they were ‘starving’. Never did I feel it was not safe for them.
I find a lot of kids today are so protected, so coddle they grow up fearful of everything and everyone – they will find it hard to function in the real world.
“It didn’t feel unsafe to leave my capable almost eight year old home alone for thirty minutes while I picked up his brothers. But it felt unsafe to tell anyone in the neighbourhood about it.”
This comment sums it up perfectly for me. The society we live in really does make parenting much harder than it should be. The focus should be on what is best for you and your child, not what meets the guidelines of ‘parenting’ to the general public (many of whom often don’t have children).
Thanks for the post, something that has been bothering me for a while as a parent of 2 small children.
I’m a total free range parent- but you’re totally spot on about the fear with telling anyone how you parent. Our 10 + 8 year old stay home alone for up to two hours all the time. They have a cell phone and know what to do in an emergency and which neighbors to go to. Our oldest is extremely mature and responsible and his generally wild little brother listens to him for some reason. We started leaving them home alone over a year ago for short stints, like running to the grocery store and slowly added more time. Now, I can go to the gym or the spouse and I can go out for dinner alone and leave them at home. They’ve also been riding to and from school (less than a mile) since the youngest was in kindergarten. We live in a quiet suburb where people know each other, so it’s pretty low risk allowing them to ride to a friend’s house or let them roam the neighborhood until a certain time. I just try to remember the freedom I had at their age and try to dole the same out where appropriate. I think the fear parents have bleed to their children. I already have a kid with an anxiety disorder, so we’re teaching him while he’s young that he’s capable of handling things on his own. I know there’s often the fear that we’re making kids grow up too fast, but it can also be argued that kids are being babied far too much today too. It’s all about balance and finding appropriate spaces for freedom for kids.
I love this! Your kids must be so proud to be trusted. Or they totally think it’s normal. 🙂