…there are forces at work here that we should recognize, name and resist.<\/p>\n
First is the upper-class, competition-driven vision of childhood as a rigorously supervised period in which unattended play is abnormal, risky, weird. This perspective hasn\u2019t just led to \u201cthe erosion of child culture,\u201d\u009d to borrow a quote from Hanna Rosin\u2019s depressing Atlantic essay on \u201cThe Overprotected Kid\u201d\u009d; it has encouraged bystanders and public servants to regard a deviation from constant supervision as a sign of parental neglect.<\/p>\n
Second is the disproportionate anxiety over child safety, fed by media coverage of every abduction, every murdered child, every tragic \u201chot car\u201d\u009d death. Such horrors are real, of course, but the danger is wildly overstated: Crime rates are down, abductions and car deaths are both rare, and most of the parents leaving children (especially non-infants) in cars briefly or letting them roam a little are behaving perfectly responsibly.<\/p>\n
Third is an erosion of community and social trust, which has made ordinary neighborliness seem somehow unnatural or archaic, and given us instead what Gracy Olmstead\u2019s article in The American Conservative dubs the \u201cbad Samaritan\u201d\u009d phenomenon \u201d\u201d the passer-by who passes the buck to law enforcement as expeditiously as possible.<\/p>\n