"Why would you want to put children in harm's way?" That, put simply (and minus a lot of the yelling), is what I have been asked on 10 TV shows, 31 radio interviews, and an avalanche of blogs for about a week now – ever since I declared last Saturday "Take our children to the park … and leave them there" day.
I'd come up with the idea as a way for neighbourhood children (including mine) to meet each other, and even be forced to entertain themselves. Try it for half an hour, I'd suggested, just to break the ice. I said it was for ages seven or eight and up, because seven is the age kids walk to school, by themselves, in most of the world.
As one mom wrote to my blog, after sending her eight-year-old to the local playground: "He made up a few games and played in the sandbox, which he hasn't done in years, partly because I hate the sandbox, ha. He had a great time, wore a watch so he'd know when to come back, and was walking back up the hill exactly when he said he would be."
That seems such a nice, normal thing for a boy to do on a sunny day that I am dismayed it is considered radical, even dangerous. So let me state: actually, I don't want to put children in harm's way, any more than our parents wanted to put us in harm's way when they sent us outside. Violent crime is going down. Over in the UK, it plummeted 43% from 1995 to 2005-06. Here in America, it's lower today than it was in the 70s and 80s, back when most of us were told by our sane, loving parents: "It's a beautiful day. Get out!"
What has made those words sound so crazy today – at least when not followed by, "and I'll be watching you the whole time, with snacks, bottled water, Purell, sunscreen, the police on speed dial and your dental records with me, just in case"? It's because we have been force-fed a media diet of "You and your loved ones are in terrible danger from (fill in the blank)" for about a generation.
On Thursday, as I was waiting to go on one of the morning news shows, an ad came on TV: "Is your makeup dangerous? Find out today, on Dr Oz!" Cut to video of the doctor pointing to a lipstick and uttering words such as "bacteria" and "germs". I later checked my emails and up came the Yahoo home page: "Five serious dangers at the office." Apparently, if you wake up, put on lipstick and walk into the office, you've already put yourself in serious peril, twice. And that's before we put children into the mix.
The stories that sell are the scary ones, which is why we keep hearing about the dangers to kids posed by food (choking), formula (additives), nappies (chemicals), blankets (smothering), toys (phthalate), school yards (bullies), playgrounds (injury), bedding (fumes), playmates (racism), books (leaded print), shopping carts (bacteria), car seats (asphyxiation), strollers (amputation), and dirt (dirt). Hard to remember that our kids are, all told, pretty safe! When I was born, four times more children died in infancy than now. When my parents were born, we had yet to eradicate polio. Or Hitler.
It almost seems that, the safer our society becomes, the more we feel compelled to ramp up the fears about unlikely dangers. Which brings us to the one that made "Park" day so controversial. Parents are worried their children will be kidnapped the moment they turn their backs. That's understandable, because it's a crime we see every day on TV – often the same crime, shown over and over, because it is ratings gold.
But how common is it really? Warwick Cairns, author of How to Live Dangerously, crunched the numbers, and now asks: If, for some strange reason, you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped, how long would we have to leave him outside, unattended, in England, for that to be statistically likely to happen?
About 600,000 years.
It doesn't matter that those are about the same odds as death by lightning. All that matters to the media is scaring us. Result? We keep our kids inside. We stay there too. Then we turn on the TV and look! "Up next: is your toothbrush dangerous?"
Let me guess.
Lenore Skenazy @'The Guardian'
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