Free Range Parenting Law in Utah.

[kellyb]

I'm pretty sure "free-range parenting" is the norm in most developed western countries. Americans are just incredibly frightened and anxious about everything. I mean here kids walk, bike or take the buss to school pretty much when they start going there. It's not uncommon to see children go to the store, a couple of kilometers away, by themselves either.

I think the abduction and abuse "satanic panic" in the 1980's is part of what changed American culture. That, combined with so many people in the economic upper 40% moving further and further out, away from the urban cores to properties with very large lots where walking to stores and schools was impossible.

 

[paulhutch]

Wow things must be very different outside Massachusetts. I've seen none of this nonsense about parents getting in trouble for allowing their kids to do the things I and my friends did in the 60s and 70s.

From the article:

Several families have faced serious legal consequences for practicing free-range parenting.

The article only points to 4 incidents in the USA of parents getting trouble, one in MD, one in NYC, one in SC and the other in FL and all 4 where acquitted in the end. So several families in a country of 350 million people have had a problem and they create a whole new law. IMO a better approach rather than passing a new law is to clarify or re-write whatever law is in place in the a state that causes the problem for parents that allow normal kid activities.

I'm actually leaning towards thinking there aren't any laws in UT prohibiting this to begin with (especially since they can't point to even a single problem in UT) and instead it's ridiculous overreaction and an authoritarian must create a law desire for a non-issue by the Libertas Institute of Utah.

 

[kellyb]

Just one anecdote: not too long ago I was lurking on a facebook post where someone was complaining about the bad mother next door letting her 5 year old play outside in her front yard alone. In the 5 yo's front yard. No indication the kid was running in the street or anything. And the consensus was that the neighbor should call CPS.

 

[quadraginta]

I suspect it's not about them being trapped inside, but rather, being unsupervised in a public place.

A friend of mine is a VPD officer, and he mentioned to me last year that kids going missing is pretty common from "I went into the bar and left the kid in the car, when I came out at 3am he was gone! How could this have happened!"

The phrase "reasonably safe conditions" gives a lot of latitude for interpretation, but I suspect that the situation you describe would fail that test under most reviews.

 

[quadraginta]

Just one anecdote: not too long ago I was lurking on a facebook post where someone was complaining about the bad mother next door letting her 5 year old play outside in her front yard alone. In the 5 yo's front yard. No indication the kid was running in the street or anything. And the consensus was that the neighbor should call CPS.

He could have eaten dirt!!!.

When I was five we lived in the married grad student ghetto at Syracuse University. What kids were there (and there were a lot) were almost exclusively six or younger. This means that many of us didn't even have school to take up part of our days.

We ran in a pack all over that neighborhood (and beyond), membership earned by being able to keep up. Parents were at school, working, or studying, mostly. I don't recall very many parental interventions.

There are things I do remember which I seriously doubt would pass muster even by the most relaxed modern standards, and yet, there were few injuries, most of those of the sort which could still easily happen today. (One example; I broke a collarbone when I was four, falling out of a tree.)

Of course, these were also the days when parents responded to childhood diseases like measles or chickenpox by throwing parties so that all the neighborhood kids who hadn't been exposed could come by to get infected.

 

[Loss Leader]

When I grew up in rural Minnesota in the 70's, I along with my brother and sister were alone at home at times while our parents worked.

There was a story a couple years ago about a mother who let her 9 year-old son ride the NYC subway alone. Some people were horrified.

ETA: Huh. She started a whole movement.

 

[Brainster]

Just one anecdote: not too long ago I was lurking on a facebook post where someone was complaining about the bad mother next door letting her 5 year old play outside in her front yard alone. In the 5 yo's front yard. No indication the kid was running in the street or anything. And the consensus was that the neighbor should call CPS.

My sister asked me to watch her 9-year-old son to make sure he got to the next-door neighbors one time. She lives on a cul-de-sac in very nice suburban area, where the houses are around 3500 square feet apiece, and run in the high six figures.

And, dutiful uncle that I am, I made sure to watch him carefully. Fortunately no strangers were lurking in the bushes and he completed the trip uneventfully.

When I was a kid, it was more or less understood that I'd be home for lunch most of the time, but not to worry if I didn't get back till dinner. Obviously I'd get a bit of a scolding, but that was all. We lived in an area where there were lots of kids (height of the baby boom) and were very close to a schoolyard, where there was plenty of room to play baseball or football.

 

[Loss Leader]

The current unreasonable panic traces pretty cleanly to the abduction of Adam Walsh and John Walsh's subsequent founding of the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Stranger abduction is a real thing and it does happen, but the reaction to the danger is grossly out of proportion to the threat.

 

[quadraginta]

My sister asked me to watch her 9-year-old son to make sure he got to the next-door neighbors one time. She lives on a cul-de-sac in very nice suburban area, where the houses are around 3500 square feet apiece, and run in the high six figures.

And, dutiful uncle that I am, I made sure to watch him carefully. Fortunately no strangers were lurking in the bushes and he completed the trip uneventfully.

<snip>

From the POV of actual statistics it would have made more sense for your sister to get a stranger to watch the kid, in case there were any family members or friends lurking in the bushes.

 

[Arcade22]

Just one anecdote: not too long ago I was lurking on a facebook post where someone was complaining about the bad mother next door letting her 5 year old play outside in her front yard alone. In the 5 yo's front yard. No indication the kid was running in the street or anything. And the consensus was that the neighbor should call CPS.

If it's too unsafe for children to be out playing in their front yard without constant adult supervision in their neighborhood then I'd say that people should consider moving away as soon as possible, at the very least for their own safety.

At some point people have to acknowledge that there are perfectly acceptable risks in living among other people and, unless you intend to live like a hermit in the middle of nowhere, you have to accept that the only reason you are alive is because someone has decided to let you live. Hell even if you live in the middle of nowhere you are at risk because you lose the effect of safety in numbers.

 

[fuelair]

If my childhood was viewed through the present day POV, my parents would have faced charges of neglect, child endangerment and serious violations of child labor laws.

I did not suffer a bit.

Not only did not suffer from walking the 2+ miles home from my elementary school (4th through sixth) but I found a large cache of men's magazines by a tree near the small stream running through the area. It was the initial foundation of my very fine collection!!

 

[blutoski]

I'm sure you trust your friend, but I'm surprised those cases don't make the news?

Depends on how long it takes to locate the child, but yes, some make the news.

Wouldn't they issue amber alerts for the kids?

Pretty much never.

In Canada, Amber Alerts are only issued if there's very strong evidence of an abduction. A kid wandering off due to boredom is not an Amber Alert scenario here.

 

[blutoski]

Where would the kids wander to from a bar in the middle of the night for a few hours? Surely the parent would get arrested and it would make the news at least some of the time?

Bar is just an example, for brevity. Bingo hall, casino... even shopping center parking lots. Not very newsworthy, and often resolved within hours without police intervention.

 

[blutoski]

The phrase "reasonably safe conditions" gives a lot of latitude for interpretation, but I suspect that the situation you describe would fail that test under most reviews.

Yes, just for clarification, I don't entirely agree with the law, but I understand where it's coming from, and wanted to explain that the car rule probably wasn't about the kid being at risk of suffocation so much as just being unsupervised.