Mar 30, 2018 4 min read

Considering the recent massacre of schoolchildren at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, and the seemingly never-ending stream of stories about terrible things happening to kids here and across the country, you’d think parents would be keeping their children close and hugging them a little more tightly. Well, most parents, anyway.

There’s a segment of parents in this country who support a “free-range” approach to raising kids. In other words, if a young child wants to walk alone a few blocks to a playground, no problem. If a mom wants to leave her kids in the car while she pops into a store, no problem. And now, the state of Utah has signed off on this.

Last week, Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill that would, among other things, allow children 9 or older to walk or bike to school unattended or remain in a vehicle while a parent runs an errand. According to an Associated Press report, this applies when there are “reasonably safe conditions.” We’re not even sure what that means.

Where, exactly, is it reasonably safe for a 9-year-old to wander around without supervision or remain in a car with no parent keeping a watchful eye? Some neighborhoods might seem idyllic, but bad things happen in the best of places. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, based on U.S. Department of Justice Figures, nearly 800,000 children – about 2,000 daily – are abducted in this country every year. Some of those abductions are the result of family or custody disputes. But of the children who are kidnapped by strangers, 20 percent are found dead, and the center says that in 80 percent of kidnappings by strangers, the abductions happen within shouting distance – a quarter-mile – of the children’s homes.

The approval of the legislation in Utah came about a decade after the “free-range” phrase entered the lexicon. According to a Yahoo! report, writer Lenore Skenazy wrote a story for a New York City newspaper about allowing her son, then 9, to ride the subway and bus by himself because he wanted his “independence.” Her piece led some to label her the worst mother in America, but others signed on to her free-range kids blog.

Several parents have faced charges in recent years for alleged failure to properly supervise their children. The Yahoo! report noted the case of the Meitiv family of Silver Spring, Md., in which the parents were charged on two different occasions for allowing their kids, ages 10 and 6, to walk home from a park without supervision. They ultimately were cleared on charges of neglect.

According to Yahoo!, “Other high-profile cases involved Debra Harrell, a mother in South Carolina who was charged with unlawful conduct toward a child for allowing her 9-year-old to play alone at a park while she worked at a local McDonald’s, and a Florida mother named Nicole Gainey, who was arrested for child neglect after allowing her 7-year-old son to walk alone to a park.”

In response to the new Utah law, Skenazy said, “Yes, anything can happen. But I hate the idea that imagination becomes the basis of law(s)” that punish parents for their decisions in supervising their children.

But there’s nothing imaginary about the hundreds of thousands of child abductions and the sexual assaults and even murders of kids that occur every year.

Proponents may say that the “free-range” approach is just a different way of parenting. We find it to be more like laziness and dereliction of duty.

In a perfect world, our kids would be safe and sound no matter where they went, without parents and other adults keeping a close eye on them. But as we know, and as we hear in the news every day, we live in a very imperfect world.