Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts With Worry

You don't remember the times your dad held your handle bars. You remember the day he let go.

We want our children to have a childhood that's magical and enriched, but I'll bet that your best childhood memories involve something you were thrilled to do by yourself. These are childhood's magic words: "I did it myself!

I still remember the time my older son, Morry, who was maybe ten at the time, called me just after I’d left for work to ask if he could have banana bread for breakfast. “Sure!” I said. But what I should have said was, “Heck yes! Have whatever you want! I’m not there. If I get home and find the dregs of a vodka smoothie in the blender, I’ll know you need more supervision. Otherwise, you know how to make breakfast, and you’re old enough to decide what to eat.

The avalanche of expert advice—and nonexpert advice on nonetheless very enticing Web sites—undermines our belief that we are equipped with enough common sense to deal with most child-rearing issues. That battered confidence, in turn, leads us to look ever more desperately to the experts wherever we find them. At the library. In parenting magazines. On TV. Online. But a lot of those experts give advice so daunting and detailed and frankly nondoable (does anyone really want to spend the day retelling potty stories with the aid of a spoon puppet?) that we feel like failures. Then when—surprise—our kids turn out not to be perfect, we know who’s to blame. We are! If only we’d made one more pretend forest out of broccoli spears, our kid would be a veggie fiend. If only we’d put aside that deep-fried Oreo in our second trimester, she’d be in the gifted program at school. And if our child is cranky? Uncommunicative? Headed for five to ten years’ hard labor? That just might be because we told her, “Look, sweetie, a broken cracker is not the end of the world!” instead of saying, “Oooh, your cracker broke. Sad sad sad sad sad!” and respectfully relating.

Of course, if adolescents are ready to take on the world—and make babies and sustain the species—it’s no surprise they’re surly and awful to be around when we treat them like little children today. The disconnect between “I’m grown up!” and “You’re grounded” is just too great. One study found that the peak year for depression among American women is eighteen. They’re ready to start out but can’t get started.

The idea is that if you’re worrying, then you’re doing the right thing,” says Lawrence Balter, a professor at New York University and editor of the encyclopedia Parenthood in America. Worrying “is like a demonstration to yourself that you’re being responsible,” he says. It has become our national pastime.