Confessions of an Anxious Parent

Are today's parents afraid to let their kids play on their own? Jill Suttie tries to strike a balance between safety, freedom, and success.

By the time I was 11 years old, I'd incurred my fair share of childhood injuries. I'd fallen from my bike and scraped my face, stepped on a rusty nail in the woodpile behind our house, and broken my arm while roller skating. My parents did not encourage any of these injuries, nor approve of them. But they left me alone to play, most of the time, and my explorations inevitably resulted in the occasional trip to the hospital.

Nor were my parents especially concerned about trying to make my free time educational. They didn't worry that four consecutive hours of TV would warp my mind or diminish my reading skills. They never pushed me to play chess or other strategic games, nor did they join me in playing tag or hide and seek, and I didn't expect them to. Parents were supposed to be inside—working, cooking, cleaning, fixing stuffmdash;and kids were supposed to be outside & being kids.

Not anymore. As the parent of my own seven– and 11–year–old boys, I am more apt to hover over them, worrying about their safety and how they are using their play time, than my parents ever were. And I'm not alone: Many of my parent friends share my anxiety. These days one is more likely to see children on organized "play dates" arranged and supervised by parents, or playing an adult—organized team sport, than to see them involved in spontaneous play with neighborhood kids.

We're afraid to let our kids play outside unsupervised because something could happen to them. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "concerns about safety have limited the time and areas in which children are allowed to play outside," and have contributed to a decrease in overall physical activity among children. Journalist Richard Louv bemoans this trend in his 2006 book, Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. "Fear is the most potent force that prevents parents from allowing their children the freedom they themselves enjoyed when they were young, he writes. "Fear of traffic, of crime, of stranger–danger—and of nature itself." In short, TV can seem a whole lot safer than an empty lot or busy street corner.

"There is this idea that every child's experience must come with a health warning because every aspect of their life carries a potential risk," says Frank Furedi, a sociologist at the University of Kent in England and the author of Paranoid Parenting. Parents are afraid to let their children confront the world on their own, he adds, because they have a preconceived notion that it's a dangerous place, even more so in our post-9/11 world.

Though statistics show that criminal activity is down in many communities and there is reportedly no more danger from crime today than there was 40 years ago, those facts don't seem to make much difference to parents, myself included. Despite my own childhood experiences—or perhaps because of them—I still find myself regularly peeking out of the front window to make sure my kids are alright. Yes, the girl who once broke her arm roller skating now anxiously keeps an eye on her own kids, and media reports of the rare childhood abduction, freak accident, or terrorist attack just feed the flames.