Free Range Kids

A few weeks back, I posted some commentary about Lenore Skenazy, the New York City mom who let her nine year old son ride the subway alone.  I was not the only parent motivated to write in support of her and what seemed to me to be a perfectly reasonable act on her part.  So many have written to her that Skenazy has started a blog on the subject called Free Range Kids. 

I expect some people will be outraged by what they incorrectly perceive to be an insouciant attitude on her part toward children's safety.  I suppose some will be aghast that she *gasp!* put a picture of her son on her blog.  And I'm sure that some, like me, will be amused by the implicit comparison of our children to cattle and poultry. 

But as recent events in Texas have so painfully shown, children are often far more at risk when they are under the care of their parents and their parents' friends and living in small towns than they are when riding the subways of New York.  Ironically, the alleged rape and abuse of  the kids in that "church" compound in Texas was actually facilitated by their parents' refusal to let their kids interact with the outside world.