Over at the New York Sun, Lenore Skenazy has started an almighty furore with a column about letting her nine year old son navigate himself home in New York. He took the subway and a bus. She has been pilloried and attacked and she has (which has presumably been the upside) appeared on numerous talk shows to defend herself, and her belief that her boy was perfectly capable and responsible enough to carry out his mission.
The most remarkable thing about this business is that his trip was considered remarkable at all. He was doing no more than carrying out a trip that would be an everday event in the life of a normal child a generation ago. Moreover, when done for the first time, such experiences are character-building and teach responsibility for oneself. I watched this little chap interviewed (good grief) and he seemed perfectly mature enough for the simple task to me - though really, its' not much my business, I think, since such matters are always best left to parents, who know their children better than anyone else. He gained a little independence that day, and took pride in being able to take on something and succeed in it. That is - or should be - part of the educational process.
That we don't teach children this healthy sense of responsibilty and self-reliance, in the same age that we sexualise our children with bras for seven year olds and (I learn from Vanessa Feltz today) stiletto shoes for babies might be seen as a good sign of the collapse of any kind of common sense in our society.
It will also have something to do with the obsession with paedophilia in this country and western society more generally so well spoofed by Brass Eye, an obsession that one is usually attacked for criticising - but, here goes.
I start from the position that children ought to be challenged and taught responsibilty as they grow up. We do children a disservice when we deprive them of such learning steps of achieving goals and demonstrating responsibility - and we do them a greater disservice when we teach them that the world is full of drooling paedophiles. First, because it isn't, and secondly because by cotton woolling children and not ever allowing them out of sight we are rearing a generation of timid souls, unwilling to challenge the world around them and less able to enter fully into independent adult life.
The paedophile obsession isn't discouraged by government because it produces a more malleable citizenry, by dint of the existence of a threat too large, dangerous and mysterious to be dealt with by the individual. So responsibility for your children is transferred a little more from the family, where it belongs, to the state.
The solution to the paedophilia problem is treatment for the non-offending paedophile and extraordinarily harsh sentences for the offending paedophile. The solution is not effective house arrest for all children at all times. We ought to punish the transgressor, rather than punishing an entire generation of children for the fact that some perverts find some of them attractive.
So - well done Skenazy. You came to the reasonable opinion that your child was ready to take a baby step from the nest. You knew that such a step was not without some risk, but you didn't overreact because you realise that life involves some risk and that risk has to be accepted in the parenting process just as it does in everything else.
