When I was five years old, I walked to kindergarten every day. It was three blocks each way. For that matter, so did nearly every other five-year-old who lived within three blocks of the place.
The next year? First grade? I and all my friends walked six blocks each way to school.
My parents would probably be arrested today.
That’s the subject of Ross Douthat’s latest.
And besides the usual snickering at the overweening, overprotective helicopter parent run amok, Douthat points out something much more corrosive:
Third is an erosion of community and social trust, which has made ordinary neighborliness seem somehow unnatural or archaic, and given us instead what Gracy Olmstead’s article in The American Conservative dubs the “bad Samaritan” phenomenon — the passer-by who passes the buck to law enforcement as expeditiously as possible. (Technology accentuates this problem: Why speak to a parent when you can just snap a smartphone picture for the cops?)
20 years of watching John Walsh has turned us into a nation of Dwight Schrutes.
Except when child protective services gets involved, nobody walks away laughing.
10 blocks each way. For 9 years, twice a day for 6 of those years.
High school was about 2.5 miles away one way. Walked or rode a bike for all of that.
We live in a country where 25 year olds are considered “children” by the government… should anyone really be surprised?
Keeping people perpetual children is a fairly big industry if you haven’t noticed. Turning down aid in the form of the federally mandated “Free” and Reduced Breakfast & Lunch Program will facilitate contact to some authority reporting you as an unfit parent as much as leaving an uncooperative 7 year old unsupervised in a car with the windows rolled down while you run into Holiday for a cup of coffee will.
Due to desegregation guidelines probably more inner city kids being bussed across town to a far away school than walking to their neighborhood school.
This is a very tough call. A 4th grader being left on her own for a four to eight hour work shift is very different than the case of a parent running in to a gas station for five minutes with their child in constant view. (As a young, newly single parent, I did the latter, but not the former). I’m guessing South Carolina is not a state that is “happy to pay for big government” like MN, so low-cost/free after school or summer child care is hard to come by for low income, single parents. As Mr. Douthat says, it’s a dilemma for conservatives.
When I was a kid in the 60’s we had a season pass to the local pool. My mom would send me at age 9 and my brother at age 7 off on our bikes for the entire afternoon. We could swim, play at the park, go to the baseball diamond or fool around with our friends whose parents did the same thing. What was once considered good parenting is now criminal. At age 11, I was responsible enough to be in charge of both my brothers, then 9 and 2, and answer the phone after hours for my father’s business. If he had to make an after hours call, I would contact him and relay the message.
I never once felt like my parents did anything wrong nor did anyone else in town. In fact, they were considered model parents and had also been foster parents. Nowadays their behavior would be criminal for both child and violating child labor laws.
The nannies out there will not cut anyone any slack. Last year I left my dog in the car with the windows cracked at Target whlle my wife and I went in for five items. We were back within six minutes and somebody from Hennepin Co. Sheriff was already at the car. After giving us a “talking to” he let us go with a warning. I then took the on the mile long walk back home while my wife drove the car. Probably lucky we were not arrested!
I too walked to school several blocks each way for my entire childhood and roamed much farther in my free time. Today I could be arrested for allowing my daughter the freedom to develop the independence to be a responsible adult. Come to think of it, that development of independence could be quite threatening to the “authorities”.
The term cell phone Samaritan also applies. That device makes everyone an instant hero. The stuff that people call in is ridiculous. On the other hand, perhaps Kitty Genovese might have survived today.
The degree of self-realized stupidity on the part of the caller can usually be determined, if contact with them is made, by how many times in a minute they recite the mantra, “But you never know, right?” to you.
Or, some would try to justify such foolishness by acknowledging that they didn’t know “what they should do,” as if every situation had an expectation of a specific response, or that they had some obligation to respond to it.
In fairness though, unless the cops are particularly busy, part of the job is to respond to such calls and, if necessary, politely help the caller understand what 911 is really for. A too harsh response by the police could eliminate the possibility of a person ever calling again, even in situations where it truly is necessary. Perhaps part of the new militarization is the instilling a sense of importance, or, “I’m too good for such things.” ?
Don’t trust your friends and neighbors but trust the government? After Obama said the government is made up of our friends and neighbors?
The comments to the Douthat piece were pathetic. The problem lies deeper than single moms unable to afford child care when they are paid the minimum wage. The best outcome thelibs hope for is that mom earns $15/hr. flipping burgers while her kids are being looked after by strangers, who do not love them and who are motivated by profit.
What conservative endorses the idea that children should be put in daycare so their parents can work? I’m certain that there are conservatives who believe that, but it is not a conservative idea.
Pow: What is the conservative response to a single parent who has to work, has no nearby loving family and has to have strangers look after his/her child? I’m concerned that the typical Calvinist/libertine responses – your child is the result of sin and you should be punished or why let a child be born of your pleasure – are not morally acceptable. Real children live in real, broken families – they are owed our concern and care. This is an area where faith communities could fill a much bigger role.
Google Gerald Amirault and get back to me.
If you’re a male, getting within 10 feet of a child (including your own) under any circumstances without an unrelated witness or a recording cctv is, at best, unwise.
Just a Mom-
The scenario you describe, a “a single parent who has to work, has no nearby loving family and has to have strangers look after his/her child” should be looked at as a disaster, not the norm. The commenters to Douthat’s piece looked at it as being the norm. You don’t push for a huge increase to the minimum wage to handle a case that is out of the ordinary.
The “single mom” story always starts in the middle. How did she get to be a single mom? Some are unavoidable and regrettable, but some made bad choices and now hold the kid hostage for more handouts. When society encourages and subsidizes sexual promiscuity and individual satisfaction over family unity, the good single moms get lumped with the bad. The solution isn’t more subsidies for single moms, it’s to stop encouraging single motherhood.
Starting when I was 5 years old (and barely 5) I walked by myself to school. Only 3 blocks.
Was at my parent’s house last week. I noted a school bus sign in town. I asked why kids need to take the bus for the 6 blocks to school. The mother said “that’s nothing. We see the kids standing out in the cold on the corner of (xxxx & xxxxx) waiting for the bus”. I said “that is only 4 blocks. Wouldn’t they get to school quicker by walking?”. “yes”.
Mr. Doaks … Thanks for precisely expressing a thought I’ve had for a long time but was unable to express without sounding even more ignorant and prudish. The whole “war on women” is predicated on what you’ve described, referring to such behavior as a women’s health issue.
Same with the “single mom” designation. It used to be applied to those mothers who were widowed, abandoned, or perhaps got pregnant in some involuntary manner. Those who became mothers intentionally, through wanton behavior, or other optional methods didn’t get the same victim status as we now apply to any woman who has a child. God forbid anyone engage in “shaming” such activity.
I never had the option of a school bus either even though I lived in a fair sized city with a busy, uncontrolled intersection or two along the way.
Nowadays, one of the worst things you can wish on someone in my area is to be in a hurry and find yourself behind a school bus which is going to the same place you are. The distance between school bus stops in my neighborhood is so slight that a kid with a good arm could play catch with another kid standing at the next bus stop. God forbid one of these drivers notice the train of cars stopping and starting behind him and pull over so they could pass …
In the old days (before Bismarck invented the social state), the shame a person felt for having children outside of marriage (make or female) wasn’t shame of sin, but shame of taking food from your neighbor’s plate to fill your own and your child’s plate.
Nothing to do with religion, other than that the parish was the mechanism used to transfer the money. You know those terrible poor houses in the Dickens books? They weren’t run by the state, they contracted out to parishes. They were an adaptation of the old church-based system of family welfare to the industrial age.
Regarding single parenthood, one thing that strikes me is that the most dangerous person to a child is mom’s boyfriend. Not the child’s dad, but mom’s new boyfriend when the parental relationship breaks down. And given our nation’s rate of relationship breakdowns, there are quite frankly a lot of BOMs (boyfriends of mothers) out there. Which probably explains a lot of our concern, no?
And regarding how to help single parents in general, my take is that we need more, not less, Calvinism and awareness of sin–both the sins of fornication/divorce and the sins of taking from others when we ought to be providing for ourselves. And it’s worth noting that prior to the welfare state, people of all religions, especially Calvinists, took a very active role in providing for the poor.
See Marvin Olasky’s “The Tragedy of American Compassion” for details, but more or less, the poor would be divided into “worthy” and “unworthy” by work and moral tests. Those who were not willing to do real work or reform morally had the incentive of hunger to learn to do so, and looking at what’s happening in the inner city today, I’ve got to say it was a more moral thing to do than what we’re doing today.