The Modern Parenting Paradox
It's a strange time to be a parent. We are constantly warned of the dangers modern technology poses to our children. "Screen time" has leap-frogged stranger danger and junk food as this generation's overarching parenting worry. It explains everything from childhood obesity to weaker academic performance to addiction-like behaviors to reduced social skills. Books touting the anxiety-inducing effects of children's screen-filled sedentary lifestyle regularly top best-seller lists. The New York Times listed The Anxious Generation Notable Books list, helpfully list under the heading "The Kids Are Not All Right." The message is everywhere: kids don't play outside anymore, kids don't ride their bikes to school, kids aren't playing enough sports, kids are too fat.
A recent New York Times piece by David French is typical of the genre. In How Did the Latchkey Kids of Gen X Become the Helicopter Parents of Gen Z?, Mr. French describes his idyllic childhood of unsupervised play and family dinners. He concludes that more intact families will help solve the problem, and gently chides Gen X and Millennial parents to "back off a bit."
This interpretation falls flat. Current parenting generations have lower divorce rates than their parents, which would have solved the problem already under French's formulation. He also does not consider whether the "outside" he wan children to play in is physically safe for them, and he does not address the very real consequences parents face when they leave their children unattended.
Allowing a child to walk or bike somewhere invites the very real risk of a "good Samaritan" calling the police. And if the child is injured or killed while unsupervised, the unspeakable tragedy of losing a child might also come with a felony charge. A father in Charlotte, North Carolina was charged in June of this year with felony manslaughter when his 10-year-old son was struck and killed by a car on the way back from a Subway, less than a ten-minute walk from his home (the driver was not charged). Last year, police were called to a quiet suburban street in Louisville, Kentucky when an 8-year-old was spotted bicycling on the street where she lived. A mother in South Carolina was arrested in July of last year for leaving her daughter to play at a nearby playground while she worked because she could not afford childcare. A woman was arrested last November when her 10-year-old son was seen walking alone in "downtown" Blue Ridge, Georgia, population 370.
The good news is that children are underrepresented in pedestrian deaths in the U.S. The bad news is this is because parents are making a rational decision not to let their kids walk anywhere, thus the rate of pedestrian death spikes dramatically at 20 years old, when children can no longer rely on parents for every ride.
When children are allowed to walk in neighborhoods, they are more likely to be struck by cars than adults. This is due to their underdeveloped sense of the dangers cars pose, as well as drivers overestimating their available stopping distance because of children's proportionally smaller stature.
Some may attribute this withdrawal of youth from public spaces as a reaction to the risk of violence or abduction. Even during the height of latchkey kids in the 70's and 80's, abductions of children by strangers were quite rare; 100-300 per year, or less than 1% of total child abductions. The other 99% of cases are usually non-custodial parents, with the balance being acquaintances of the child's family. These cases range from trauma to tragedy, of course, but the nature and prevalence of this threat to children has been vastly overstated for years. Put another way, child abduction is primarily a function of custody disputes and family conflict. The issue still dominates the child safety discussion, however, while the far greater threat killing thousands of children every year is right outside our doors: our roads.
Governmental response to parents' concern about street safety can be puzzling at times. When parents say they would like their children's ability to walk and bicycle taken into consideration in infrastructure projects, many elected officials trumpet that the arterial roadways crisscrossing residential neighborhoods are perfectly safe. These statements are invariably followed by arguments, also without evidence, that any change to the existing road network would create congestion. Imagine the FAA saying safety infrastructure improvements are impractical because they cause delays: "Faster trips for the survivors!"
Heavier police enforcement is often proposed as an alternative solution to safer street design, (sometimes, paradoxically, by the same public servants who say the streets are safe already). If enforcement alone were sufficient, the problem would have been solved by now. The evidence shows otherwise. This is because enforcement's vaunted deterrent effect is temporary. Research consistently shows enforcement gains fade within weeks. Enforcement is also very expensive. Enforcement proponents often overlook that police prefer to be paid for their work, and unlike infrastructure costs that can be offset by grants, police are paid directly with property taxes out of towns' annual operating budgets. Communities can pay once for lasting safety improvements, or pay endlessly for intermittent deterrence: not a difficult decision.
And of course, opinions differ on what a community should feel like, but when I picture a nice New England town to raise kids in, I don’t imagine four-lane highway bypasses with a heavy law enforcement presence.
Over the past 80 years, we built a transportation system that is lethal to children in their own neighborhoods. We then told the parents of those children that they are personally responsible for any negative outcomes of that system. Parents have responded by not letting children walk or bike unattended, reducing children's opportunities for recreation, face-to-face play, and personal autonomy, which parents are also blamed for.
By not letting kids walk anywhere, parents are forced to drive them everywhere. This puts an enormous strain on families, particularly those where all the adults are working full-time. It also exposes children to the risk of automobile crashes as passengers. Car crashes were the leading cause of death for children for decades, until gun deaths recently overtook them. Both causes are many times higher than any other cause of death for children, and they are both enormous global outliers.
Unlike gun control, transportation safety is often a local issue. Towns build and maintain many of their roads, and have influence on how state roads are managed within their borders. It may take time and patience, but this is something we can fix here in Windsor. We should commit to streets where children can walk and bike safely, whether to school or to a friend's house. If it feels dangerous to imagine a 10-year-old biking near Windsor Ave, Matianuck Ave, Park Ave, Broad Street, etc, then the need is real. Parents shouldn't have to agonize over screen-time vs letting their kids play outside. Let's fix our streets so kids can just be kids.
This piece appeared in the Windsor Journal on September 12, 2025
