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How much supervision do children need?
My parents were stricter than many others. When I went out to roam the neighorhood as a kid, they usually asked where I was going.
I walked to school beginning in first grade. I walked over a mile to middle school. My middle school friends and I would walk two miles to the mall.
Most of the neighborhood around my house was a free-range zone. At any time, I could be at one of three or four houses or in various backyards. Bikes could extend my range considerably.
I knew it was time to come home when my mom stood on the front steps of the house and called me at suppertime. Sometimes in the summer, I would go out again after dark.
Often my parents would drop my brothers and me at the swimming pool and leave us there all day. Occasionally, I would go to a Saturday matinee at the local theater with cartoons, a short and a double bill, and stay there most of the day with my friends.
I had easy access to chisels, handsaws, files, knives, nails and other sharp and pointed objects in my dad's basement workshop. And I could heat up canned soup on the stove by myself in the second grade.
Apparently that amount of freedom at an early age isn't the norm these days. Just ask Debra Harrell, 46, a South Carolina single mom who was arrested after leaving her 9-year-old daughter to play alone in a public park while she went to work as a shift manager at a McDonald's.
Harrell spent the night in jail, lost custody of her child for 17 days and could face 10 years in prison if convicted of felony child neglect. She is accused, under South Carolina law, of leaving a child at "unreasonable risk of harm affecting the child's life, physical or mental health, or safety," although law enforcement officers are given wide discretion to decide whether a child is endangered.
But more information is necessary to give the full picture. The North Augusta park in which her daughter, Regina, was left featured a splash pad, a playground and basketball courts. Volunteers come by each day with free breakfast and lunch. Most importantly, neighbors say plenty of friends and some parents and baby-sitters also are around to watch the children.
Regina used to spend the day with her mother at the McDonald's, where the girl passed the time fooling with her laptop. But the laptop was stolen in a burglary at their home, and Regina was left to sit doing nothing, bored to death. She reportedly begged her mom to drop her at the park.
I can't compare my youth with Regina's. My mom didn't work, and we had a network of neighbors who kept an eye on things and would lend a hand any time my mom needed help caring for us.
The options for a single mother working a menial job are far more limited. Harrell said she couldn't afford regular day care.
But while Regina's mom was not around all day to watch her, the park seemed to provide some of the same protections the neighborhood of my youth did. Regina had meals, friends to play with and at least some adult supervision in a facility that catered to kids.
Slate online magazine recently conducted a survey that indicates how things have changed since my childhood days. Most respondents who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s said they had been allowed to walk one to five miles from home alone in the second or third grade. By the 1990s, most children had to wait until middle school age to do that.
Slate cites a change of attitude in the 1980s. People became more concerned about the dangers of parks and playgrounds, and some high-profile abductions sparked fears of child-snatching.
President Ronald Reagan declared National Missing Children's Day, and the faces of missing children began to appear on milk cartons. But despite the growing concern, statistics indicate that children in the '80s or today are no more likely to be abducted by strangers than they were 40 years ago.
In other words, we can't necessarily justify keeping children on a shorter leash simply because the world has become more dangerous.
I'll concede that children can get into mischief when left on their own. And leaving children totally unsupervised with no adult to contact in an emergency can be highly traumatic for the child.
But what's a single working mom with no money for conventional day care supposed to do? Grandparents or other relatives often lend a hand, but they aren't always available.
It's no wonder that mothers quit low-paying jobs to stay home with their children. Cities need parks or other recreation areas where young children can be dropped off for safe, supervised play.
I hope Debra Harrell doesn't go to prison. She was doing the best she could in a tough situation.
James Werrell
7 August 2014
http://www.thestate.com/2014/08/07/3607228/opinion-how-much-supervision-do.html#storylink=cpy
