

Advice from America's Worst Mom - aycangulez
http://theweek.com/article/index/96342/The_last_word_Advice_from_Americas_worst_mom

======
abalashov
From the point of view of a Soviet immigrant to the US, the predominant public
reaction the author describes is quite bewildering. It is hard for me to
imagine how an 8 or 9 year old child riding a subway could be the basis of a
sensational news story; if anything, 8 or 9 sounds like a seasoned, advanced
age.

I came here when I was 6, in 1992, and did quite a bit of my growing up
subsequently in a well-tended, well-watched family-oriented graduate student
housing facility on the campus of a private university. Not exactly the 'hood.
My parents, as all the (predominantly foreign) residents there, were busy
graduate students trying to make it on a ~$10k/year stipend with student visa-
based work restrictions, and, being in the humanities field, faced quite
daunting demands to excel so distinctively according to the rules of their
field in order to have a stab at staying in this country after their visa ran
out. So, of course, they were busy working/studying until 10-11 PM.

Never in my wildest dreams as a Moscow child could I have imagined that
leaving me alone in that highly enclosed, heavily security-patrolled, communal
environment full of watchful neighbours and fellow parents would be considered
"child neglect" under Indiana state law, nor that, in fact, it would be so
until the age of 12 to leave me home alone for _any_ amount of time, strictly
speaking, as a statutory matter.

In fact, I was one of the very few children of ex-USSR or Eastern European
extraction who was not, at some point during this tenure, essentially
kidnapped by university security with no notice given to the parents and
placed in a foster family for a few days while the shocked and aggrieved
parents were badgered with saber-rattling about child neglect by whatever
state agency. I avoided it narrowly by a stroke of luck; on many occasions,
e.g. winter nights, when I was playing outside - in the dark! - at the
precarious hour (!) of 8 PM, I saw the university cops peering out of their
patrol cars, eyeing me like prey. Honestly, these keystone cops were a far
greater danger to my welfare than any conceivable predator. They were often
unpleasant and openly contemptuous, amplifying the psychologically traumatic
fear of police and other martial authorities that is already built into any
child of Soviet parents by inheritance. To this day, I still have this
reaction to cops that I must surely be "guilty" of something, even though I'm
innocent. The way that they provided foundations for that feeling, with their
hostile dispositions, abrasive lines of questioning, etc. was a lot more
injurious to my development as an individual than free association with other
kids until mid-evening in a protected communal yard.

It is difficult to imagine a safer environment for a child than the kind of
place that this was. If there were ever a place where there were some adults
around at almost times, and neighbours you knew and could count on in case of
an emergency, this was definitely it.

The stream of sanctimonious busybodies from the state child/welfare agency
that would occasionally come around to harass these poor, tired foreigners was
just unbelievable. Now that I've lived in Georgia for 10 years, I make an
analogy to what Georgia's agency - DFACS (Department of Family and Children's
Services) - spends its time doing in predominantly working-class Hispanic-
occupied trailor parks and poor black neighbourhoods down here.

Some of this is just an incorrigible cultural and institutional defect, as
other comments have pointed out. Another important difference with the USSR
specifically, though, is that we had households with two working parents for a
lot longer than has been normative in the US; our entry of women into the
workforce dates back almost to the revolution, in keeping with the Marxist
gender equality premise. So, Soviet society developed institutional solutions
and accommodations[1] for this relatively early. A necessary consequence is
that children had to lead a parent-independent existence much earlier in their
lives than if the premise of a full-time stay-at-home mother is granted.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Russia#Pre-
school_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Russia#Pre-
school_education) \-- see the paragraph ("The Soviet system...")

------
patio11
In Japan there are lots of kids commuting to school at six or eight years old,
often across town or in different cities. Everyone thinks I'm batshit insane
when I tell them what Americans would think of it. I am mostly on board with
this, although I did walk an eight year old to the station in downtown Nagoya
because he was walking there at ten pm.

~~~
pmjordan
Same in Vienna. There are no special school buses, kids just use the same
buses and trains as everyone else. In more rural areas (such as where I grew
up) kids either get the bus or walk/cycle. In fact, I remember walking home
from school together with friends as being quite fun (highlight of the day?),
with various adventures to be had along the way. And nobody freaked when it
took me twice as long to get home as it should have because we found something
exciting in a ditch along the way or decided we needed to climb a tree.

I'm pretty sure any incidents would hit the media pretty quickly. That said,
driving your kids to school seems to be much more common now than it was 20
years ago.

My girlfriend, who grew up in the UK, was amazed when she first witnessed the
kids on public transport, but then the UK is an extreme case of overzealous
protection. These days you apparently can't just pick someone else's kids up
from school without special paperwork.

~~~
rimantas

      UK is an extreme case of overzealous protection
    

Which does not work? I am too lazy to look for sources right now, but wasn't
there a research wich found that childern in UK are the most unhappy in the
world? Not to mention problems with alcohol and teenage pregnancy. I guess
this kind of protection is like trying to protect someone by not allowing him
to walk on his feet. When finally let go he'd just collapse at once.

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malkia
Me (4 back then) & my cousin (5) took off one day from the city where our moms
were with us, to our home city (20km - not much) - we walked, ate some grass,
kicked some signs, tooks two buses - one in right direction, one wrong - total
from 9:00AM, uptill 4pm or later we were at the door of my grandmother &
grandfather asking for the truck toy (that's why we started, we needed to play
in the sand and we were missing an important vehicle).

That was in Bulgaria, around 1980s - Yes people were worried, but not much -
it might've been the communist era that either did not produce much child
related crime, or such were hiddenly took and dealt with (by still spreading
that everything is okay).

Nowadays (especially was it 2004-2005) - there was whole media frenzy of kids
disappearing - for about week or so. I've looked at the statistics - and
nothing was different for that week compared to previous years - it's just
that media picked it up.

It's exactly that - media - not news source - I'm talking about CNN, FOX,
MSNBC and the crap that they do. I used to love CNN, I don't think I do
anymore...

Anyway just my experience.

Oh, and later it was no problem for me taking of one part of the city (Burgas)
and walking 2 or 3km through couple of streets, just to go to where my
grandmother worked, and they go back, and stroll the streets.

Hell, our most favourite kid movies were about kids strolling all day streets
either at their home cities, or at tourist resort places their parents were
staying.

But nowadays.. It's just too much, too soft, and too tight at the same time.

As the article is saying: "Preaching independence while warning against it."

------
Zak
I grew up in rural Alaska. By the time I was 8, I was hunting small game
unsupervised. I was allowed to operate an ATV on my own as soon as I was
physically able to work all the controls (I rode it with a parent's assistance
before that). It was a bit longer before I got to take out the motorboat on my
own. I may have been a bit younger than average for the area when I started
doing some of these things, but not by much.

None of these things caused problems. People didn't start having ATV or gun
accidents until they discovered alcohol and inhalants. No children were eaten
by wolves or bears. I was a much happier child because of the freedom, and I
think, a much more self-reliant adult.

------
meric
Since I was 9, I looked for my 6 years old brother after school and brought
him back home by bus every day. Granted, occasionally it would take me 20
minutes to find him and I'd get frustrated at why he was playing in the sand
pit when we were supposed to go home, but it's not like we ever got kidnapped
by strangers or anything....

That was only 11 years ago in Australia.

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sanj
My son (about 8) just managed to walk a half mile across streets and traffic
lights to the grocery store to buy lemons -- for lemonade.

Beyond the fact that he managed to overpay for the lemons, he came back safe,
proud and happy.

Sign me up for worst father!

~~~
StavrosK
Jesus, who would rip off an 8-year-old?

~~~
elai
I can so see a too energetic kid throwing money on the table and not listening
to the clerk to come get his change and running out of the door.

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dlsspy
Why isn't she teaching her children to be afraid of everything? So unamerican.

I fully expected this to be a Jessi Slaughter article. _That_ is a set of bad
parents.

------
rue
The U.S. stands far and beyond any other place in this respect, though I
suspect some of the same influence is starting to creep in elsehere as well.

In The Best Country in the World(*), I used to walk to first grade by myself
and thereafter rode buses/subway/trains by myself or with schoolmates - just
like everyone else here. Most of us even came home to an empty house and had
to manage to feed ourselves before the parents got home some hours later.

This used to be the norm about a decade ago still when my younger brother was
in that age range, but recently based on public discussion it seems the
bubblewrap parents are gaining a foothold.

------
elblanco
I really wonder if all these parents today were so tremendously traumatized by
their freer range that they have to coop their kids up all day to avoid that
kind of catastrophe? Are there really millions of child rearing adults
suffering from PTSD because they go to ride the bus alone at 9? I've yet to
really understand this strange phenomenon of the shrinking roaming area.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-
children-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-
lost-right-roam-generations.html)

I grew up in an urban area, then moved at 10 to a very rural one. In both
places my "roaming" area was several miles in any direction from my house. In
fact, my parents set my roaming area in the city to a specific triangle of
roads that they felt were too big to and dangerous for me to cross, but
weren't too mad when my friends and I did on occasion veer outside of those
lines. If I had an older friend with us (he had to be at least 13) then we
could pretty much go anywhere our feet or bikes could take us in a day.

I did this until I was about 10, then we moved to a very rural area and my
boundaries became very large indeed...basically as far as I was able to walk.

My parent's were aghast when they were contacted by the local rural middle
school after the principle had seen me cutting across an intersection in front
of the school after class one day to get to the local shopping mall to hang
out at the arcade. He demanded that I either take the bus home, or get a cab
to take me literally across the street, an activity I had previously
performed, at a much younger age, dozens of times a day.

------
gommm
When I went to study for a semester in Rochester, I didn't have a car and
tried at first to hitchhike.

What really surprised me was how scared most people were (especially when it
was around 8pm at night) when I would approach them. It was as if they
automatically thought that only a thief or a criminal would be coming to them
in a car park.

In France, Spain and Germany (I used to walk 40 minutes to school there when I
was 12), I've never seen that, people don't expect the worse to happen to them
and don't seem to have their heads filled with tabloid whatifs scenarios or at
least not yet.

~~~
chronomex
I'm wary of people at night, but that's because I actually got mugged
recently.

------
julius_geezer
"A year ago, journalist Lenore Skenazy caused a media sensation when she let
her 9-year-old ride New York City’s subway by himself."

a) Outside of how many acres of Manhattan? b) Which lasted until when? The
next silly-ass story for an ADHD media cycle, I suppose.

Back in the day (Kennedy administration) having your Mom walk with you to
school was a fine way to be marked as a loser (though we didn't know that word
yet). I usually read on my way to work, but I'm fairly sure I do see kids
younger than middle school riding solo or at least without adult supervision
on DC buses.

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ibejoeb
I would absolutely worry, but I hope I'd be able to let it happen.

This is a nice, semi-controlled experience that's probably good for everyone.
Should the parent and child become separated, for example, I'd imagine that
the knowledge each has--that arriving independently at a safe destination is
routine--is serious peace of mind factor.

This is similar to the fire safety plans a lot of us did as kids. Didn't
anyone else crawl out the window and down the fire escape and meet our parents
a few blocks away, despite the building not actually burning, just to be
prepared?

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farmerbuzz
I wonder if the outrage over this is part of the same trend described in the
20-somethings article ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1614280> ). If
kids are more sheltered, then it would make sense that it takes longer for
them to "grow up" and start making decisions of their own. It could also
explain why the partying and debauchery is so crazy at American colleges (the
first real taste of independence), although I can't honestly say I know what
its like anywhere else.

------
ifthen
Times are different. I walked to school since kindergarten, but no way I let
mine when it came time. (Certain years we drove just because we lived where
there were no bus routes, and making a small kid walk that far with heavy
backpacks just never made sense from a time POV.) Imagine that though, they
actually survived my paranoia.

But now? No way unless they were a few years older. NYC needs to watch more of
that news they dismiss: Attempted kidnappings happen a lot in the burbs. All
paranoia is local though.

------
greenlblue
This kind of thing is very common in almost every corner of the world where
there are subways and in general a decent public transportation system. That's
how my brother and I grew up. We were basically on our own since 1st grade
because where I grew up everything was a two station ride and a block away.

~~~
elblanco
Something similar is also common in very rural places. Where walking miles
through the woods, or along a dirt road are the normative ways local kids find
each other.

------
shard
Man alive! I was taking the bus home from school by myself from FIRST grade.

~~~
malkia
My boss, a native californian, told me that he used to take the bike and cycle
for about mile, two or more to his school, and then back (San Fernando
Valley).

~~~
ugh
And that’s special? Jesus. I was walking to elementary school starting in
first grade (half a mile) and biking to my next school right from the
beginning (fifth grade, a bit more than a mile) and I was taking the bus when
the weather was too bad for me to take the bike (which includes walking half a
mile to the nearest bus station). That’s nothing special in Germany. Everyone
does it.

~~~
elblanco
I live in boring suburbia. The elementary, middle and high schools are a 10,
15 and 20 minute walk from house respectively. Somehow, I still have to
contend with kids all over the neighborhood dutifully lining up so that the
bus can come pick them up at the crack of dawn and then drive them, 2...maybe
3 minutes to their schools. It's stupid.

------
malkia
Sorry, another post.

But what happened to the "Little Red Riding Hood Story"?

How do we interpret in nowadays US standards? I guess it makes sense, huh! The
big bad wolf, right!

~~~
Mz
Actually, my understanding is that "Little Red Riding Hood" is a tale of
sexual predation. "Little Red Riding Hood" is a euphemism for the clitoris and
it's generally a lot more obvious in French that it's a sexual morality tale.

------
Mz
I've lived without a car for about 2 1/2 years in Suburbia, USA. The character
of my neighborhood has changed. You see more kids outside playing. Teens walk
to the nearby shopping center now. So this stuff can change -- and I think it
needs to. I think Peak Oil will compel America to make some changes of some
sort. Hopefully, we will use it as an excuse for constructive changes.

------
dnsworks
Ride a train? By the time my daughter is 9 she'll be flying alone back and
forth betweenOK)

