# Free Range vs Helicopter parenting: Poll **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 24, 2015, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452 "2015-04-24T16:28:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/61 "2015-04-28T16:34:28Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > No kids here, so I am not voting, but I want to share my favorite story. My coworker brought her 8 YO daughter in one day. Coworker was on the phone, and the girl came and asked me where the restroom was. It’s just around the corner, and I told her so, and she went. I didn’t worry. > > She came back in and her mom came rushing (!) out. “You can’t go to the bathroom without me! **There are bad people waiting there to take you from me!** ” > > Whoa. > > What a way to either give the girl a complex, or ensure that she ends up never believing anything you say. I’ll bet that went over well with your coworkers. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/62 "2015-04-28T17:59:54Z")
> [@eclectic\_wench](#): > > Yeah, I don’t think anyone thinks they’re a helicopter parent. Everyone thinks they’re ‘free-range with prudent controls’. They just disagree about what the prudent controls are. > > The definition also depends on where you live. We’re in a city, on a street with a fair amount of traffic, no front gardens, no green space and not enough kids of the appropriate ages to make a loose group who can keep a vague eye on each other. My five-year-old doesn’t get to play out front on her own - sinister strangers are low on my worry list, but bad drivers are high up. When we go over to my brother’s house, in a suburban estate with lots of green spaces and speed bumps and no traffic except people who actually live there, the five-year-olds (theirs and ours) play outside with the resident gang of kids. ‘Prudent controls’ mean different things in the two places. This. In my opinion, the biggest “danger” is not “strangers”, but people driving cars - and the kid’s own inattentiveness to same. I have no studies to prove it, but I’m willing to bet that deaths or injuries from vehicles far, far outweigh deaths or injuries from “strangers” abductions (or deaths or injuries from playground equipment) for kids living in a major city. It is all very well to jump on the ‘free range, let the kid have a few boo-boos, s/he’s learn by mistakes’ bandwagon. It is a different story if the “learning” involves being smashed into the pavement by a car. The risks my parents took with me (early '70s) were nuts - I walked myself to school in Grade 1. That’s too young, I had several close calls, when wandering across streets. That was common back then, though. My parents (and all parents) took lots of risks with us we would never dream of these days - I used to ride in the back of my dad’s pickup truck down the highway in the country; my mom smoked inside the car with the windows up; I don’t think our back seat ever even had seat-belts (and if they did, they were never used). None of that was particularly unusual. Of course, at some point you have to risk letting the kids out in city traffic unsupervised, or the kid will never have any freedom. What point that is, though, will vary by locale and by kid. Today’s “free range is best, parenting today is nuts” has some truth to it, but is also heavily influenced by people’s nostalgia for the golden age when they were growing up. Which, looking back, wasn’t all golden. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/63 "2015-04-28T19:24:01Z")
Has there been an increase in the number of childhood threats in our society over the last 50 years? Has the number of pedophiles increased? Has the number of unsafe drivers increased? Has the number of wild animals, poisonous snakes increased? Has playground equipment become more dangerous? I would argue that with the age of 24 hour news available via cable news channels and the internet, that parents are much more aware of incidents of child death, abduction, injury today across the country and around the world than parents did 50 years ago. 50 years ago, you had national news only on for 30 minutes each evening. The rest of the news (television and newspaper, were primarily focused on local stories. Not so today. Parents today perceive the world to be a much dangerous place than parents did 50 years ago. I don’t think that it’s actually much different, but perception is reality. In fact, cars are safer today than they used to be. With pedophile registries today, parents are armed with the information that their parents didn’t have. The world didn’t change much, just our knowledge of it has. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/64 "2015-04-28T19:28:55Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > In fact, cars are safer today than they used to be. Yes and no. From the perspective of those _inside_ the car, of course. But cars are physically bulkier, and it can be harder to see little kids if they’re unattended by taller adults. Cars are also much better insulated, with better sound systems, so it is certainly harder to hear noises. I’d argue that cars are _ **not** _ safer for the average under-four-foot pedestrian. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/65 "2015-04-28T19:31:30Z")
Many helicopter parents who criticize free-range parenting as “harmful” willfully ignore the harm of smothering, overprotective, micromanaging, controlling helicopter parenting. We can’t look at the risks of one approach and disregard the risks of the other. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/66 "2015-04-28T19:52:00Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > Has there been an increase in the number of childhood threats in our society over the last 50 years? > > Has the number of pedophiles increased? > Has the number of unsafe drivers increased? > Has the number of wild animals, poisonous snakes increased? > Has playground equipment become more dangerous? > > I would argue that with the age of 24 hour news available via cable news channels and the internet, that parents are much more aware of incidents of child death, abduction, injury today across the country and around the world than parents did 50 years ago. 50 years ago, you had national news only on for 30 minutes each evening. The rest of the news (television and newspaper, were primarily focused on local stories. Not so today. > > Parents today perceive the world to be a much dangerous place than parents did 50 years ago. I don’t think that it’s actually much different, but perception is reality. > > In fact, cars are safer today than they used to be. With pedophile registries today, parents are armed with the information that their parents didn’t have. > > The world didn’t change much, just our knowledge of it has. Yes, cars are safer - to ride in - these days. Does that mean that the standards of yesteryear made sense? When I was a kid, no kid riding in the back seat used seatbelts. Is today’s seatbelt-mania therefore a bad thing? Or the use if specialty baby-seats? I think the better view is that the common customs of yesteryear were worse than what we do now, safety-wise. Also, safer to ride in does not, as others have noted, necessarily translate into safer for child pedestrians. The issue seems to be framed as ‘what we did in the past worked, and threats have not increased, so what people do now must be unjustified’. How about ‘what we did in the past was very risky in some ways?’ As to the danger of pedophiles, I agree that is much overblown. Not so risk of vehicles. That was under-rated in the past. According to the CDC, Motor vehicle injuries are a leading cause of death among children in the United States: [http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/child\_passenger\_safety/cps-factsheet.html](http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/child_passenger_safety/cps-factsheet.html) ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/67 "2015-04-28T20:15:52Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > Almost no parent today, even those who consider themselves free range, give kids as much latitude as the average parent did 30 years ago. This is despite the risk of any harm happening to a kid being objectively lower. I read things like the above and wonder why cause and effect are ignored in these discussions. Could the “risk of harm… be… objectively lower” precisely \*because \* “almost no parent today… gives kids as much latitude” as they did in the past? Why is the lower risk always used as an argument against parents today when, in fact, it’s more likely that it’s evidence that today’s parents are objectively better? ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/68 "2015-04-28T20:28:13Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > I read things like the above and wonder why cause and effect are ignored in these discussions. Could the “risk of harm… be… objectively lower” precisely \*because \* “almost no parent today… gives kids as much latitude” as they did in the past? Why is the lower risk always used as an argument against parents today when, in fact, it’s more likely that it’s evidence that today’s parents are objectively better? This was covered earlier in this thread. The largest reason the risk to children is lower is due to overall declining crime rates. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/69 "2015-04-28T20:32:41Z")
Again, chicken and egg. Are crimes against children declining because parents aren’t putting them in as many situations where they (the kids) could have crimes committed against them? ---
**Author:** ![eclectic\_wench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ac91a4/32.png) [@eclectic\_wench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eclectic_wench)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/70 "2015-04-28T21:02:50Z")
> [@Omar\_Little](#): > > Has there been an increase in the number of childhood threats in our society over the last 50 years? > > […] > Has the number of unsafe drivers increased? Yes. In Ireland in 1960, there were [78 cars per 1,000 people](http://www.econ.nyu.edu/dept/courses/gately/DGS_Vehicle%20Ownership_2007.pdf). In 2002, there were 472 cars per 1,000 people. And the population has increased by around 50% in that same time frame. So there are around _nine times_ as many cars on the Irish roads as there were in 1960. Let’s say, just for funsies, that people are only half as likely to drive unsafely nowadays. (This doesn’t fit my experience - I wasn’t born in the 60s, but compared to the 80s or even the early 90s, Dubliners today drive much more aggressively and have much, much less consideration for pedestrians. But just for fun, let’s go with it.) That still means that there are 4.5 times as many unsafe drivers on the road as there were in 1960. So if I’m more alert about unsafe drivers than my parents were, it’s not because oh those terrible young people are all such terrible smothering helicopter parents it was all so much better back in the old days when we wore onions on our belts which was the style at the time. It’s because the only non-stupid response to a manifold increase in bad drivers, and cars in general, is increased caution. ---
**Author:** ![May\_20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce7236/32.png) [@May\_20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/May_20)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/71 "2015-04-28T21:37:13Z")
My kids are almost 17 and almost 12. I’m free range with prudent controls. When they were 6 and 1, I was definitely helicopter. And with the younger child, I am more helicopter-y than I am with the older child. The older child basically tells me her schedule every morning and lets me know when I need to pick her up from where or whether she can get a ride from a friend. Yes, I sometimes say no, but it’s very rare and for reasons that even she deems reasonable (most of the time because she’s, well, 16). The younger one chafes at his sister’s apparent freedom because he doesn’t remember how things were when he was almost 7 and she was almost 12. She has had to earn her mobility by showing responsibility and maturity. And he often thinks he’s as “big” as she is. It’s a balance, trying to give them the freedom they need while remembering their maturity levels. Honestly, though, my husband is more helicopter-y than I am, though he expects me to enforce the “flight zone” since I am the one home with the kids. While the stranger kidnapping statistic is reassuring, I do know that if one of my children were kidnapped, I would be utterly broken. I am sure I am not alone in this feeling, which is why I think that we are sometimes too overprotective of our children. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/72 "2015-04-28T23:20:39Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > But cars are physically bulkier, What? No they aren’t. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/73 "2015-04-28T23:27:10Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > What? No they aren’t. I had the same thought but I would say the typical SUV has worse visibility, especially down low, than the tanks like a Bel Air or an old Caddy. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2015, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/74 "2015-04-28T23:32:05Z")
> [@TBG](#): > > What? No they aren’t. Well, maybe not if you grew up in the 50’s. I recall a lot of passenger cars and few light pick-up trucks, and looking around I see an endless parade of SUVs. Trying to get some numbers, it seems like the percentage of trucks / SUVs on the road has indeed risen, as has average car weight, over time. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/75 "2015-04-29T06:27:44Z")
nm. I don’t have enough experience here to be commenting. I gave my experience of how parents tend to act and from working with kids, but it sounds like some parents are vastly different to my experiences. I can’t imagine letting 10+ kids have complete run over an entire floor of your house, or kids running back and forth amongst houses. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 6:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/76 "2015-04-29T06:40:44Z")
Note: this is not because of something to do with my not getting out all that often or “looking at the world through my computer screen.” I took care of kids a lot as a teen. I helped out in kids ministry. I’d go over to people’s houses as a kid or play outside with other kids, riding our bikes around the neighborhood. I associate the less supervised kids as the kids whose parents don’t pay enough attention to them, which means they are the kids who act up more often. I thik supervision correlates with better behavior. ---
**Author:** ![Edward\_The\_Head](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ce73a5/32.png) [@Edward\_The\_Head](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Edward_The_Head)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/77 "2015-04-29T12:30:09Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Again, chicken and egg. Are crimes against children declining because parents aren’t putting them in as many situations where they (the kids) could have crimes committed against them? Would a [Washington Post blog](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/14/theres-never-been-a-safer-time-to-be-a-kid-in-america/) with cites be ok? All crimes and many accidents are all down against kids. I read an article, and I’m looking for it, that addressed your question, it said that crime is down across the board, for everyone. So unless your parents are still looking out for you it’s not because of helicopter parents. I did find one article, but it only deals with parts of [Northern Virginia.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fairfax-posts-record-low-crime-rate-in-2014/2015/04/20/f4462dc8-e79c-11e4-aae1-d642717d8afa_story.html) > [@Anaamika](#): > > She came back in and her mom came rushing (!) out. “You can’t go to the bathroom without me! There are bad people waiting there to take you from me!” > > What a way to either give the girl a complex, or ensure that she ends up never believing anything you say. I have two daughters, 9 and 6. Their mother and her parents have said the same thing to my kids for years. So much so that my 9 year old will still go to the bathroom with my ex-father-in-law in public bathrooms. I’ve been told I’m not supposed to let them go by themselves because something could happen to them. My oldest will sometimes not go to the bathroom without someone else, even when she really needs to go. The other day I was at the grocery store and went to the bathroom. Some guy was walking his 9-10 year old daughter in to the men’s room. It was strange to see that as she was far too old to be in there. My ex, who has the kids most of the time, is a helicopter parent, she doesn’t let them out of her sight, she doesn’t teach them anything either that I would think most kids know how to do, she does it for them. My kids give me their butter knives when we’re out to eat because they are not allowed to touch them. It’s a butter knife, one has to work hard to cut themselves with it. I’ve been told in multiple emails not to let the kids outside unless I go with them and that letting them be somewhere alone is not good. How the hell are kids supposed to learn anything if they are not given the chance too? No “free-range” parent is kicking their kid out the door at 2 years old, they are gradually giving them more freedom to learn on their own. Otherwise, when they get older they aren’t going to be able to handle themselves. As a parent my job is to teach my kids how to deal with stuff in the world, teach them how to do new things. I can’t tell you how happy my kids get when they learn something for the first time. Just a couple of weeks ago my 9 year old finally learned she really could use a butter knife to cut something, and learned it’s not hard and not going to hurt her. ---
**Author:** ![Moonlitherial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4bbf92/32.png) [@Moonlitherial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonlitherial)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/78 "2015-04-29T14:12:39Z")
Your job as a parent is to raise adults. Kids need to learn to deal with responsibility, preferably in small easy to digest doses. My kids got a huge confidence boost when they started at University and discovered that skills they thought were universal were actually kind of rare. They had classmates who couldn’t boil water to cook a meal because they had never been allowed to use a stove, one who had others check her bus routes every time she had to go places because she was so frightened of getting lost she couldn’t trust her own reading comprehension. Now we definitely had failures when they were learning but those help. My daughter decided to join us once at an event downtown. She caught the commuter train from our neighbourhood to join us in the city since we both worked downtown. She made a bad transfer and ended up on an express train to the suburb on the opposite side of the city instead of getting off at the exhibition station. She was 12. She panicked a little, used her payphone quarter and called us for help. We were able to talk to her and the station agent and get her on a return train where she joined us at the event, a little late. 8 years later when she lost her passport within hours of arriving in Paris on her solo spring break trip she was able to (after one tearful phone call home) deal with the embassy and getting her passport reissued and still enjoy her trip. She’s always been a very sensitive kid and that kind of resiliency was hard to teach. It took dozens of “Oh look the worst happened, now what do we do to fix it” situations before she was able to stop and had we helicoptered until she was 18 she would have had no coping skills. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/79 "2015-04-29T16:34:31Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > I’m a man. Imagine the reaction if I were to come up to an unaccompanied child and start talking to it. Not that I have ever called the authorities on a parent, but I can see why that option would be less fraught than going up to the child directly. What the what?? I don’t have to imagine it. I talk to random children in the park all the time, and I’m a man. What is “fraught” about that? Seriously, “Imagine if I talked to a child…”? People who are afraid to talk to other people’s children in public probably also think kids shouldn’t be out of an adult’s sight until they’re 25 years old. It’s a similar derangement and I don’t think we should encourage it. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2015, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452/80 "2015-04-29T16:55:04Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > What the what?? I don’t have to imagine it. I talk to random children in the park all the time, and I’m a man. What is “fraught” about that? > > Seriously, “Imagine if I talked to a child…”? People who are afraid to talk to other people’s children in public probably also think kids shouldn’t be out of an adult’s sight until they’re 25 years old. It’s a similar derangement and I don’t think we should encourage it. Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I’m a childless, middle-aged man. A friendly one, who likes kids. I’ve had a couple of unprovoked unpleasant reactions from parents in the past, and they’ve affected me. I can’t be sure what the problem was, but it seemed to be Unattached Male Near Children. Maybe it was something else, who knows? It was probably just rude people, and I’ve probably over-compensated. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-range-vs-helicopter-parenting-poll/718452.md?page=3)