It鈥檚 one of the puzzles of our time that as communities grow safer, we鈥檙e becoming more protective of our children. The days when kids were sent out to play and left to their own devices are long over.
Many of us wouldn鈥檛 think of letting our youngsters go to a park alone. Or anywhere else, for that matter.
Less than 30 per cent of kids walk to school these days 鈥� just half the number who did a generation ago. Instead, we drop them off and pick them up.
Don鈥檛 dream of leaving a child home alone. A Winnipeg mother was charged with child abandonment for leaving her six-year-old son unattended at home for 90 minutes.
Forget letting your kids go to the store alone. Security guards at a Lego Store in Calgary took an 11-year-old into custody for shopping by himself. The store stands by its policy.
And just the other day, an RCMP squad descended on a Squamish family after a neighbour complained their four-year-old was running naked through a sprinkler.
Yet our streets and public places have never been so safe. Across the country, just 33 kids were abducted by strangers in 2013. And incidents of child murder are at their lowest in 30 years.
Nevertheless, the fear gradient keeps rising. The term 鈥渉elicopter parents鈥� has been coined for this hovering behaviour, and it doesn鈥檛 stop with keeping kids permanently in sight. Stores are selling elbow and knee pads for infants learning to crawl. Mustn鈥檛 risk bruises, of course. And parents are fitting their toddlers with 鈥渨alking wings鈥� 鈥� a kind of harness that cushions falls.
Dietary fads are also on the rise. Some parents are serving allergy-free kids non-gluten bread and non-lactose drinks 鈥渏ust in case.鈥�
The practice is not only unnecessary, in some cases it can be unhealthy. One study found that infants whose parents steered them away from peanut products were 10 times more likely to develop a peanut allergy later on.
Shuttering kids indoors has also been linked to eyesight problems. The past two decades have seen a huge increase in the number of children who develop myopia.
About one in three Canadian kids is now shortsighted. That might be twice the number back in the 1990s.
Scientists believe the primary culprit is lack of time spent outdoors. Myopia is caused, in part, by a failure of the eye muscles to develop properly.
The mechanics aren鈥檛 well understood, but it appears exposure to sunlight helps prevent this condition. One study showed that for every hour spent outside each week, the risk of myopia declined by two percentage points.
Some parents are fighting back. A 鈥渇ree-range parenting鈥� movement has grown up in the U.S., to fight claustrophobic child-rearing practices.
But it鈥檚 a difficult battle to win. How do you defend actions that some equate with child abuse?
鈥淏etter safe than sorry鈥� can be carried to extremes, but it鈥檚 a devastating rejoinder when something does go wrong. And of course, those are the only incidents we hear about. The millions of times kids walk safely to school go unremarked.
Still, this is an issue worth facing up to. Kids with overly controlling parents are more likely to suffer bullying at school. They also report higher rates of depression later in life, and are more likely to use anxiety medications.
The argument that we鈥檙e only doing what is best for our kids loses force when it emerges we may actually be harming them.
But perhaps the strongest point is this. We鈥檝e spent enormous time and effort making our communities safer places, and it appears we have succeeded.
We can afford to let our kids enjoy the fruits of all that labour.
