But Skenazy, who prompted an uproar last year when she wrote a column about allowing her nine-year-old son to take a New York City subway and bus alone, said that the alarm parents feel has been stoked by sensation-seeking news outlets and crime shows like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
“On TV, most criminals are strangers,” she said. “That sinks into your view of the world and you think all strangers are to be distrusted.”
Schools are skittish about unsupervised young walkers. Even though Lisa Reid, who lives in a suburb of Vancouver in Canada, had signed a permission form, when her first-grader proudly told his teacher he was walking home himself last spring, a distance of six houses, the teacher was incredulous. She took him to the office and called Reid, who didn’t hear the phone.
That was because Reid was pacing at the end of the driveway, waiting for her son, her worries climbing exponentially as the moments ticked by.
Reid used to teach in a Vancouver school where many students were refugees.
“Those kids all walked home,” she said. “They came from countries where they walked through terrible, horrible things and they thought it was great to be safe here on our streets.”
Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor at New York University who writes about the history of American education, said that schools themselves should not be blamed for what some might consider hyper-vigilance.
“The public school is the most grassroots institution we have,” he said. “They’re responding to very real demands. This is clearly something that has engaged and agitated the public.”
Not only institutions feel threatened when individuals wander off the range — so do other parents.
Recently, Amy Utzinger, a mother of four in Tucson, Arizona, let her daughter, age seven, walk down the block to play with a friend. Five houses. Same side of the street.
Afterward, the friend’s mother drove Utzinger’s daughter home.
“She said, ‘I just drove her back, just in case ... you know,’” recalled Utzinger. “What was I supposed to say? How can you argue against ‘just in case’?”
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