Utah Legislature passes free range parenting bill

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If Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signs a bill that recently passed both houses of the Utah legislature unanimously, parents in his state will not have to worry about getting arrested for letting their kids play outside or walk to school.

Which, of course, no parents should have to worry about in any state. But they do ... in part because of me.

Utah's so-called Free-Range Kids Law is named for the movement I began 10 years ago, when I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone. I wrote a column about it in the New York Sun (R.I.P.) and two days later I was on the Today Show, MSNBC, Fox News and NPR being asked why I'd let my son do something on his own in the big, wide, child-snatching world.

I launched the Free-Range Kids blog that weekend to explain that I love safety, I just don't think our kids need a security detail every time they leave home. That's when I started hearing from other parents who felt the same way, had allowed their kids go outside on their own — and ended up being investigated by the cops or child protective services.

Outraged by these stories, I publicized them: South Carolina mom Debra Harrell thrown in jail for letting her 9-year-old play at the park while she worked at McDonald's; the Meitivs of Maryland investigated twice for letting their 10 and 6-year-olds walk home from the playground; Maria Hasankolli handcuffed for oversleeping while her 8-year-old stepson missed the bus and walked himself to school. There were many more. But all my sharing unintentionally ignited a new fear in parents: "Free-Range" your kids and you could get arrested.

Clearly, the laws needed to be clarified. Giving our kids an old-fashioned childhood is not negligence. It should never be considered that. I

The Arkansas legislature was the first state to vote on this bill a year ago. It sailed through the Senate but hit a wall in the House, stymied by the all-too-familiar fear: What if a child gets kidnapped? The specter of this rarest of crimes (people are more likely to be hit by lightning than be kidnapped) was enough to trigger the backlash.

Ironically, crime-wise, kids today are safer than when their parents were growing up and zooming around (helmet-free) on bikes. The crime rate today is back to what it was in about 1967. And it's not down because we "helicopter" kids — crime against adults is down too and we don't helicopter them. It just doesn't feel as safe today, thanks to the 24-hour news cycle and all the other likely suspects: A litigious culture. Safety-obsessed society. An industry that has given us little teddy bear monitors you can clip on your kid that start beeping if they stray from your side.

The danger in seeing only danger is that our kids are not getting the kind of independence they need to thrive. Growing up hyper-supervised may even explain why young people get to college and feel threatened by free speech. Up to that point there was always an adult on hand to make sure they felt comfortable and safe. It's possible young people got so used to being overprotected that they began to demand it.