Why children can’t go home alone

A story from my childhood came to mind as I recently read an ABC News report about a mother who was arrested after her son was seen walking alone to the Dollar Store, a half-mile from his home lay.

Brittany Patterson of Mineral Bluff, Georgia, was at a doctor’s appointment with her other child when her almost 11-year-old son left his house and was discovered by himself. Someone called the police, who took the boy home.

A few hours later, officers went to Patterson’s address, handcuffed her in front of her children, dragged her to the police station for a mugshot and charged her with intentionally and knowingly endangering “the physical safety of her minor son.”

The Department of Family and Children Services required Patterson to comply with its safety plan, which required her to download a GPS app to track her son’s location.

She refused, God bless her. And it wasn’t long before her “crime” and the “children on the loose” debate became a hot topic on social media.

As a columnist for 30 years, I have been reporting on the evolution of parents’ growing – and unjustified – fears about their children’s safety.

“Free range parents” who try to give their children some of the freedom they had as children are increasingly facing the wrath of family members, neighbors and local authorities.

When I was a kid in the ’70s, things were very different – and much better.

I was free to walk or bike anywhere as long as I got home in time for dinner and arrived when the streetlights came on in the evening. We children were alone all the time and our parents were not afraid when we were out of sight.

When I was just 6 years old, I disappeared from my house and made my way to a mom-and-pop supermarket three blocks away.

My older sisters Krissy and Kathy, 7 and 9 respectively, were supposed to watch me while my mother did laundry downstairs. But to throw me off, Krissy gave me a coin she made out of a piece of cardboard and told me I could use it to get candy at the little store.

Of course my mother was upset when she saw that I was missing. But I was found quickly, and no problem child in the neighborhood reported my mother to the police. That’s because there were only three network television channels at the time and parents’ fears weren’t fueled around the clock by sensational news about kidnapped children on cable news channels.

Despite parents’ increasing paranoia, children are no more likely to be kidnapped today than they were in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Consider: There are approximately 40 million elementary school-age children in America today. According to Child Watch of North America, about 115 children are abducted each year – while nearly 140,000 are injured in car accidents each year.

Despite this reality, our television and cable news media have spent decades exaggerating and stoking fears about the safety of our children — and pretty much everything else that gets ratings. So we have become a fearful culture, afraid to give our children the freedom to move, explore and learn freely.

God help every parent today whose 6-year-old might slip out of the house with a paper coin his sister made for him!

Email humor columnist Tom Purcell at [email protected].