Advice from America's Worst Mom

I came here when I was 6, in 1992, and did quite a bit of my growing up subsequently in a well-tended, well-watched family-oriented graduate student housing facility on the campus of a private university. Not exactly the 'hood. My parents, as all the (predominantly foreign) residents there, were busy graduate students trying to make it on a ~$10k/year stipend with student visa-based work restrictions, and, being in the humanities field, faced quite daunting demands to excel so distinctively according to the rules of their field in order to have a stab at staying in this country after their visa ran out. So, of course, they were busy working/studying until 10-11 PM.

Never in my wildest dreams as a Moscow child could I have imagined that leaving me alone in that highly enclosed, heavily security-patrolled, communal environment full of watchful neighbours and fellow parents would be considered "child neglect" under Indiana state law, nor that, in fact, it would be so until the age of 12 to leave me home alone for _any_ amount of time, strictly speaking, as a statutory matter.

In fact, I was one of the very few children of ex-USSR or Eastern European extraction who was not, at some point during this tenure, essentially kidnapped by university security with no notice given to the parents and placed in a foster family for a few days while the shocked and aggrieved parents were badgered with saber-rattling about child neglect by whatever state agency. I avoided it narrowly by a stroke of luck; on many occasions, e.g. winter nights, when I was playing outside - in the dark! - at the precarious hour (!) of 8 PM, I saw the university cops peering out of their patrol cars, eyeing me like prey. Honestly, these keystone cops were a far greater danger to my welfare than any conceivable predator. They were often unpleasant and openly contemptuous, amplifying the psychologically traumatic fear of police and other martial authorities that is already built into any child of Soviet parents by inheritance. To this day, I still have this reaction to cops that I must surely be "guilty" of something, even though I'm innocent. The way that they provided foundations for that feeling, with their hostile dispositions, abrasive lines of questioning, etc. was a lot more injurious to my development as an individual than free association with other kids until mid-evening in a protected communal yard.

It is difficult to imagine a safer environment for a child than the kind of place that this was. If there were ever a place where there were some adults around at almost times, and neighbours you knew and could count on in case of an emergency, this was definitely it.

The stream of sanctimonious busybodies from the state child/welfare agency that would occasionally come around to harass these poor, tired foreigners was just unbelievable. Now that I've lived in Georgia for 10 years, I make an analogy to what Georgia's agency - DFACS (Department of Family and Children's Services) - spends its time doing in predominantly working-class Hispanic-occupied trailor parks and poor black neighbourhoods down here.

Some of this is just an incorrigible cultural and institutional defect, as other comments have pointed out. Another important difference with the USSR specifically, though, is that we had households with two working parents for a lot longer than has been normative in the US; our entry of women into the workforce dates back almost to the revolution, in keeping with the Marxist gender equality premise. So, Soviet society developed institutional solutions and accommodations[1] for this relatively early. A necessary consequence is that children had to lead a parent-independent existence much earlier in their lives than if the premise of a full-time stay-at-home mother is granted.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Russia#Pre-school_... -- see the paragraph ("The Soviet system...")

That was in Bulgaria, around 1980s - Yes people were worried, but not much - it might've been the communist era that either did not produce much child related crime, or such were hiddenly took and dealt with (by still spreading that everything is okay).

Nowadays (especially was it 2004-2005) - there was whole media frenzy of kids disappearing - for about week or so. I've looked at the statistics - and nothing was different for that week compared to previous years - it's just that media picked it up.

It's exactly that - media - not news source - I'm talking about CNN, FOX, MSNBC and the crap that they do. I used to love CNN, I don't think I do anymore...

Anyway just my experience.

Oh, and later it was no problem for me taking of one part of the city (Burgas) and walking 2 or 3km through couple of streets, just to go to where my grandmother worked, and they go back, and stroll the streets.

Hell, our most favourite kid movies were about kids strolling all day streets either at their home cities, or at tourist resort places their parents were staying.

But nowadays.. It's just too much, too soft, and too tight at the same time.

As the article is saying: "Preaching independence while warning against it."

None of these things caused problems. People didn't start having ATV or gun accidents until they discovered alcohol and inhalants. No children were eaten by wolves or bears. I was a much happier child because of the freedom, and I think, a much more self-reliant adult.

That was only 11 years ago in Australia.

Beyond the fact that he managed to overpay for the lemons, he came back safe, proud and happy.

Sign me up for worst father!

I fully expected this to be a Jessi Slaughter article. That is a set of bad parents.

In The Best Country in the World(*), I used to walk to first grade by myself and thereafter rode buses/subway/trains by myself or with schoolmates - just like everyone else here. Most of us even came home to an empty house and had to manage to feed ourselves before the parents got home some hours later.

This used to be the norm about a decade ago still when my younger brother was in that age range, but recently based on public discussion it seems the bubblewrap parents are gaining a foothold.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-...

I grew up in an urban area, then moved at 10 to a very rural one. In both places my "roaming" area was several miles in any direction from my house. In fact, my parents set my roaming area in the city to a specific triangle of roads that they felt were too big to and dangerous for me to cross, but weren't too mad when my friends and I did on occasion veer outside of those lines. If I had an older friend with us (he had to be at least 13) then we could pretty much go anywhere our feet or bikes could take us in a day.

I did this until I was about 10, then we moved to a very rural area and my boundaries became very large indeed...basically as far as I was able to walk.

My parent's were aghast when they were contacted by the local rural middle school after the principle had seen me cutting across an intersection in front of the school after class one day to get to the local shopping mall to hang out at the arcade. He demanded that I either take the bus home, or get a cab to take me literally across the street, an activity I had previously performed, at a much younger age, dozens of times a day.

What really surprised me was how scared most people were (especially when it was around 8pm at night) when I would approach them. It was as if they automatically thought that only a thief or a criminal would be coming to them in a car park.

In France, Spain and Germany (I used to walk 40 minutes to school there when I was 12), I've never seen that, people don't expect the worse to happen to them and don't seem to have their heads filled with tabloid whatifs scenarios or at least not yet.

a) Outside of how many acres of Manhattan? b) Which lasted until when? The next silly-ass story for an ADHD media cycle, I suppose.

Back in the day (Kennedy administration) having your Mom walk with you to school was a fine way to be marked as a loser (though we didn't know that word yet). I usually read on my way to work, but I'm fairly sure I do see kids younger than middle school riding solo or at least without adult supervision on DC buses.

This is a nice, semi-controlled experience that's probably good for everyone. Should the parent and child become separated, for example, I'd imagine that the knowledge each has--that arriving independently at a safe destination is routine--is serious peace of mind factor.

This is similar to the fire safety plans a lot of us did as kids. Didn't anyone else crawl out the window and down the fire escape and meet our parents a few blocks away, despite the building not actually burning, just to be prepared?

But now? No way unless they were a few years older. NYC needs to watch more of that news they dismiss: Attempted kidnappings happen a lot in the burbs. All paranoia is local though.

But what happened to the "Little Red Riding Hood Story"?

How do we interpret in nowadays US standards? I guess it makes sense, huh! The big bad wolf, right!