Wednesday Coffee Talk: Free-range kids

Today’s topic of discussion comes courtesy of Lenore Skenazy, who’s recent book Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry came to my attention this morning. Ms. Skenazy feels that the constant 24-hour barrage of news on cable television has turned this generation of parents into helicopter moms and dads afraid to let their kids go alone to the corner store. Skenazy first got attention on this subject last year when she wrote a column about letting her 9-year-old son ride home alone on the New York City subway. This was apparently a travesty akin to chaining her kid to a radiator while she went on vacation to Mexico, and a shit storm ensued with some dubbing her the “worst mother in America.” She even got the attention of Penn & Teller:

So what do you think? Should we let our kids be kids and roam about the neighborhood like most of us probably did when we were young, or is it our job in this day and age to try and protect them 24/7/365?