Poll: Most Americans Want to Criminalize Pre-Teens Playing Unsupervised

A whopping 68 percent of Americans think there should be a law that prohibits kids 9 and under from playing at the park unsupervised, despite the fact that most of them no doubt grew up doing just that.

What's more: 43 percent feel the same way about 12-year-olds. They would like to criminalize all pre-teenagers playing outside on their own (and, I guess, arrest their no-good parents).

Those are the results of a Reason/Rupe poll confirming that we have not only lost all confidence in our kids and our communities—we have lost all touch with reality.

"I doubt there has ever been a human culture, anywhere, anytime, that underestimates children's abilities more than we North Americans do today," says Boston College psychology professor emeritus Peter Gray, author of Free to Learn, a book that advocates for more unsupervised play, not less.

In his book, Gray writes about a group of 13 kids who played several hours a day for four months without supervision, though they were observed by an anthropologist. "They organized activities, settled disputes, avoided danger, dealt with injuries, distributed goods... without adult intervention," he writes.

Of course, those kids were allowed to play in the South Pacific, not South Carolina, where Debra Harrell was thrown in jail for having the audacity to believe her 9-year-old would be fine by herself at a popular playground teeming with activity. In another era, it not only would have been normal for a child to say, "Goodbye, mom!" and go off to spend a summer's day there, it would have been odd to consider that child "unsupervised." After all, she was surrounded by other kids, parents, and park personnel. Apparently now only a private security detail is considered safe enough.

Harrell's real crime was that she refused to indulge in inflated fears of abduction and insist her daughter never leave her side. While there are obviously many neighborhoods wrecked by crime where it makes more sense to keep kids close, the country at large is enjoying its lowest crime level in decades.

Too bad most people reject this reality. The Reason/Rupe Poll asked "Do kids today face more threats to their physical safety?" and a majority—62 percent—said yes. Perhaps that's because the majority of respondents also said they don't think the media or political leaders are overhyping the threats to our kids.

But they are. "One culprit is the 24 hour news cycle," said Richard Louv, author of Last Child in the Woods, when I asked him why so few kids are outside these days. Turn on cable TV, "and all you have to do is watch how they take a handful of terrible crimes against children and repeat that same handful over and over," he said. "And then they repeat the trial over and over, and so we're conditioned to live in a state of fear."

Rationally understanding that we are living in very safe times is not enough to break the fear, he added.

Experience. Through his Children and Nature Network, Louv urges families to gather in groups and go on hikes or even to that park down the street that Americans seem so afraid of. Once kids are outside with a bunch of other kids, they start to play. It just happens. Meanwhile, their parents stop imagining predators behind every bush because they are face to face with reality instead of Criminal Minds. They start to relax. It just happens.

Over time, they can gradually regain the confidence to let their kids go whoop and holler and have as much fun as they themselves did, back in the day.

Richard Florida, the urbanist and author of The Rise of the Creative Class, is one of the many parents today who recalls walking to school solo in first grade. He was in charge of walking his kindergarten brother the next year. The age that the Reason/Rupe respondents think kids should start walking to school without an adult is 12.

Florida has intensely fond memories of riding his bike "everywhere" by the time he was 10. Me too. You too, I'm guessing. Why would we deny that joy to our own kids? Especially when we're raising them in relatively safer times?

"Let your kids play in the park, for God's sake," Florida pleads. "We'll all be better for it."

i don’t. i didn’t want my parents hovering over me. they didn’t want to either, they were working at home or at work. they actually did work around the house, cleaning, cooking, fixing stuff, maintaining things. they didn’t sit on their asses all day watching or on the internet.

Well, here’s the deal: in terms of becoming a crime victim, a child is incredibly safe. In terms of being hit by a car, drowning oneself (often accidentally in a pool), or other accidental kinds of death are extremely risky for unsupervised children. My best word on this matter is that focusing solely on crime is missing the real threat: that the threat of accidental death is underrated. When I see how much supervision is going on for a lot of things with kids, the aspect and threat of serious accidents, and not neccessarily murder or kidnapping, really is there.

The wussy tween nephews came for a visit this summer. They don’t know what outside is because they aren’t allowed to play in their own backyard. They wimped out on geocaching because it is done outside in the sunshine where there’s bugs and weeds and stickers, oh my! They wouldn’t go hiking or rock hunting at the state park and where there is a playground and a lake for swimming and no way to camping out. They didn’t want to go to another park where the water is shallow a long way out so they could chase each other or play ball. We barely got them to go swimming at the house. A visit to a cave was out. No to archery, croquet, flying a kite, fishing, RC cars in the driveway, riding bikes (didn’t know how to ride a bike and didn’t want to learn) or exploring wildlife in our perfectly safe country neighborhood, no to running an errand for me a quarter mile down our quiet road to grandma’s, and no to a million other kid activities. Only one ventured out to the garage once to play with the kittens. They refused to help hubby grill one night and he had to beg them to go out later to roast marshmallows. One let something roll under the desk but was too scared to put his hand under to get it. The other is so timid he can’t speak above a whisper. Wimps! Enough was enough. We ended their visit early and packed them off other relatives.

Oops ... DH and I should be in jail.

Not only did we let the kids out unsupervised we also expected them to engage in stoop labor (farming, baling hay,milking cows) and even let the oldest boy drive tractors and equipment down the road starting when he was about 8.

OK ... I did get a little worried when DD was driving tractor (disking) with me for the first time, each on a different tractor. I kept track of when I should see her again coming over the hill ... when I did not I hauled @$$ over the hill to check on her.

She had parked her tractor and disk and was picking up pretty rocks. :)

That’s a good memory.

Another bad thing we do — allow the kids to shoot rifles and shotguns unsupervised. We had rabbit stew on Thanksgiving from rabbits our oldest boy shot and dressed.

I’m glad we have been able to raise them like this. A lot of parents are not so blessed.

Video games aren’t bad, for the adults or kids, so long as either have decent control over when one starts and when one stops playing them. As a note, as a father and an adult in my 30s, I play them, both by myself and with wife and my kids. However, I don’t get into playing for hours on end, I do have work hours during the day. And when it is light outside, generally the priority for our kids is to play with things like family frisbee or family football, or go have fun with a soccer ball at the park 2 blocks away. The big and important message is that video games only deserve a fraction of time and for certain situations where we can play together as a family enjoyment. I even let one of my kids play till about 5 a.m. at one point, so that, after feeling drowsy as ever, he got the point that it doesn’t feel that great to spend too much time on video games in a day, or stay up late, during summer break anyways. In essence, this is more important than totally banning video games from the house just because nowadays it actually helps the kids get the concept of there being more than just playing games. In addition, with education nowadays being computer-reliant, it helps them understand that one needs to balance between a computer for games, and using it for work functions. And as a final note, they are always the ones to be proactive in encouraging their friends to enjoy sports outside for their daytime enjoyment as well.

My parents’ only real rule for me to remember was to remain away from water and handling fire unsupervised, otherwise, play away. What’s funny is that the danger of a kid drowning nowadays is pretty high up there, in fact, it’s statistically more dangerous to have a below ground pool with only a fence around it near your home than it is to have a gun in your home, from a child safety standpoint.

Weekends seem to be when our grumpy, old FReepers come out.

“We didn’t need no VIDEEO GAMES. We played Kick the Rock. And we liked it!”

“We knew all our neighbors. Because nobody had AC and we were all out in our yards day & night, sweltering, looking at the neighbor men walking around shirtless and miserable. And we liked it!”

“We didn’t have no ‘low violent crime rate’. We knew if we set foot outside our neighborhood, we’d be knifed ... by WHITE PEOPLE! So, it was safer then. And we liked it.”

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played ...

With all the child abductions, the crime stats, the local hooligans, life just isn’t what it was decades ago.

Decades ago a college age woman didn’t have to be in fear of her life being out late at night with friends. Today, she better be.

Except that none of this is true. All serious crimes; murder, rape, robbery, assault, and, yes, even child abductions (committed by strangers) are the lowest they've been since 1963.

A "fear" of crime is at an all-time high.

This is a contributing factor to many people having fewer children. Forget the hype of the “it costs 250K to raise a child” argument - “it takes 24 hour supervision until they are 20” that makes people say more than one kid is impossible to handle along with work and life.

Last year my Grandchildren were staying with me. Several times they told me they didn’t have anything to do. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had said that to my parents.

One thing you can be certain of, they would have made sure I was not bored with nothing to do.

My son is now 19 and we let him stay at home because he has a very well paying job and is going full-time to college. Our contribution is some cash and free room and board.

Since he is an adult we try not to run his life so he now holes up in his room a lot and plays video games. We did not allow that before he graduated high school.

I do get him outside as part of his “rent” is to mow and trim the lawn and help me with the remodeling I am doing on our house. He also got two extrs lawn mowing jobs on our block. He will do anything legal to make money for college. He saves every penny for college so I have no complaints but I still am not enamored of the time spent on the video games.

I am in my early 50s and although I made a very good living working with and on computers and networks I just can’t get into the gaming. I have so much to do fixing the house, cars, and also my hobby of woodworking I just think it is a waste of my time, but that is just my opinion.

I agree that there are dangers kids can get into. No doubt about it.

Tell you what, with a choice of a kid falling and getting hurt or being abducted, raped, tortured, and be held in captivity for hours or years, I’ll worry more about the later.

Drew, we have seen evidence of reclassification of crime downward. I don’t trust those statistics at all.

I know the big headline is safer streets... are you really buying that?

I’ve never heard of so many abductions and killings.

There’s a new one on the news every night, but the stats are supposed to be lower than ever. It just doesn’t compute.

I’ve never heard of so many abductions and killings.

That's the 24/7 News effect. Especially if you're watching FNC ("The Missing White Girl network"). 30+ years ago, we had 30 minutes of news twice a day. These stories never made national news unless it was the Lindbergh baby or Frank Sinatra Jr.

Nationwide, there is an overall decline. That doesn’t tell you much about what is going on in smaller areas though. Crime likewise also doesn’t tell you of other threats to your child such as accidental death, drugs, etc. once your kid, nephew, etc. is stuck in an addiction, or is the one that dies in an accident, or gets killed, the stats don’t matter.

This is a rediculous urban legend. There are some exceptions where a child needs extra care due to being severely disabled. But for the most part, kids in general don’t need to be watched 24/7. In infancy, they sleep long blocks of time ranging from 0.5 to 3 hours at a time. Gave me some time to do anything from house cleaning to reading to editing family video recordings of what our family did on special occasions. I even played video games with my wife when my kids were out and asleep. But had no problems stopping when they were waking up to go and help them out when neccessary.

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