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Yes yes yes!

It seems as though the newest wave of mothers is saying no to prenatal Beethoven appreciation classes, homework tutors in kindergarten, or moving to a town near their child’s college campus so the darling can more easily have home-cooked meals. (O.K., O.K., many were already saying no, but now they’re doing so without the feeling that a good parent would say yes.) Over coffee and out in cyberspace they are gleefully labeling themselves “bad mommies,” pouring out their doubts, their dissatisfaction and their dysfunction, celebrating their own shortcomings in contrast to their older sisters’ cloying perfection.

via Let the Kid Be – NYTimes.com.

In short: we are being brainwashed with fear and it makes us worry that everything we do as parents may be putting our kids in danger. That’s why we judge other parents so harshly, and why we keep our kids cloistered like Rapunzel. Don’t get me wrong. As founder of the Free-Range Kids movement—a group of people who believe in giving kids more freedom and responsibility—my philosophy is not to throw kids out of the car (sorely tempting though that may be at times). But Free-Range parents do believe that kids are more capable and competent than we give them credit for. And that, after teaching them basic safety, they need some freedom to develop as smart, happy, responsible humans. Not crazy freedom. Just the kind of freedom we had, back when parenting decisions were not the stuff of national news.

from: Time to Stop Judging Other Mothers and Ourselves by the author of Free Range Kids

As far as I’m concerned the only people who get to judge my parenting are my parents… and my kids, when they are 18.

. . . raising children in the United States now isn’t more dangerous than it was when today’s generation of parents were young. And back then, it was reasonably safe, too. So why does shooing the kids outside and telling them to have fun and be home by dark seem irresponsible to so many middle-class parents today?

from Stop worrying about your children!

It seems to me that parents these days are worried about things they shouldn’t be, and not worried enough about the things they should.

I remember growing up with basically a home range. This amounted to the distance I could cover on my bike and still be home by dark. As I remember it, I would regularly bike to my baseball games, bike and walk to school, bike to friends houses, the mall, the library, etc. Granted we lived in the suburbs, but still. That was a lot of busy roads and what amounted to basically a 10 square mile area.