Checking In on “Safety” Culture

Last week, we told you about a Georgia mom arrested for letting her son walk home alone. Today, we’re digging into the safety culture that got us here.

A 2015 Pew Research Center survey on American parenting: Parents, on average, believe children should be 10 years old before they can play in front of the house unsupervised while an adult is inside.

• The average age parents consider appropriate for a child to stay home alone for about an hour is 12 years old, and they think children should be 14 years old before spending time at a public park unsupervised.

• 62% of American parents say they can be overprotective.

Related: The social scientists Jon Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have coined the term “safetyism” to describe American society’s growing overemphasis on physical and emotional safety.

• Lukianoff and Haidt say one place where safetyism has been particularly pronounced is the college campus, with its rise in trigger warnings, safe spaces and campus censorship.

• For instance, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy offered students "self-care suites" with milk, cookies, hot chocolate, coloring books and Legos to help them manage stress the day after Donald Trump’s election win.

• Other schools and colleges gave students who were “too emotionally distressed” the day off or provided counseling.

Bubba’s Two Cents

Complaints about the next generation being too soft are nothing new, but modern examples like extreme COVID rules and the safe-space movement on college campuses push the conversation into new territory. We’re prioritizing safety, rigorous scheduling and just general over-parenting at the expense of independence and adversity.