Lenore Skenazy

Free-Range Kids

1. IDEA 1

   Children need more freedom

   Skenazy, a journalist, became known after writing that she let her nine-year-old son ride the New York subway alone. She argues that modern parents greatly overestimate the dangers their children face and restrict them too much.

2. IDEA 2

   Fear outruns the facts

   Skenazy argues that crime against children in America had fallen, yet parents had become more fearful. Media coverage of rare crimes, in her view, distorted perceptions. In her account, the gap between feeling and fact is wide.

3. IDEA 3

   Strangers are rarely the threat

   Skenazy argues that the fear of strangers is out of proportion to the actual risk. Most harm, she notes, does not come from strangers. In her view, such fear leads parents to worry about the wrong things.

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