The Next Step: Let Grow!

It’s not just about kids either…If people are raising a bunch of scared pansies afraid of freedom, who will stand up for freedom?

I have to disagree with Marcus above. But then I consider myself to be pretty libertarian, and not to be classist, racist, or misogynist (particular as I am female), so perhaps you are painting with a pretty broad brush. There is a huge overlap between favoring a smaller government/more freedom and favoring the government not arresting parents for their parenting choices and more freedom for kids. And as she’s trying to spread the free range message, it makes sense that she should spread it to areas where people are likely to appreciate freedom. I’m sure she publishes in other places that wouldn’t make you so queasy.

But in any case, Congrats!! this is awesome!! I have a 12 year old and sometimes it’s an uphill battle!

Libertarianism aside, the company you keep for this venture is superb! Haidt and Schuchman! Well done Lenore! Maybe the Atlantic will pick you up soon!

This is great, Lenore, and I hope this organization blossoms.

Hopefully many will follow you, even if you write for a magazine partially funded by the 59th ranked political donors in the country.

Theresa Hall

It’s a matter of perception I guess. CPS gets disproportionately involved with minority families. As with the case in South Carolina where a black mother got arrested because her 9 year old was playing alone in the park.

Was that big government or a judgmental conservative who didn’t like the idea of a black child running around unsupervised. I know what I believe it was.

P.S. And, just for the record, Lenore has also published many articles in the Huffington Post.

Margot maybe you choose to do the right thing as much as possible but I have hard time believing that all workers are innocent when some do take kids on the flimsy excuse. Plus the government does pay a big fat check per kid. Maybe you personally don’t see that check someone does that fat check

@Theresa, I’m still at a loss to work out why any CPS worker would remove a child in order for someone else to score a “fat check”. Do you think the worker is being paid off by the recipient of the “fat check”? Never in my 22 years in the job have I heard of that happening. You do realise that the “fat check” you speak of is money to raise the child, right? And that most foster carers top that amount up with a significant amount from their own funds.
Can I suggest that your difficulty is actually with the decisions made by some workers and in fact, has nothing to do with money but a lot to do with overly cautious decision making on occasion, which in turn is most likely to arise from fear of the consequences of getting it wrong.
Very occasionally, children die after being left with their family. This traumatises a worker, and even the whole office, in ways you could not even imagine, for a very long time. You have to appreciate that the vast majority of CPS workers are in the job because of a love of children and a strong sense of social justice. Even if the decision to leave the child there was a was a reasonable one at the time, people are always raking over the coals and trying to work out how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Sometimes the response is to exercise a more than the necessary degree of caution the next time.
Also, can I suggest that you only know the very basic details of the cases that you read about in the media. Privacy and confidentiality provision restricts the information that can be disseminated. There is so often so much more going on than members of the public will ever know.
These issues are very complex, and your lazy and offhand remarks about “flimsy excuses” and “fat checks” are offensive to people who dedicate their careers to promoting child safety.

Hi there!

How do we help with this? I’m part of a childcare center in Washington State and have a large number of people who would volunteer time and possibly money to get involved, especially one person in particular who is getting their graduate degree in Educational Policy! Please let me know what we can do.

Re politics I was friends for a while with a way-liberal “trans” who insists I’m a libertarian. This was last year, when I hadn’t voted for a Democrat pretty much ever.

As for fear of predators, the groundwork was definitely in the “Satanic Panic”. Now, that’s blamed on religious conservatives, but if you look at the primary sources, center-left media probably did as much as anyone, esp to stir up “awareness” in “mainstream” circles. The actual Satanists (who overwhelmingly don’t believe in Satan) can’t be let off too easy either. They prob’ly never had a hand in crime apart from drug use and delinquency, but they did attract a very disproportionate number of people either trying to be offensive for its own sake or looking for excuses to be creeps.

Lenore

Congratulations! You’re already changing the world. Now you’re in a position to do even more.

Here is an idea for a short film.

Billy (a normal kid) moves to a new town called Stepford. He has trouble making friends. All the children in Stepford are too frightened to do much of anything. They are ‘programmed’ to not play outside or do anything that ‘normal’ children do.

As with the Stepford Wives film, there is a conspiracy to program Billy to be a Stepford child. His programming involves the whole town and consists of things such as:

Ridiculous school rules. Tag is outlawed and recess is disappearing
Parents that report Billy to the CPS if he walks 2 blocks to get to the store.
Police pick him up whenever they see him outside without adult supervision.
A NEWS report of Billy observed as doing the life-threatening act of doing a cartwheel without a helmet.

In the end, Billy becomes a Stepford Child and is no longer self-reliant. He’s too frightened to do much of anything. Anxiety is now a major problem with him because he learned that everything is dangerous.

@John B: If anything, right-wing types have shifted from fears about individual predators to “networks of kidnappers, traffickers and abusers, presumed to be centered on Hollywood and other liberal elements. A clear subtext is that any calls to make the slightest change to consent laws, etc is really being directed by wealthy deviants. I have found it somewhat amusing to compare this vision w/ the likes of de Rais and Bathory, who were monstrous and powerful but completely antisocial.

I don’t know – obviously this is purely anecdotal, based on my experience, but I would not say that fear of sexual predators/sex traffickers/random strangers abducting kids from front yards is in any way a “conservative” phenomenon. At least in my circle – conservative Catholics who mostly have large families – parents are generally very “free-range” and laid back about supervision. Generally during the coffee-and-donuts hour after our Masses, the kids run free both inside and outside the church hall, and it’s only the most anxious parents who even bother to do a half-hourly head-count. After all, if you have (or think you might someday have) eight or ten kids, watching them 24-7 is not even a realistic option. . .

Free range, overprotection, and helping children so much that you smother them is a huge topic!
I don’t understand why complicate this any further by dragging politics into it.

@Donald: The reason politics is dragged into the issues you mentioned is that whether you’re allowed to free range your children or have to helicopter them is dependent on politicians

Marcus – perhaps you should actually read some of the Reason articles, rather than painting with broad, inaccurate, inflammatory strokes? A wide swath of the country doesn’t align with either the “right” or the left”, and many of them identify increasingly with the libertarians. Not all (in fact I’d say most) libertarians are not anarchists. Your very first slander talks about slavery – the very idea of slavery is an anathema to libertarians. Libertarian-ism is about individual liberty and responsibility, and about NOT infringing upon the rights of others. Slavery most definitely impinges upon the rights of others. Your obvious ignorance about the BASIC PREMISE of the political system pretty much invalidates anything you might have to say about it.

Furthermore, why bring up the Koch brothers? They spend literally MILLIONS on charitable causes? Are you now uncomfortable with the New York ballet? Again, the fact that you don’t understand the basic premise invalidates this argument.

Libertarians have absolutely no issue with people joining together to create a better society. As long as no one is forced to do it. You want to establish a commune with whatever rules you see fit? Fine. Just don’t make anyone else pay for it.

Here’s the intro to the Libertarian party platform – what, exactly, about this makes you queasy?

As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.

We believe that respect for individual rights is the essential precondition for a free and prosperous world, that force and fraud must be banished from human relationships, and that only through freedom can peace and prosperity be realized.

Consequently, we defend each person’s right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.

I can’t find let grow on line?