Why tight-leash parenting? Suburbanization.

Here’s my ah-ha moment from this weekend:

Earlier this week, Megan McArdle had a post on free range parenting.  Then on Friday, she wrote about the declining number of new-construction starter homes, leading to some interesting discussions in the comments on changing expectations.  And this is what I’m thinking, mashing those two pieces together:

The growth of suburbanization made tight-leash parenting possible.  (Can I coin a term and say that the opposite of free-range parenting is “tight-leash parenting”?  Because I don’t recall having seen an antonym to FRP in common use.*)  Yes, we can point to causes such as fears of abduction, but those fears wouldn’t have had the effect that they did if the right conditions weren’t in place — note that 1970 was a milestone year; just as in 1920 more people lived in cities than on farms, in 1970, more people lived in suburbs than cities.  Having a backyard for kids to play in, with a swingset of your own, became part of an American childhood.  And principles of (sub)urban planning dictated concepts such as arterial roads, collector streets, and isolated subdivisions designed so that the only way in and out is through a major arterial road.  At the same time, those same planners demanded that homes, shopping centers, churches, any type of place, really, be built with a required number of parking spots to eliminate the need to park in the street  — heck, in my town, and I presume we’re not alone, parking in the street, even in a quiet neighborhood, isn’t even permitted on an overnight basis, except for occasional special permission for visitors.

(Is the antonym “helicopter parenting”?  I think these refer to two different aspects of parenting; helicoptering is more about the metaphorical hovering to make sure the kid succeeds in school, activities, etc., and FRP/tight-leash parenting over the degree to which kids literally have freedom to roam.)

What does this mean?

It means that parents are able to restrict their kids from going to the park alone, because they have the alternative of playing in the backyard.  It means that parents can make the decision that their Special Snowflakes are able to walk to school by themselves, or to their other activities or their friends’ houses, only at a much older age than in the past, because it’s no great inconvenience to drive them, and many of their destinations wouldn’t be accessible by foot anyway.

In contrast, the much denser world of city life in, say, Germany, means that tight-leash parenting would be a far bigger hassle than here.  You can’t send your kid out to the backyard to play, in most cases; they’d have to go to the courtyard, or to a nearby playground, and, while German parents are just as likely to go along with their preschool kids (though there’s a distinct difference in their willingness to sit and socialize with the other moms vs. the American mom’s determination to actively play with the kid), I believe they’re willing to send kids off by themselves at a much younger age, because, hey, the option of “just play in the backyard while I do X” isn’t available.

Besides which, for a German parent to pull the leash in a bit and say, “you know, I think you’re too young to travel here or there by yourself after all” would also be a bigger inconvenience, because the limitation would be not just chauffeuring somewhat more often than you’re already used to, but a far greater change in how the family lives, especially as middle-schoolers are accustomed to riding public transportation by themselves, or travelling by bike.  Not to mention that many families there are still one-car families (as were we, during are stay there), as was also more common in the U.S. even in the 50s and 60s.

(* Yes,  I know, in New York and certain other big cities, life is lived in a much more European style, with apartments and carlessness and mass transit.  Does that mean that kids there are much free range-ier?  I don’t know.  I imagine that’s true for poor kids, but likely more often in a latchkey-kid sort of way.  Whether middle class kids have the same tight leash as suburban kids, because TLP has become a middle-class norm even beyond the suburbs, I don’t know.)

Whenever you have some potential new risk introduced to you, how you react depends in large measure on how difficult or easy it would be to change your life in response to that risk.  Wear a bike helmet? Sure.  Install a carbon monoxide detector?  Of course.  Build an underground bunker to protect against mass chaos in the event of an EMP attack?  No thanks, too much work, I’ll take my chances.

And — without discounting all the other factors, such as the rise in scheduling kids’ time, working moms = no eyeballs on the streets or kids to free-range in groups, etc. — the fact that, when the reports of abducted children came about in the 80s, it did not involve a lot of sacrifice to tighten the leash, is an important component of the “why” as well.