"America's Worst Mom"

When journalist, Lenore Skenazy, put her nine-year-old son on the New York City subway she caused a media storm. They called her, "America's Worst Mom," but Skenazy strongly defends her actions and calls for childhood independence and freedom. She states, "Adults once knew what we have forgotten today, Kids are competent. Kids are capable. Kids deserve freedom, responsibility, and a chance to be part of the world."

Skenazy rejects the "parenting expert." She insists these people only tell us "what we're doing wrong and why it will warp our kids forever." When Skenazy told the expert what she had done (let her 9 year-old kid ride the subway) and why (to give him a little independence, freedom, self-reliance and responsibility) the expert looked at her "like I just asked her to smell my socks."

I have a nine-year-old myself, and although I am not sure I would put her on the New York subway, I have put her on an airplane to Europe (alone) since she was eight-years-old. Her sister traveled domestically by air alone at three-years-old. Many mothers think I'm too liberal.

I sent my twelve-year-old to boarding school (she wanted to go), and allowed her to ride a London train across England (alone) that same year. Am I encouraging independence and a sense of freedom and responsibility or am I, too, a wayward mother? Is it better to let the kid be a bit adventurous (and maybe a bit at risk) or coddled(and perhaps even more at risk)?

Where ever you draw the line - or not, as the case may be. There will be judgements made, and eyebrows raised about your actions. But 'the proof is in the pudding' as they say - if you can raise a self-sufficient, independent, confident child does it matter how you get there? After all, isn't America made of individuals, and doesn't that means individual mothers making individual insights and calls on mothering their offspring?

Isn't that diversity what makes America great, and what, as they say, "makes a horse race."

Would you like your nine-year-old ride the New York subway? Worst mom or Adventure mom?

(Lenore Skenazy has a book out, Free Range Kids.)