Life Support: Let the children go on foot and on bike

Tuesday, April 03, 2007 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

One sunny afternoon as our children played nearby, I asked a neighbor at what age she would allow her son to bicycle around the block by himself.

“I don’t think I would ever do that,” she replied. “The world is a very different place now than it was when we were growing up.”

Did she really think the number of child molesters and kidnappers in the world had increased in the past 20 or 30 years, I asked? “Oh, yes, I think it is increasing. Because of the Internet.”

At a PTA meeting, during a discussion of traffic problems around the school campus, I asked what we could do to encourage families to walk or bike to school. Other parents looked at me as if I’d suggested we stuff the children into barrels and roll them into the nearest active volcano. One teacher looked at me in shock. “I wouldn’t let my children walk to school alone … would you?”

“Haven’t you heard about all of the predators in this area?” asked a father.

“No, I haven’t,” I said. “I think this is a pretty safe neighborhood.”

“You’d be surprised,” he replied, lowering his eyebrows. “You should read the Megan’s Law Web site.” He continued: “You know how to solve the traffic problem around this school? Get rid of all the predators. Then you won’t have any more traffic.”

Huh?

Our hyper-anxiety about the safety of children is creating a society in which any outdoor activity that doesn’t take place under the supervision of a coach or a “psychomotor activities” mandate from the state is too risky to attempt.

An example: My son’s school has a written rule that students in grades K-4 may not ride their bicycles to school. My son and I cheerfully ignore this restriction; I think school rules belong on campus, not off. As we ride together each day, I remember the Huffy Sweet ‘n’ Sassy I rode to school when I was a kid. Hot pink, with a flowered wicker basket, it stood out among the other bikes parked in the crowded racks, its tall orange safety flag flapping in the breeze.

Now, my son’s bike stands alone, always the sole occupant of the school’s tucked-in-a-faraway-corner bike rack. When we arrive, other kids look at us in amazement and ask questions such as “Why do you ride a bike?” and “Don’t you have a car?”

Although statistics show that rates of child abduction and sexual abuse have marched steadily downward since the early 1990s, fear of these crimes is at an all-time high. Even the panic-inducing Megan’s Law Web site says stranger abduction is rare and that 90 percent of child sexual-abuse cases are committed by someone known to the child. Yet we still suffer a crucial disconnect between perception of crime and its statistical reality. A child is almost as likely to be struck by lightning as kidnapped by a stranger, but it’s not fear of lightning strikes that parents cite as the reason for keeping children indoors watching television instead of out on the sidewalk skipping rope.

And when a child is parked on the living room floor, he or she may be safe, but is safety the sole objective of parenting? The ultimate goal is independence, and independence is best fostered by handing it out a little at a time, not by withholding it in a trembling fist that remains clenched until it’s time to move into the dorms.

Meanwhile, as rates of child abduction and abuse move down, rates of Type II diabetes, hypertension and other obesity-related ailments in children move up. That means not all the candy is coming from strangers. Which scenario should provoke more panic: the possibility that your child might become one of the approximately 100 children who are kidnapped by strangers each year, or one of the country’s 58 million overweight adults?

In 1972, 87 percent of children who lived within a mile of school walked or biked daily; today, just 13 percent of children get to school under their own power, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a significant parallel, before 1980, only 5 percent of children were obese; today that figure has tripled, says the CDC.

The next generation of grandparents won’t even need to harangue their progeny with tales of walking seven miles to school in the snow; it’ll be impressive enough to say that they walked at all. My neighbor was right — the world is a very different place.

(Freelancer L. J. Williamson wrote this for the Los Angeles Times. )