Today’s Wall Street Journal features a review of two books, The Parents We Mean to Be by Richard Weissbourd, and Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy.  I’m not sure why they are reviewed together, except that they do have a common theme of parents backing off and leaving their kids alone a little bit.

Weissbourd’s book focuses on how parents have failed to provide moral leadership, instead focusing on either self-esteem or success.  This can lead to a total failure to teach kids the hard lessons of life such as working hard and doing the right thing, or, conversely, it can lead to kids under so much pressure to succeed that they stagger under the burden.  In neither case are children becoming good, moral citizens–they’re just becoming some combination of selfish and successful. 

The book by Skenazy is about how we over protect our kids, so much so that they don’t learn to live with failure or to take care of themselves.  The WSJ article writes:

Ms. Skenazy, a humor columnist, believes we should give “our children the freedom we had without going nuts with worry.” She lampoons safety-obsessed parents who see a threat-filled world, from metal baseball bats and raw cookie dough to Halloween-candy poisoners and kidnappers. She advises turning off the news, avoiding experts and boycotting baby knee pads “and the rest of the kiddie safety-industrial complex.”

I can go with Weissbourd’s thesis that parents’ job is not to make kids feel good, but to make them be good.  I see a tragic lack of moral guidance from parents toward their kids.  I give my kids as much freedom as I possibly can, and my DH and I work hard to help them become independent and to responsible.  A big part of that is us explaining the moral implications of actions and words, and them accepting the consequences of their actions and words.  We seldom let them off the hook just because it would make them feel bad.

But I’m a little more hesitant to accept Skenazy’s idea that we shouldn’t worry so much about our kids.  Anyone who reads newspapers or magazines, who watches the news, or who gets amber alerts on their cell phones knows that there are scary people out there who actively want to hurt our children.  Clearly, we have to hold on loosely.  But if we don’t protect them, who will?  What are we here for, if not that?

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