@katrina2017 I take your point about a lot CPS paranoia being caused by fear mongering—egregious overreaches are rare! But I remember when I was at university there was an “incident” in my small college town where a visiting Swedish professor’s wife had to deal with a police and CPS investigation because she left her baby in a stroller outside a cafe for 10 minutes—a totally normal thing to do in Sweden. I was an impressionable age so it’s always stuck with me.
I guess something that really resonated was the bit about her feeling like her daughters life was so confined; we have to be so much more judicious about when and where we can let little kids roam because we don’t have a literal village or even just trust in strangers that there will always be eyes on the child ready to step in should the situation become unsafe. If my kid goes to school a few blocks a way that would be great, I’d walk with them until they were comfortable getting there by themselves—but just the way our cities are set up it might not be possible (my elementary school was a 30 minute subway ride from my house; I know people who, even though their school is a ten minute walk still drive the kids bc they live in neighborhoods with no sidewalks and lots of busy intersections). A five year old playing in the yard alone just isn’t the same as five year olds taking public transportation independently, which they do in many countries.
I think this the main an issue with the book I am struggling with (and may be indicative of the fact I can’t turn off my anthropologist brain)—there are these ideals that really resonate with me about autonomy and respecting the child, but putting them into practice in a society that fundamentally does not respect children is hard (practically, emotionally). The book is mining specific cultures for general solutions, but parenting is a culturally, materially embedded practice—and this isn’t explored in any meaningful way. I found the first chapters about why “westerners” parent the way they do incredibly flimsy—instead of say, the erosion of public institutions; the privatization of common goods; the rise of automobiles and the suburbs; fixation on productivity and our culture of overwork (and lack of material support for parents, like family leave); etc.—it’s apparently all due to medieval theologians. (Please, spare me.)
