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When Mothers Get Arrested for Mothering. Raising independent kids shouldn’t be this hard.
(www.theatlantic.com)
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2026
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Dude (ma'am?) I had kids in the 90s and 2000s and was never a helicopter parent and though I do agree with your damned if you do, damned if you don't, the world is judgemental as fuck, that over-involved parenting style is not harmless either. My kids were in a group of kids at school and even in HIGHSCHOOL some of those parents tracked their kids everywhere they went. It's a level of surveillance I cannot imagine imposing. But it wasn't all the kids ever. The surveilled kids did not do well adjusting to freedom, and didn't trust their parents much. I don't think it hurts little kids as much as long as you have a plan to build their independence before high school, which these parents did not.
It is true here that elementary school won't let kids be walkers now without an adult or teenage sibling to walk with them at dismissal. You can arrange a walk-pooling group but it has to have a grownup. From the bus they don't though, can just walk home.
The kids across the street from us still run in the yard by themselves and run up the street to visit their friends, there are I'd say 8 year olds riding bikes alone & in groups, we do not live in an HOA or gated anything just in a neighborhood in the city. Though I obviously don't know if the bike kids are air-tagged or something, they look like when I was little just fewer of them now.
I'm from California originally, that's an agendered term to me! lol (that said, I am dude in the way you're thinking)
Fair enough... I still think it was pretty widespread at this point, but I do get the sense California was "ahead" of the curve on that, so it may have entrenched earlier for us and so may be more exaggerated to me. I also think the helicopter parenting well predated everyone being tracked, which is really what my point was. Again though, fair enough.
Agreed, the HS thing is kind of wild. Can't really imagine that. I was surprised that our kiddo's teacher was so agitated when we suggested the walk to school, I had kind of hoped in this part of Europe it would be more accepted.... and even moreso surprised that she doesn't let her 4th grader anywhere without supervision. We're in a mid sized European capital, it's eminently walkable and kids can even ride trams and buses for free. Go figure.