America has gone Child Abuse Hotline crazy: 7.8 million kids get reported to child protective service each year — and 7.1 M turn out to be fine. That’s a lot of extra calls!
Why so many? Onlookers can mistake Free-Range parenting for neglect, but they mistake poverty for neglect, too: A child looks “too young” to be running an errand. A child is dressed “wrong” for the cold. A child is coming home with a latchkey.
Free-Range Parenting Laws like Utah’s — what we now call “Reasonable Childhood Independence” laws at Let Grow — would curb this. Read the oped I wrote with Let Grow’s legal consultant, Diane Redleaf, in today’s New York Daily News by clicking here!