DIFFERING ideas and views are one of the great parts of life. A world of views keeps things interesting. Life would be dull if everyone agreed. But every now and then along comes a view that galvanises the majority to one point.
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New Yorker Lenore Skenazy delivered that view when she wrote a column shortly after allowing her nine-year-old son to ride the subway on his own.
Overnight she was labelled ‘the world’s worst mum’. But the reality is Lenore provided an alternative view to what society has come to accept as right.
By nature humans remember the bad things in life.
We hear horrific stories such as the disappearance of Eloise Worledge from her Beaumaris home in 1976 or Daniel Morcombe from a Sunshine Coast bus stop on December 7, 2003, and these events stay with us. They make us wary. Cautious. Protective.
We read about people capable of horrendous deeds such as Mister Stinky.
These are stories not easily forgotten.
No doubt America has its own versions of the Worledge, Morcombe and Mister Stinky stories that haunt society.
Yet Lenore Skenazy reminds us with her view that as horrific as these stories are, particularly for the families involved, in the grand scale of life they remain very isolated.
“I felt like I had stumbled upon a really amazing sociological phenomena that I hadn’t been completely aware of – which is this fear that our children are unsafe every single second of the day,’’ she said yesterday.
Skenazy believes parents are afraid of physical danger for their children and they have the notion that ‘we have to do everything for them or they won’t develop right’. It’s an interesting opinion and one that will leave parents reeling because it goes against the accepted view in society today that children need protection.
What’s great about views is that they get people talking and thinking. Lenore Skenazy now travels the world to ensure that continues and that’s a great thing.
