Welcome back to Good Life, a newsletter about navigating our modern culture and staying sane in the process. This week, we discuss how important it is to allow your children to become independent of you.
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Stop Leashing Your Children
I was scrolling through my social media this week and stumbled upon a heated discussion about when it’s appropriate to leave your children home alone. As with most things parenting-related, it really caught my attention. Y’all probably know by now that I don’t let modern trends dictate my parenting style, but the knives were out on both sides, and I’ll admit that it drew me into the rabbit hole.
The question is: At what age is it appropriate for your child to stay home alone?
Kelsey Piper’s recent Substack piece, “How getting richer made teenagers less free,” focused on how our society protects children’s rights more than at any time in history, but at a cost — children have lost their independence.
“Americans hit their children less than we used to. We spend more time playing with them. We spend, of course, far more money on them. We supervise them more,” Piper wrote.
“But the same forces that worked to eliminate child labor and exploitation and gave parents more room and incentive to invest in their progeny have also worked to strip children of independence,” she added.
She then broke down a poll her Substack conducted on the age at which it is appropriate for children to stay home alone, and a third of the respondents admitted they didn’t feel comfortable until their children were between 14 and 17.
It was this little bit of information that sent women on social media wild. One side argued that 13 was way too old to be staying at home alone for the first time. While the other argued that children should never be alone at home, no matter the age.
It probably won’t shock any of my readers to hear that I agree with the former camp, not the latter. Every child is different, but one thing you realize after becoming a parent is that you can safely leave your children at home alone for small spurts of time earlier than you think.