When Are Kids Truly Safe?

02/20/2009

Human resources are like natural resources; they’re often buried deep. You have to go looking for them, they’re not just lying around on the surface. You have to create the circumstances where they show themselves.
Sir Ken Robinson 1950 - 2020

In her article, "The Toxic Paradox: Can We Really Protect Our Kids from Everything?," in New York Times Magazine (February 8, 2009), Peggy Orenstein talks about the anxieties parents face in trying to protect their children from a growing, changing number of environmental concerns. She talks about the uncertainties she experiences in deciding whether she is doing enough.....

"'There's no way around the uncertainty,' says Kimberly Thompson, president of Kid Risk, a non profit group that studies children's health. 'That means your choices can matter, but it also means that you are not going to know if they do.' A 2004 report in the journal Pediatrics explained that jittery parents have more to fear from fire, car accidents and drowning than from toxic chemical exposure (with the exception of lead, which still threatens the health of millions of children). To which I say: Well, obviously. But such concrete hazards are beside the point. It's the dangers parents can't -- and may never -- quantify that go bump in the night. That's why I've purged my pantry of microwave popcorn (the bags are coated with a potential carcinogen), but although I've lived blocks from a major fault line for more than 12 years, I still haven't bolted our bookcases to the living room wall.

"Paul Slovic, a psychology professor at the University of Oregon, calls that skewed response 'intuitive toxicology.' When the potential impact of a chemical is catastrophic -- cancer or birth defects -- we tend to act from the gut, ignoring the actual probability of harm. I wouldn't expect parents to have the same risk tolerance as experts. Yet, I wonder sometimes if avoiding the vinyl lunch box -- I don't care if it has 'Hello Kitty' on the front -- is just another blade in a helicopter parent's propellar, another version of overzealous monitoring that has produced kids who leave for college without ever having crossed the street by themselves.

"In this era when children symbolize emotional fulfillment rather than free household labor, we cling to the belief that if we just do everything right -- starting with what a woman eats before she's even pregnant -- we can protect them from pain or failure or sadness. We can make them perfect and, in the process, prove ourselves beyond reproach. But, of course, that control is illusory: even if it were possible to do everything 'right,' it could still come out wrong. What if it wasn't the creosote or the pesiticide that gave me cancer but something even more frightening -- plain old bad luck? What is a parent supposed to do about that?"

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