Overprotective Government, Overweight Kids?

A recent
study in the science journal PLOS One found that
overprotected kids face a 13 percent greater chance of being obese
than other kids, possibly because they aren’t allowed to do things
like play outside and walk to school:

[T]he evidence suggests that the physical activity of
children has declined over time as rates of child overweight and
obesity have increased. At the same time, there has been a shift in
perceptions of safety for children, even though children arguably
face the same or fewer risks today than in previous decades.
Parents have become more risk averse and protective over time, and
as a result children have enjoyed fewer opportunities for active
free play and independent mobility.

The study, which was conducted in Australia, blames helicopter
parents. Here in America, helicopter government is also making
parents afraid to send their kids outside to play. While examples
like Debra
Harrell—the mom jailed for letting her 9-year-old play in the
park—are rare, in my
piece at the Weekly Wonk, I discuss a couple of other
cases:

A man in suburban Pittsburgh dropped off his kids, age 6
and 9, at the park while he ran some errands. This sight was so
unusual – children playing on their own – that a passerby called
911. The police came and charged the dad with two counts of child
endangerment. This happened
recently in D.C., too. …[And] One mom got a visit
from Child Protective Services because her children
were playing in the rain! It has become a radical act to let
kids play beyond the living room.

If our cops, courts, and lawmakers absorb helicopter parents’
wrongheaded belief that a child outside is a child in danger (even
though crime is at a 50-year
low), any parent who wants her kids to get some exercise and
independence must worry about the possibility that she could be
deemed negligent.

That doesn’t mean parents shouldn’t let their kids go
forth and frolic. It means the government should make it abundantly
clear that parents who believe their children are fine outside,
unsupervised—the way we were as kids—will not face harassment or
charges.