Latest news with #Skenazy
New York Post
17-05-2025
- New York Post
Why the time has come for New Yorkers to trust the subway again
On back-to-back nights last week, I bumped into two New Yorkers made famous by the subway: Lenore Skenazy and Daniel Penny. Skenazy rose to prominence in 2008 as 'America's Worst Mom' for letting her 9-year-old son ride the 6 train alone; Penny in 2023 for restraining Jordan Neely, a repeat offender menacing other passengers, in a headlock that would lead to Neely's death. Skenazy's and Penny's incidents took place 15 years apart, but are united by a perennial question: Is the subway safe enough for New York's most vulnerable? 5 Author and parenting activist Lenore Skenazy became famous a decade ago when she let her young kids ride the subway alone. Zandy Mangold Back in the oughts, Skenazy argued that the real threat to kids wasn't dangerous riders, but overprotective parents who never let them develop the skill of independence. The subway, in theory, is the ultimate liberator for kids and parents alike. I'm raising my kids in the suburbs, and the biggest pullback to city life isn't the arts or the restaurants — it's the chance for my kids to grow in confidence and be exposed to the world without my hand-holding. City life for kids, though, requires trust in public order. When Skenazy made a name for herself by sending little Izzy into the subway alone, the city's trust was peaking. Just months before, MTA had announced that ridership was at a 50-year high, and subway crime was at a record low. 5 Daniel Penny put Jordan Neely in a headlock that would lead to Neely's death. Steven Hirsch Thanks to the leadership of Mayor Rudy Giuliani and his successor, Michael Bloomberg, New Yorkers were safer than they had been in generations. The secret sauce those mayors used was 'broken windows' policing, targeting disorder and low-level crime to maintain public peace and confidence in public spaces. The way scholars George L. Kelling and James Q. Wilson saw it, if you tolerate broken windows, graffiti, fare evasion, and low-level lawlessness, you signal that no one is in charge and you invite bigger crimes to follow. But when you enforce the basics, you stop that spiral before it metastasizes. With a focus on the small stuff, NYPD was able to keep a lid on the big stuff, build trust in the system, and prevent recurrences of the mayhem of the 1970s and 1980s that spawned Charles Bronson's 'Death Wish' on the silver screen and, in real life, Bernie Goetz, the so-called Subway Vigilante. 5 The mayhem that greeted subway riders during the 1970s and 1980s was so extreme that it inspired the iconic film 'Death Wish.' FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images Disastrously, however, the city's voters turned away from that center-right consensus on crime and handed the keys to Gracie Mansion to Bill de Blasio. Following de Blasio's election in 2014, the city slashed proactive policing, ended stop-question-and-frisk, and sent the clear message that low-level crimes would go unenforced. The result: more fare evasion, more disorder, and more violence. According to research from Aaron Chalfin, associate professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania, felony assaults in the subway system tripled from 2009 to 2023, even while ridership fell by 20%. 5 A group of kids can be seen leaving the 34th Street Penn Station subway station in Manhattan in October 2022. Stephen Yang With Big Bill's 'compassionate' policing approach put into practice, it was only a matter of time before crime surged and a modern subway defender was forced to rise to the occasion. That man was Daniel Penny. On May 1, 2023, Jordan Neely — already arrested more than 40 times, including for punching a 67-year-old woman in the face and breaking her nose — boarded an F train in Manhattan. According to witnesses, Neely raged at passengers, yelling that someone was going to die and that he wasn't afraid of prison. Penny stepped in and ended the threat. Daniel Penny's act is one that no New Yorker should ever have to take. But these days, we need brave men like Daniel Penny on board because city leadership has failed to create the conditions that let parents feel as confident as Skenazy did in the Bloomberg era. 5 Mayor Adams can claim some improvement on subway violent crime numbers, which began to creep back up during the tenure of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, according to reports. Paul Martinka Thankfully, though, the tide is turning in favor of order. Following the horrific burning of a woman on the F train in December, the NYPD launched a new Quality-of-Life Division last month to crack down on low-level offenses, just like the broken windows playbook calls for. Summonses and arrests are up, and crime numbers are looking better. As the Manhattan Institute's Rafael Mangual told me, 'progress is being made — in part because more resources are being devoted to the subways.' Mangual added, however, 'disorder that doesn't make it into official stats is still what riders experience every day.' And parents like me can still feel that. If New York is going to be a place for kids to range free again, like Lenore Skenazy did 17 years ago, we need a full return to the public safety principles that made it possible. Jordan McGillis (@jordanmcgillis) is the economics editor at City Journal.
USA Today
15-04-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are embracing free-range parenting. What is that?
Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell are embracing free-range parenting. What is that? Actor and comedian Dax Shepard says he and wife Kristen Bell let their kids ride motorcycles in their neighborhood – and parenting experts say that's a good thing. 'Do whatever you want. I trust you, you know how to get home," Shepard says. "You know how to flag a stranger. They've had really a ton of autonomy, I think, relative to other kids.' On the March 12 episode of Dax Shepard's 'Armchair Expert' podcast, the actor opened up about his free-range parenting style with Jonathan Haidt, author of 'The Anxious Generation.' Haidt praised Shepard for his parenting style and emphasized the importance of letting children problem solve and make choices when they encounter obstacles. 'The gut response is why should you take any risk,' Haidt says. 'Whereas, if you think about it, you realize, 'Wait, If I don't train my child how to take risk ... I'm creating a child who won't be able to deal with the world, and that's what we've done.' What is free-range parenting? Free-range parenting is a philosophy that emphasizes free play, increased independence and limited parental intervention. Advocates of the practice argue constant supervision restricts a child's natural process developing resilience, independence and resourcefulness, and encourages children to problem solve without direct supervision, such as taking public transit, walking to school or playing at the park. Lenore Skenazy, the author of 'Free-Range Kids: How Parents and Teachers Can Let Go and Let Grow,' said in a 2020 Armchair Expert episode that constant parental intervention is a 'disempowering, distressing, demoralizing way to live.' 'There's something lost to the kids when they are constantly under surveillance and constantly helped and assisted and supervised,' says Skenazy. Shepard says he had an 'inordinate amount of free time and responsibility' as a child and started working in cornfields at 12 years old in the summer, which he says makes him predisposed to embracing the 'anti helicopter' parenting movement. Proponents of protective parenting argue free-range parenting increases the risk children encounter danger and can result in neglect when children are improperly supervised. Free-range parents also may run into legal issues; states like Illinois and Oregon don't allow children to be left alone under the ages of 14 and 10, respectively. Why overprotection isn't always a good thing Skenazy says constant overprotection inadvertently creates vulnerable kids who don't know how to respond to adverse situations. On the other hand, Skenazy argues, giving kids a 'practical roadmap' for how to stay safe can be empowering. As hands-off as Skenazy and Haidt are about kids in the real world, they advocate for a more restricted online one. Shepard's kids, who are 10 and 12, have iPods with restrictions. They can text on WiFi at home, listen to music and audiobooks, and create home movies, but don't use games or social media. Shepard says the approach is working. 'I just deep panicked that they were going to get obsessed with it,' Shepard says. 'They forget to charge it. A month goes by and they go, 'Oh, I want to do whatever,' and they charge it.' In the podcast, Haidt describes that America underwent a 'moral panic' throughout the 1990s when there was a disproportionate level of concern about kidnappings and sex trafficking as parents simultaneously stopped trusting their neighbors, resulting in a 'clamp down on the autonomy of children.' 'What's so insane about what's happening, parents are afraid to let their kids run around outside because they're afraid they'll get picked up by a sex predator,' Haidt says, adding that now, sex predators can easily contact children on social media. More: What type of parent are you? Lawnmower? Helicopter? Attachment? Tiger? Free-range? Here's what Haidt and Skenazy say parents can do to raise resilient children Haidt advocates for four norms for parents and schools: no smartphones until high school, no social media before 16, phone-free schools and more independence, responsibility and freedom in the real world. Haidt acknowledged that parents who restrict phone use may isolate their children socially if they're the only kids in their class without a smartphone. He emphasized that the four norms will only function as proper solutions if parents collectively decide not to give their kids smartphones. 'The key is to give your kids a great, exciting social childhood,' Haidt says. 'If your kids have a gang, if they have just a few other kids that they can hang around with, they're probably gonna come out fine. Shepard says taking worthwhile risks, like driving a car, are a part of everyday life. 'What people are not doing, I think accurately, is assessing what's at stake,' Shepard says. 'If you don't drive a car you're not going anywhere in your life and if your kids don't have this sense of competence and autonomy, they're going to miss out on where the car takes you.' Skenazy advocated for teaching children the three R's when it comes to threats: Recognize, resist and report, and said she embraces the idea that when adults step back, kids step up. 'Tell your kids that if something happens to them that makes them feel bad or sad, they can talk to you about it,' Skenazy says. 'Even if somebody says, 'this is our secret,' you can tell me, and nothing bad will happen to you. I won't be mad at you, I won't blame you.' Like the immune system, Haidt says kids are antifragile — meant to learn from challenges. 'Imagine your kid in two ways. In one, your kid is competent and confident, and they go out there into the world and they're doing things. And the other, they're just always afraid because they think everything's risky. Which one do you want for your kid?' Haidt says. Rachel Hale's role covering youth mental health at USA TODAY is funded by a grant from Pivotal Ventures. Pivotal Ventures does not provide editorial input. Reach her at rhale@ and @rachelleighhale on X.
