Why are so many parents being arrested?

The communities that used to assist them are gone. So we call the cops instead.

Kids running
(Image credit: (H. Armstrong Roberts/ClassicStock/Corbis))

This summer has seen a rash of stories of parents being hauled away in cuffs for such sins as letting their kids roam unaccompanied in a park, or keeping them in the car while performing a short errand, or even leaving them alone in their own home for a few hours.

My own childhood seems to have become illegal. I was the son of a single mother. During summers I would explore my neighborhood, visit friends' houses, walk to a pond to fish, ride my bike from our home in Bloomfield, N.J., to the abandoned lots of Newark, and jump it over curbs. I could be unsupervised from 10 in the morning until 8:30 at night, when the streetlights started coming on. If I was home with my grandmother, sometimes she would leave me alone to do grocery shopping.

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Michael Brendan Dougherty

Michael Brendan Dougherty is senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is the founder and editor of The Slurve, a newsletter about baseball. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, ESPN Magazine, Slate and The American Conservative.