In 1969, American children walked to school as often as not. But today, many parents frown on children doing anything outside while alone. In fact, some parents have been arrested for allowing their children to walk or play outside.

Why can’t children be free to walk? Many Americans believed that the United States is chock full of perverts ready to grab the nearest unsuspecting child, behave in some indecent manner, and bury them in some deserted place.

In fact, such incidents are rare and possibly becoming even less common over time. According to the FBI, fewer than 150 American children per year are abducted by strangers, and only 1 percent of abductions of children involve sexual offenders. Where children are victimized, they are usually victimized not by strangers on the street but by acquaintances and relatives in their homes; only 4 percent of all sexual assaults of persons under 12 involved strangers, and 84 percent of them occurred in the victim’s home. Violence against children occurs less frequently than 20 years ago; murders of children under 14 from all causes have declined by about a third since 1993, from 2.2 per 100,000 to 1.5.

Of course, these statistics are unlikely to persuade Americans traumatized by intense television coverage of the most unusual, horrifying crimes. The average American might argue that even if one child is murdered by a stranger every hundred years, children should be kept safely locked away to prevent such horrors.

But this argument proves too much. Why? Because parents who do follow the conventional wisdom are also exposing their children to equally severe risks.

The most long-run risk of state-mandated helicopter parenting is physical harm from lack of exercise.  As terrified adults have shoved children off their feet and bikes, childhood obesity has increased, doubling over the past thirty years. In turn, obesity is a risk factor for diabetes, heart disease, cancer and a wide variety of other fatal disease. Continue reading →