A new Iconowatch report by Iconoculture has announced the crash of helicopter parents, those hovering, overprotective, stifling moms and dads, usually late-wave Boomers, famous for practicing constant and close surveillance of their Millennial offspring. They and their subset, the obsessive hoverers known as Black Hawks, (named after the military helicopter) may soon be replaced by the more relaxed and permissive Free Range Parents.

 

Describing this inevitable backlash against helicopter parents, the report mentions New York Sun columnist Lenore Skenazy, creator of the website Free Range Kids, her blog urging readers to “give our children the same freedom we had!”  (http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/). Free Range Kids is the result of a slew of criticism Skenazy faced after writing a column in which she chronicled her then nine-year-old son’s ride home on the subway, solo, returning home to their Manhattan home from an Upper East Side department store.

 

“As kids, we walked to school, played outside, went to the park. Parents now are terrified, out of the blue,” Skenazy tells demo dirt. “We are not allowing our children the same freedom we had.”

 

And for those who argue that times are more dangerous now than ever, Skenazy cites research conducted by the Crimes Against Children Research Center of the University of New Hampshire indicating that murder and abduction rates have actually gone down. “It is a perception issue,” Skenazy contends. “People think that it is a jungle out there, and that stems from the media and non-stop cable.”

 

Parents must have more faith in their children, Skenazy says. “We need to trust that kids could be competent enough to do things on their own without dying. They are 40 times more likely to die in a car crash than to get abducted while playing outside.”

 

And once parents realize that children playing together outdoors is not an invitation to abduction, says the mother of two boys, their kids will enjoy more active play. “My son looks out the window and he looks so forlorn. There are no kids to play with, and we live by a big courtyard. They are all inside, except for maybe one mom with her toddler,” says Skenazy, whose sons are ages ten and twelve. “No one’s outside, so kids go back in to watch TV, which scares them, or they play on the computer. It is a vicious cycle.”

 

The trend toward more relaxed parenting may also bring relief to moms and dads. “People are sick of the hovering parents. And the parents who hover find that they have no free time, it’s a drag, and they have zero life,” Skenazy says.

 

Helicopter parenting, she contends, is a problem that “once identified, you know what you can’t stand. When you identify the problem, what does the solution look like?”

The solution, says Jen Singer, popular mom blogger (www.mommasaid.net), and author of You're a Good Mom (and Your Kids Aren't So Bad Either), is to loosen up. Singer says she too has noticed that parents are starting to ease their grips on their offspring.

“Today's moms are reluctantly loosening the reigns on their kids, but most will never let them roam free like we did as kids, back when our mothers kicked us out of the house in the morning and expected our return only for meals or bathroom breaks,” Singer explains. “We've been too conditioned to fear the Stranger Danger to put our Mommy Monitors on pause for very long.”

 

And what gets Mommy Monitors beeping? Today’s media, of course. “We can't go back to the good old days of simply letting kids roam free all the time because of something our parents didn't have to deal with: child unfriendly media,” Singer maintains. “My mother never had to worry that another kid would show me The Sopranos on his cell phone, and yet that's exactly what happened to a bunch of fifth graders in my neighborhood. Crime rates may be down indeed, but the Internet is filled with ‘neighborhoods’ where our kids truly aren't safe.”

 

David Kent Jones, president of Computer Parenting, LLC, and creator of Online Teen Dangers (www.onlineteendangers.com), promoting ways to keep kids safe, agrees. “Take the Internet for example. Filtering out every web site out except for Disney and Barney for a 16 year-old would be silly. However, when the father of a young teenage girl that had been killed by an Internet predator was interviewed, he said he had ‘no hint’ of what she was doing on the computer,” he says.

Despite concerns about today’s risks, the trend towards a more flexible parenting style is most likely due to the obvious consequences of overzealous rearing. “We've seen Helicopter Parenting turn out college kids who text home to ask what to have for lunch, so it's time the pendulum swings back the other way, even if only a little bit,” Singer says.

 

Jones agrees. “I believe balance is in order. You can’t plastic wrap your kids when they are born and store them in a bubble until they become adults. At the same time, you can’t abandon them to the wolves,” he says.

 

Are Free Range Moms abandoning their kids to the wolves? No. "’Free range kids’ is simply a backlash against the Helicopter Parents. It's about breaking ourselves from micro-managing every waking moment of our kids' lives to give them some reasonable freedoms as they get older,” Singer, who writes about Slacker Moms versus Super Moms, explains.

 

The best way to ensure safety and balance may be to focus on where the greatest dangers lurk, and how they manifest themselves. Kent, whose Online Teen Dangers site offers a free eBook on the dangers teens face and strategies to combat them, offers three ways to monitor kids’ safety both on and offline. First, Kent suggests creating a “Code of Conduct, a written set of rules that parents and kids agree together to follow.  As long as the rules are respected, the child will have more freedom. This eliminates misunderstandings of expectations and consequences.”

 

Next, Kent advises to follow with your children. “Kids will respect what parents inspect. Occasionally check if the rules are being obeyed,” he says. “Ask your child questions about their activities. Be a vigilant parent. Watch for danger signs that warrant closer inspections.”

 

Remaining calm but firm, is the third key step in monitoring your family’s safety, Kent says, as it encourages open communication and trust. “Outbursts of anger at disobeyed rules will only make your kids hide their mistakes in the future,” Kent says. “They need to know that no matter what happens, you love them. Be consistent on carrying out the consequences that you agreed to in the Code of Conduct.”

The main trend in parenting, while moving away from the helicopter parent, still involves vigilance, given the Internet and other media. Basically, advises Singer, mother of two tween boys, “Hover as you see fit.”

 

As for Skenazy and her free range parenting style, she has faced a torrent of disapproval from those who question her choice to let her son ride the subway alone. Her favorite snappy comeback to the accusation, "How can you let your son take the subway?" was suggested by a devotee of her blog. "'Because he came home with a DWI,'" she laughs.

 

Despite enduring criticism, Skenazy graciously remains uncritical of fellow parents. “It’s not like the children of overprotective parents will become sniveling, frightened, curled-up-in-the-fetal-position 35 year-olds,” Skenazy adds. “I think all our kids are going to turn out all right.”