A lesson in brave parenting

Opinion: June 21, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Bruce Barcott

Los Angeles Times

What in heaven’s name were her parents thinking?

For a lot of people, that was the second thought that came to mind upon hearing that Abby Sunderland, the 16-year-old Thousand Oaks, Calif., girl attempting to sail solo around the world, was rescued by a French fishing vessel Saturday after being cast adrift in the middle of the Indian Ocean. (The first thought, of course, was: Thank God she’s alive.)

Now that Abby’s OK, the inevitable storm of criticism is raining down on her parents, Laurence and Marianne, who wished their daughter bon voyage when she cast off from Marina del Rey in January. Allowing a 16-year-old girl to sail alone around the world — were they insane?

Not at all. Unusual, yes. But hardly “the worst parents in the world,” as I’ve heard them called recently. In fact, they may be the opposite. Like Paul Romero, the father of Jordan Romero, the 13-year-old Big Bear Lake teenager who climbed Mount Everest last month, the Sunderlands are practicing something bold and rare these days: brave parenting.

Raising kids today (I have an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old) is like working on a construction site with an overzealous risk manager. Everywhere you look there are signs reminding parents that Safety Is Job One. We’re told to cut up hot dogs and grapes to prevent choking, to lash the kids into car seats, to never let them out of sight at the park. A certain amount of this is progress, of course. I’d rather my kids not launch through the windshield like human missiles in a head-on, thank you.

But in our obsession with safety, we’ve lost sight of the upside of risk, danger and even injury: raising bold children who are prepared for adventure and eager to embrace the unfamiliar.

Constrained habitat

The habitat of my own children is constrained. It contains entirely too many screens and couches. And this constraint is not unique to my family. As Richard Louv pointed out in his groundbreaking book, “Last Child in the Woods,” kids are playing outside less often and for ever-shrinking periods of time. Sandra Hofferth, a researcher at the University of Maryland, found that the amount of time kids spent outside doing things such as walking, hiking, fishing and beach play declined by 50 percent between 1997 and 2003. Not long ago, up to half of the kids in this country walked or rode their bikes to school. Now fewer than one in five do. That inactivity has consequences. In the 1960s, less than 5 percent of American kids were obese. Now it’s pushing 20 percent.

How nutty have things gotten? Last month, Lenore Skenazy, who resists the bubble-wrapping of childhood at her website freerangekids.wordpress.com, declared May 22 a national holiday: Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There Day. The idea was so outlandish that the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle deemed it worthy of ink. Skenazy’s radical notion was to drop off your kids at the park. Not in Times Square or the Tenderloin. At the park.

The Sunderlands aren’t crazy. They’re subversives. They’re undermining a dominant culture that pumps parents full of fear and finds us at fault every time our child skins a knee.

Last year, Dutch authorities were so alarmed by 13-year-old Laura Dekker’s plan to sail alone around the world that they didn’t just stop her from setting sail; they punished her father by revoking partial custody.

Are stage parents pushing their kids into these adventures? I have yet to run across one. The money and fame are too small. We aren’t talking Nike shoe contract money here. There were murmurings last week about the Sunderlands signing a reality TV deal. To be honest, that makes me a little nervous. But consider that Abby’s older brother, Zac, did the around-the-world gig last year with no reality TV deal. Kate Gosselin-size fame doesn’t seem to be the motivating factor.

To me, the bright line in these situations is the age of 16. It’s taken us a century of trial and error to settle on that boundary in terms of driving (a.k.a., the ability to deal death to oneself and others), and it seems an apt guideline for these sorts of adventures as well. Word to the Dutch: That’s a guideline, not law.

Bruce Barcott is a contributing editor at Outside. He wrote this for the Los Angeles Times. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.