Criminal Child Neglect and the "Free Range Kid": Is Overprotective Parenting the New Standard of Care?

Parenting in American society is a far more demanding enterprise than it once was, and the changes over a single generation are startling. Intensive Parenting is becoming the norm in the dominant American subcultures, which are embracing safety-conscious parenting approaches that might once have been viewed disapprovingly as “overprotective” parenting. Most of the change is motivated by a well-intentioned desire to protect and promote children’s safety and welfare— more specifically to (1) insulate them from risks of physical harm and victimization, and (2) increase their access to educational and cultural advantage. De facto legal standards appear to be evolving right along with these attitudes about proper parenting, with individual parental choices increasingly secondguessed by a society now willing to pass judgment on them.