My favorite living writer, Michael Chabon, is back in The New York Review of Books, this time with an essay on "the wilderness of childhood":

The sandlots and creek beds, the alleys and woodlands have been aban- doned in favor of a system of reservations--Chuck E. Cheese, the Jungle, the Discovery Zone: jolly internment centers mapped and planned by adults with no blank spots aside from doors marked staff only. When children roller-skate or ride their bikes, they go forth armored as for battle, and their parents typically stand nearby.

There are reasons for all of this. The helmeting and monitoring, the corralling of children into certified zones of safety, is in part the product of the Consumer Reports mentality, the generally increased consciousness, in America, of safety and danger. To this one might add the growing demands of insurance actuarials and the national pastime of torts. But the primary reason for this curtailing of adventure, this closing off of Wilderness, is the increased anxiety we all feel over the abduction of children by strangers; we fear the wolves in the Wilderness. This is not a rational fear; in 1999, for example, according to the Justice Department, the number of abductions by strangers in the United States was 115. Such crimes have always occurred at about the same rate; being a child is exactly no more and no less dangerous than it ever was. What has changed is that the horror is so much better known. At times it seems as if parents are being deliberately encouraged to fear for their children's lives, though only a cynic would suggest there was money to be made in doing so.

Comments

[Tripp]

Thanks for this Brandon. I love Chabon and this looks good. Last week we visited my wife's cousins. They live in the country and have a healthier idea of how kids should play.

[Citizen Reader]

Sorry, Brandon, I have tried and tried to like Chabon but just simply cannot do it. I will henceforth leave him to you and Tripp.