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Is it responsible for a parent to let a 12-year-old child ride the NYC subway alone?
Is it responsible for a parent to let a 12-year-old child ride the NYC subway alone?
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Results so far:
| Yes | 38% | 278 votes | Total: 730 votes | |
| No | 62% | 452 votes |
Yes
by Natalie Delia
Created on: July 18, 2009
I grew up in New York and it was perfectly acceptable to ride the subway at 12. I was 12 in 1992, if anything a more dangerous time in the city and the subway than today. In those not-so-long-ago days, many young New Yorkers took the subway to high school everyday from the age of 14 - not hopping on for a stop or two so they could avoid walking in the snow, but traversing the city. I went to Stuyvesant High School, in downtown Manhattan, and literally 95% of the students took some combination of ferry, subways and buses to arrive at school.
We didn't grow up afraid of our world and the people around us. We were independent young people with independent lives, complete with places to go and people to see. Taking the public transportation available to every citizen was the most natural thing in the world.
We live in Florida now and I have my own child. Everyone is constantly afraid of children falling off their bicycles, children getting hit by cars, children getting abducted, children getting molested, children being obese, children having eating disorders, children suffering from learning disorders, children suffering from depression and, finally, afraid of children committing suicide.
Between all these paranoias (and they are paranoias - contrary to what the news would have us believe, victimization of children by strangers is quite rare), our children have no independence at all and lack the freedom to create even basic senses of selves. They don't play with one another without our helpful supervision, because we take them wherever they go. They don't survive illnesses or injuries and, when they do, we feel guilty because they suffered because it should have been within our control.
Then, shockingly, we give them cars when they are 16 and give them the keys. They go from being shuttled around to owning machines capable of killing people from one day to the next. Two years later (if they haven't been killed or seriously injured in a car which, unlike victimization by a stranger, is very common), we pack them off to college and hope that the whole adult thing works out for them.
In New York, among native New Yorkers, 5 is about the appropriate age to go to a friend's apartment when the friend lives in the same building. Mothers call one another to wait the 2 minutes for their child to arrive, but this is unbeknownst to the child, who must develop independence. After another 2 years or so, walking 2 or 3 blocks in considered reasonable. At about 8, children walk to school when school is close to the house and by 11, the bus to middle school is an everyday event. In this world, twelve year olds going from 116th Street to 96th Street on the Number 1 doesn't seem so outrageous. In this way, they are prepared to travel to high school in two years and then move out four short years later.
We're moving back to New York shortly, because I am refusing to raise my son in the bubble of our best intentions. He needs to take the subway when he's 12 so he's ready to confront the world, as his own person, when he's 18.
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No
by Lisa Beach
Created on: July 16, 2009 Last Updated: July 20, 2009
That's like asking if it's okay to push a child into a pond full of sharp-toothed Piranha fish. That child would be targeted immediately by the hungry hunters just looking for easy prey.
Because that's what a 12-year-old child on a New York City subway is: easy prey. S/he might as well wear a sign saying "look at me: I'm gullible, and free for abuse." Because I believe anyone reading this will agree, the number one reason to not leave children alone IS sexual predators.
In fact, letting children like this enter and ride subways just makes kidnapping that much easier. There is no need to choose a child [at a playground, etc.], stalk or peruse a neighborhood - or use any effort at all. The unwary and innocent stand out like the sun when it's raining. Not to mention the child may not be missed for hours: until s/he's expected home.
And yes, there are those who disagree - say kids are living in a dangerous world already, etc - but there's no reason to push them into that pond full of carnivore hunting habits. There's no need to set a 12-year-old child up to be hurt, not only by sexual predators, but others as well.
Maybe the child gets onboard okay, and rides to where s/he need to be, but just moments before the train stops, someone is knifed for money for drugs. Anyone even near the thugs doing the killing is automatically at risk. How irresponsible is that? Twelve-year-olds are at that age when they think they can do anything an adult can do. They think they know more than their parents ever will, and just want to be left alone to prove it.
Well there are some adults that won't even take the Sub in NYC. They will tell one that that is what taxi's are for. There are over thirteen thousand cabs in New York City for a reason.
But back to my point. Another danger for a 12-year-old child is the odds of him/her being pushed or jostled off the platform and onto or near the rails. Even an unintended loss of balance would do it, as most 12-year-olds haven't got enough weight or strength to balance and then pull themselves back from an edge.
A child could get lost in the crowd that ensues at each stop, when the doors open; crushed or stamped on by people in a hurry, distracted somehow; vagrants could grab him/her as s/he walked up the steps - there are a thousand things that could go wrong, and they all make me shudder.
They should make parents and care-givers think - think really hard - before sending their child out into such a soup of humanity. There are other, safer ways to get around New York, no matter where the child is heading. Even if it's a short trip the child has taken a million times should not matter. The innocent mindset; the "I'm-all-grown-up" attitude; and the gullibility of a child's mind, all make that child a target. And of course, in a subway crowd, that child gains anonymity. It makes him or her a victim as easy as choosing one's favorite candy, at a candy store open twenty-four hours a day.
Is it responsible for a parent to let a 12-year-old child ride the NYC subway alone? No. Wanting one's child to gain a sense of self-reliance is admirable, but there are other, safer ways of doing so.
It would be a wonderful thing if Humanity and all her people's were perfect. It would be admirable if entire cities took care of their own - it is something everyone yearns for to one degree or another; but because that will never happen, the least we can do is keep our kids safe. We'll all sleep just a little bit easier at night.
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