Everybody Hurts
October 19, 2016 9:59 AM Subscribe

In which a rich Silicon Valley Libertarian decides to build a children's playground.
posted by Scoop (161 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite

playborhood

No. Just ... no.
posted by chavenet at 10:06 AM on October 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

it was clear that Mike thought I was putting my son at risk of turning into what used to be called a sissy — a concept whose demise he regrets. And I was of the opinion that Mike was putting his son at risk of being a bully, a label Mike thinks is now used to pathologize normal, healthy, boyish aggression.

Christ, what an asshole.
posted by curiousgene at 10:08 AM on October 19, 2016 [87 favorites]

Have fun in the chainsaw pit!
posted by Artw at 10:09 AM on October 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

I think this guy sounds a little extreme but not totally nutty. But what I actually came here to say is that Silicon Valley gets a lot of bad press and if you don't live here it probably sounds like it's full of crazy Ayn Rand worshipers. And while those people are around, most people in "the Valley" are normal and not very different from people in the rest of the US. They're probably less into guns than average. Yeah, the average household income are higher as are housing prices.

But really folks - we're normal people here. I swear.
posted by GuyZero at 10:11 AM on October 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

Hm, should I send my child to the misogynist's house to play on the fancy stuff? Should I send my theoretical daughter to the misogynist's house so she can be the only girl?

I'm a huge fan of unstructured time for kids, largely because I grew up without the whole sports/tutors/classes thing kids have today, but ew.
posted by Frowner at 10:12 AM on October 19, 2016 [43 favorites]

So this playground is like what, performance art about liability insurance?
posted by oceanjesse at 10:12 AM on October 19, 2016 [38 favorites]

Weirdly it doesn't look that dangerous or odd tome, but the parent sounds like a prize knob-end. I guess the dnager is that kids might get exposed to his stupid ideas?
posted by Artw at 10:16 AM on October 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

Really the worst thing so far about Mike is that he uses the word decimated.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 10:16 AM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Rich guy, "theories about parenting," and neighborly discord is a pretty good trifecta.
posted by rhizome at 10:17 AM on October 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

I mean I grew up on a street that had 8 kids about the same age and we had a free reign of terror over our neighborhood so I get the premise of what this dad is trying to set up, but for fucks sake our parents knew enough to butt the hell out of world and let us roam around on our bikes. The only rule was we had to be home or calling from a friends house by sundown.

I had a pretty rad childhood.

whereupon Annika looks wistfully out from the glass windows of the corporate office building from whence she types away into a mac laptop screen, and ruminates upon the state of her adult life.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:19 AM on October 19, 2016 [51 favorites]

We used to break shit and set fire to things. Happy days.
posted by Artw at 10:20 AM on October 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

The other thing is that they appear to be using a trampoline unsupervised, and that is ridiculously risky. Kids are far safer on the roof than doing unsupervised back flips - self taught! - on a trampoline. I spent some time on roofs as a kid and as a broad generality we did not do stupid stuff - partly because we knew if we fell off we'd be in huge trouble.

I would be interested to know if this dude's little non-sissy boys are out beating up the sissies and developmentally disabled - his creepy, hateful attitude seems likely to spill over. My neighborhood of free range kids was a horrorshow in that regard, too.
posted by Frowner at 10:20 AM on October 19, 2016 [30 favorites]

This dude is a fucking creep-o, also seconding the trampolines are actually surprisingly dangerous. I used to dick around in the woods by myself and was obligated to take a dog with me so's to not run into bears, honestly would rather have kids up to that than some weird suburban dad misogyny ideas paradise
posted by beefetish at 10:23 AM on October 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

Ctrl-F "insurance"

Enjoy your preteen death trap, Misogynist Libertarian Dad!
posted by Faint of Butt at 10:24 AM on October 19, 2016 [27 favorites]

a two-story log-cabin playhouse with a sleeping loft, whiteboard walls inside for coloring and really good speakers, blasting Talking Heads.

I love it when Onion articles come true
posted by ejs at 10:24 AM on October 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

Dude admits that as a boy, he had no interest in including girls no matter what, and invited a mentally challenged boy and a deaf boy to play just to round out the numbers. Then holds that up as an example of children doing right.

That's so obviously a rationale for needing parents to promote inclusivity, and he just doesn't get it.
posted by explosion at 10:30 AM on October 19, 2016 [16 favorites]

As a child of the 70s I remember this mayhem all too well, but nobody misses the trips to the ER.
posted by lagomorphius at 10:34 AM on October 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

In Mike’s worldview, boys today (his focus is on boys) are being deprived of masculine experiences by overprotective moms, who are allowed to dominate passive dads.

Oh, Mike's Worldview, how toxic you are!
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:37 AM on October 19, 2016 [53 favorites]

It just occurred to me that the 1970s childhood isn't a universal golden age but an artifact of its time - suburbanization, more working mothers so fewer adults around, fewer working children, girls allowed to roam more, less restrictive clothing for kids, etc. It's not that no one had a free-range childhood before 1960, but then, plenty of people have free range childhoods now.
posted by Frowner at 10:38 AM on October 19, 2016 [18 favorites]

This looks more fun.
Europeans are less keen on lawsuits though...
posted by sam and rufus at 10:38 AM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I guess the danger is that kids might get exposed to his stupid ideas?

Yeah that is much worse to me.

Also there do seem to be girls in the picture so he lets the boys "stoop" to playing with them I guess.

My kid has a mild disability that makes lots of physical tasks tougher for him, he'd probably "let" him play if he didn't mind being mocked and called slurs. How generous.
posted by emjaybee at 10:38 AM on October 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

This is like someone leaving milk out for a weekend and going wild over their "artisanal cheese".

It's nature playgrounds and people have been researching and doing this for a while, with a lot more thought and care about actual educational and child development goals than his random "Boys will be boys" shallow idiocy.

An unsupervised open trampoline with small kids is - I let my four year old use a toaster oven, ride horses and climb tall trees. I would not leave her there.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 10:41 AM on October 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Nothing teaches your children independence like building them a specially-designed more dangerous set of expensive toys than just letting them roam around the neighborhood.
posted by xingcat at 10:41 AM on October 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

Is there a word for thinking oh this could be interesting only to realize the subjects seems like a real asshole?
posted by Carillon at 10:45 AM on October 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

So this playground is like what, performance art about liability insurance?
oceanjesse

My thoughts exactly. I didn't get a chance to read the article closely but I didn't see any mention of the legal aspects of this. The article says:

He consciously transformed his family’s house into a kid hangout, spreading the word that local children were welcome to play in the yard anytime, even when the family wasn’t home.

Surely this guy can afford lawyers. This set-up opens him up to all kinds of liability, possibly even criminal penalties. You're intentionally inviting children onto your property to engage in activities you know to be unsafe (or at least have no regard as to their safety) not only when you're present but when no one is there?
posted by Sangermaine at 10:53 AM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

>> "nobody misses the trips to the ER."

I certainly miss living in a world where the risk was more broadly acceptable. I don't feel were living in a safer, better society, just a more fearful and precarious one.
posted by spudsilo at 10:56 AM on October 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

So he saw this lovely-sounding place:

The first place he visited was N Street in Davis, Calif., a cluster of around 20 houses that share land and hold regular dinners together. Children wander around freely, crossing backyards and playing in the collective spaces: Ping-Pong table, pizza oven and community garden.

...and decided he needed to build a deathscape in his backyard and invite all the kids and kick out all the sissy adults, especially the women. Nice job, dude.
posted by Huck500 at 11:01 AM on October 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

I certainly miss living in a world where the risk was more broadly acceptable.

We're also living in one where it's conceivably cheaper to fly to another country, obtain citizenship, and be part of their health care system than to deal with the American version.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:02 AM on October 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

I grew up in the county doing all sorts of crazy things, including climbing on roofs, running through the woods all day, messing with power tools all sorts of stuff. As long as no-one got hurt, we were home for dinner and no one was bugging her, my mom was fine with it. I let my kids have a fair bit of freedom, but less than I had as we live in the city. Unsupervised, open trampolines give me the heebie-jeebies. And after working as a roofer to support myself in university, there is no way I would be fine with kids climbing on roofs.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:02 AM on October 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Everyone has different lines that they will let their children cross, which is why I've suffered so many broken bones and have scars on the front and back of my head. It's not that my parents didn't care, it's just that they didn't have eyes on me and we didn't have reasons to stay inside.

Let's recount the injuries I had before I could confidently say I was a person

1) Opened my skull from back to front like a flap by means of falling head first off of a shed much like the one in the article onto a clay(?) roofing tile/slate. Exacerbated by my dad grabbing a handful of hair to find where the blood was coming from (I walked home) and lifting the top of my head up. I have a neat Batman logo scar back there now. I got stitches and my mum slept in my room with me to make sure my brain kept working.

2) Dented the front of my head and broke my wrist falling from a window at my Grandparents house. I said "I forgot to flap my arms" when I walked from the back of the house to the front and availed myself upon an adult. I got a cast and stitches.

3) Opened my knee on a broken bottle left carelessly in my path while I played with an umbrella on a windy day outside my grandpas house.

4) During a spirited game of "Kill the Catholics" the local kids trapped us in my Grandad's shed and were trying to break in. With a final push they managed to push my left thumb over to the other side of my hand. It still worked and I was able to gross people out with my opposite thumb for a few hours. No cast, just an hour of comedy at the hands of a drugged up child.

I wasn't even 10 yet.

Thanks to the NHS for keeping my head attached I guess.

However, my point. All of these happened "around the house" not in some playground (Save for the knee, it was in a playground owned by my Grandad's neighbor, and it was next to his house). Putting in equipment like the clear invitation to jump off of a roof in a recreation of the act that gave me my cool bald spot on the back of my head seems to be an act of pure insanity. But I'm not their parents.

But I'd invest in little coffins just in case.
posted by NiteMayr at 11:03 AM on October 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Ah, found the part about liability:

Mike tells me that people sometimes ask him if he is afraid of lawsuits in the event of an injury on his property. He would never let fear of being sued dictate how he lives his life, he says.

What about second-degree manslaughter, I asked: an accident enabled by negligence, if, say, another child — or even one of his own — broke his neck leaping from the playhouse onto the trampoline. (Unenclosed trampolines are a staple of personal-injury law; an estimated 85,000 children under 14 were hurt on trampolines last year.) Does he ever worry about that?

He flashed me a look, then snorted with laughter.

I wonder how funny he'll find it when he's inevitably hit with a suit or a criminal charge. Probably rage about the evil oppressive government and its crippling regulations strangling freedom.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:03 AM on October 19, 2016 [22 favorites]

We used to break shit and set fire to things. Happy days.

As did my gang of friends in the late 70's and early 80's, but that was in the days of leaded gasoline.

Kids may be "sissies" now, but in our case it's not because of helicopter parenting. It's because there are more cars around now than when I was a kid—the population of my city has doubled, and most single detached homes now include renters in a basement suite or the carriage house. So density has increased, and with it, cars.

Happily, the playgrounds around here are pretty "dangerous."
posted by My Dad at 11:04 AM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

During a spirited game of "Kill the Catholics" the local kids trapped us in my Grandad's shed and were trying to break in.

Did you grow up during the 30 Years War?
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:07 AM on October 19, 2016 [37 favorites]

This is addressing a legitimate problem. My kids are pretty unscheduled, and a little bit "free range," and the biggest issue with that is that a lot of the other kids in the neighborhood are at daycare or at a structured event/class/practice/thing. I would be unbelievably delighted if multiple neighborhood kids played in my yard every single day, and I totally sympathize with him putting a lot of time and focus into how to make that happen.

Past the neighborhood engagement part there's a whole lot that pisses me off, obviously. Starting with the fact that violence is not educational and does not empower children. (But then I WOULD say that, because I'm an at-home mom with a PhD, and everybody knows they are totes ridiculous.)

That N Street place, though. Sign me up.
posted by gerstle at 11:08 AM on October 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

This guy makes me think about that opening scene in Blade Runner.
"Mother!? Let me tell you about my mother! BLAM BLAM BLAM"
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 11:09 AM on October 19, 2016

Is there a word for thinking oh this could be interesting only to realize the subjects seems like a real asshole?

My thoughts exactly. I hope this idiot's book doesn't tarnish the movement for less safe playgrounds and free range kids. (That the strongest objections from both the author and Perla Ni were directed at the idea of a dangerous playground, and not the misogyny and poisonous world-view that have been stapled onto it for no particular reason, is astonishing.) I suppose it remains true that there's no idea so good that one can't find idiots who believe in it.

I'm glad I grew up with a feminist mom who let me play unsupervised on the roof at a very young age, and not this asshole, or (with less conviction) the author of this article. Either version of childhood seems incredibly limited.
posted by eotvos at 11:11 AM on October 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

violence is not educational

Punching my bully in the forehead and having him never bother me again taught me a lot about the judicious application of force as a means to an end.

The second time I tried to punch someone, I missed and got punched square in the nose. That taught me not to try punching people anymore.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:13 AM on October 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

Wow, I'm surprised at the negative reactions.

I grew up roaming the neighborhood with other kids, climbing tall trees (taller than the three story houses), sneaking through backyards, over and under fences, through hedges, climbing on roofs and out windows, etc. We walked to school in first grade. After moving to country I shot guns with no adults around (had a pile of dirt as a backstop and a box to tape targets on), rode my bike for miles to visit friends to play, lit fires, played with knives, and generally goofed around. We made up games, made up rules, refereed ourselves, etc. In retrospect, I wish I had done even more of that stuff.

I understand that this guy has some rough edges and can be offensive, but those seem like superficial flaws to me compared to his willingness to build a community, to share, and to create an awesome space for kids. I agree with his basic point about childhood (not with his general politics) and I think it's great that he is doing something about it.

That reminds me of another big part of my childhood, spending a lot of time with people who I completely disagreed with about big picture stuff (religion, politics, family culture, racism, role of women, etc.) but who were excellent people in other regards (loyal, generous, fair, courageous, imaginative, funny, etc.). I think I'd rather play with this guy or have him on my team or in my clubhouse than many other people with whom I share more social and political views.
posted by cron at 11:16 AM on October 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

I wonder if he'll still glorify bully culture when an angry dad comes over to beat the shit out of him.
posted by roger ackroyd at 11:16 AM on October 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

This guy sounds like a douche, but he's not inherently wrong that kids should or could deal with more danger. He is just an asshole about it.
posted by corb at 11:24 AM on October 19, 2016 [26 favorites]

I understand that this guy has some rough edges and can be offensive, but those seem like superficial flaws to me compared to his willingness to build a community, to share, and to create an awesome space for kids. I agree with his basic point about childhood (not with his general politics) and I think it's great that he is doing something about it.

It's not a great community if women aren't welcome to be part of it, it's not an awesome space for kids if it's not safe for them to be there, and it's neither if girls are made to feel like they aren't equal to boys.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:25 AM on October 19, 2016 [82 favorites]

I've heard a lot of 'oh if you ignore the racism/sexism/homophobia/poor-hating, X white guy is really a great guy' from a lot of other privileged white guys. Not saying anything about you or your background cron, just that I've found it's easy for people who aren't being told their role is in the kitchen or that they're an abomination in the eyes of the lord, to admire someone's other traits.
posted by Carillon at 11:26 AM on October 19, 2016 [34 favorites]

To sum up:

1. N Street is an awesome idea I want to know more about it.

2. This guy seems to have gotten a partial grasp of why N Street is good.

3. But he does not seem to understand that it's not just "people being stupid/overprotective" but, you know, larger cultural forces at play. One suspects that he would also not support using government funds to make this sort of thing easier, like more parental leave, funds for school programs/playgrounds, more parks, more sidewalks and bike trails, more common spaces, etc. Because then he'd have to pay more taxes.

4. His weird aggro sexist/ableist shit is disgusting and taints all his "innovative" efforts.

There's sort of a weird, cargo-cult approximation of a socialist approach to child health here; he is trying to have the "it takes a village" cake and the "let's bankrupt the village to make my bank account bigger" eating it too.
posted by emjaybee at 11:28 AM on October 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

There's also a big difference between stuff like "potential for independence" or "ability and willingness to take risks" (my phrases, not actual quotations) and actual legit danger to no real end. When I was a kid my mom let me bike by myself about a mile down a pretty busy street to a bookstore next to the Newport Creamery so I could browse books and then take myself out for grilled cheese and ice cream. It was great! Independence was really, really important to me and, while there was a certain amount of risk in this because of the cars and me being by myself (this was pre-cellphones as well) it gave me confidence and an age-appropriate amount of autonomy and responsibility.

I don't think setting up a playground that's designed (by someone who doesn't seem super qualified in playground design which is a serious field of study) to be kind of dangerous really meets those goals and I think encouraging kids to do dangerous stuff just to toughen them up or something is the opposite of teaching them to take appropriate risks and be responsible for themselves in an independent setting.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 11:31 AM on October 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Wow, I'm surprised at the negative reactions.

Really? You thought a man who thinks that boys and girls should play differently and blames women for the lack of free play in children's lives would go over on Metafilter?

This is a tiny nugget of good-idea misapplied and ruined by a dude who has really fucking stupid ideas about how the world works.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:33 AM on October 19, 2016 [39 favorites]

Is there a word for thinking oh this could be interesting only to realize the subjects seems like a real asshole?

Metafilter?
posted by Scoop at 11:41 AM on October 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

a man who thinks that boys and girls should play differently

This has been mentioned multiple times but I've tried to re-read the article a few times and I failed to see this. There was a story about his childhood and him 'not wanting to stoop to the level of girls' and the fact the focus of his 'camp' was boys because...well...he has 3 boys. Am I missing something?
posted by 7life at 11:41 AM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Yes, it's in this graph (emphasis mine):

In Mike’s worldview, boys today (his focus is on boys) are being deprived of masculine experiences by overprotective moms, who are allowed to dominate passive dads. Central to Mike’s philosophy is the importance of physical danger: of encouraging boys to take risks and play rough and tumble and get — or inflict — a scrape or two. Central to what he calls mom philosophy (which could just be described as contemporary parenting philosophy) is just the opposite: to play safe, play nice and not hurt other kids or yourself. Most moms are not inclined to leave their children’s safety up to chance. I certainly am not.

posted by gladly at 11:44 AM on October 19, 2016 [11 favorites]

One suspects that he would also not support using government funds to make this sort of thing easier, like more parental leave, funds for school programs/playgrounds, more parks, more sidewalks and bike trails, more common spaces, etc. Because then he'd have to pay more taxes.

I think this may be reading more into it than is in the text. Sure, maybe. But Menlo Park - and the writer gives the name of the street the guy lives on right in the article, so it's not very hard to find "Yale Rd, Menlo Park" on Google Maps. - Menlo Park is wealthy and pleasant in a lot of ways but it's also pretty antiseptic and if you look at that neighbourhood in particular it's pretty deathly boring. I 'm not sure I can even find a little-kid playground climber within a reasonable walk from that street. There is a

People get down on how structured suburban kids' lives are but it's very much a side-effect of the endless sprawl of houses interspersed with large arterial roads. At least he's walking-distance-ish from "downtown" Menlo Park which at least has a few stores and the appearance of an actual civic center unlike many other parts of the Valley (downtown Cupertino? ha! ha ha! I scoff).

So anyway, it really does make sense for some enterprising rich person to build their own park. I don't think we can say whether he pro- or con- public parks but in his neighbourhood someone made that decision in the 1960's and he's stuck with it regardless of what he believes.

Now, is his home-made park a good one? Not really.

Funny enough there's a co-operative nursery school probably less than a mile from his house which seems like a reasonable place but once a kid is between nursery school and high school in that area it really does kind of suck. We chose our much less tony neighbourhood not only because we're not made of money but because at least we have a park around the corner from us.
posted by GuyZero at 11:45 AM on October 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

spudsilo: "I don't feel were living in a safer, better society,"

Better is subjective but safer is measurable and way less kids are being injured today than in the past.
posted by Mitheral at 11:51 AM on October 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

Really? You thought a man who thinks that boys and girls should play differently and blames women for the lack of free play in children's lives would go over on Metafilter?

Well, they often do play differently. Yes, we should all be taught from age two to always respect each other, but I remember being forced to play with the boys and hating it, for many reasons. He's just trying to address reality. Life is not all PC warm fuzzies.
posted by Melismata at 11:51 AM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

lol yes corb totally. i was vaguely rural child raised as girl, played with hatchets, knives, my dad's corn knife (aka NOT A MACHETE), weird rusty chains and hooks and crap i found in the woods, me and my friends hit each other with sticks by way of fun, fire, tools, power tools, tree climbing running from angry bees etc.

i am in STRONG APPROVAL of danger and mayhem and it annoys the shit out of me when dopey misogyny/ableism people try to act like you have to be a horrible polo shirt ayn rand dad to enjoy cool danger and self-reliance
posted by beefetish at 11:52 AM on October 19, 2016 [20 favorites]

Everybody on my facebook is sharing this and waxing poetic: "great idea", "kids need to be able to explore", "kids need a little bit of risk", etc. No one has criticized it yet.
posted by theorique at 11:53 AM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

> not wanting to stoop to the level of girls' and the fact the focus of his 'camp' was boys because...well...he has 3 boys. Am I missing something?

The part of "stooping to the level of girls"? Does that not strike you as an odd and off sentiment from someone who is no longer 7 years old?
posted by rtha at 11:56 AM on October 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

Everybody on my facebook is sharing this and waxing poetic: "great idea", "kids need to be able to explore", "kids need a little bit of risk", etc. No one has criticized it yet.

They're also going to keep on driving their kids 15 miles to soccer practice 5 days a week so I'm pretty sure their praise is as vapid as their lack of critical reading.
posted by GuyZero at 11:57 AM on October 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

Well, they often do play differently

I won't dispute that. We could talk about the reasons (and certainly partly because of guys like this jerk, here), but his opinions that there are "masculine" experiences at all and that boys can be "sissies" (unless those ideas were pressed upon him by the journalist) are super squicky.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:58 AM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Central to Mike’s philosophy is the importance of physical danger: of encouraging boys to take risks and play rough and tumble and get — or inflict — a scrape or two. Central to what he calls mom philosophy (which could just be described as contemporary parenting philosophy) is just the opposite: to play safe, play nice and not hurt other kids or yourself.

...

“Uh, can you keep an eye on them?” I asked Mike, reluctantly gathering my stuff to leave. “The society of 5-year-olds is fragile and may fall into savagery!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he replied affably. “I’m a believer in that Rousseau theory — what’s it called?”

“Something about a Noble Savage?” I said. “I’m more a believer in the truth of ‘Lord of the Flies.’ ” My smile was thin and conveyed, For the love of God, can you please put your drink down and watch the kids?

His smile told me he wanted me to leave already.

Really? Rousseau?

This guy is nothing more than a smug douchebag who thinks he got rich because he played outside, without all the technology he makes his money on, instead of lucking out on leveraging a privileged education into a strong job market and from there into tech/investment bubbles. He probably also thinks his shitty new flickr-gmaps mashup is a work of unique genius and technosocial attainment.

Am I missing something?

Substance? Don't worry, so is he.
posted by snuffleupagus at 11:58 AM on October 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

EVERYTHING WAS BETTER IN THE GLORIOUSLY RECALLED MEMORIES OF MY YOUTH.

I understand that this guy has some rough edges and can be offensive, but those seem like superficial flaws to me compared to his willingness to build a community, to share, and to create an awesome space for kids.

The community will be based upon or at least broken-stair those "rough edges" which are really societally oppressive. He's built an environment where its OK to push bully boundaries by insulting their masculinity in a pro-male space. I mean at least his kids aren't calling the neighbor's "f-g" but I've always thought "sissies" was pretty much the same thing. Is this not a breeding ground for toxic masculinity? No? A good basis?

You of course know who else wanted to build communities and create awesome spaces for children.

By the time I'd gotten to his idea there was no way I wanted anything to do with him. "Whatever you call those retards these days. HAW HAW. Better than chicks!" I guess since the dude is never around you wouldn't need to worry about your children coming home with these values. No Fucks Given is not what I look for in a hangout place for my kids.

“I’m sorry you were uncomfortable with it,” he replied flatly, as we stood outside preschool. “But as you know, I don’t worry about things like that.”

posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:00 PM on October 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

BTW, Davis is chock-a-block full of co-ops, none cooler than Baggin's End.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:02 PM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

As others have said, what's disturbing is that the guy is a little bit right, but he's a jerk and a sexist.

In the late 50s, early 60s, we roamed the neighborhood on bikes and on foot, and at my grandmother's rural compound my cousins and I were turned out to play for hours, and called back in with the ringing of a loud bell at the end of the day. We built treehouses. We dammed the nearby stream. We explored the carriage house that was full of toxic chemicals, sharp farm equipment, and tools. I rode my grandmother's beat-up old pony all over the area, on the roads. I climbed onto the roof of my house, explored an abandoned and derelict building, roamed the nearby college campus, and set fires outside. I got injured a handful of times. Not as badly as proper farm children, who tended to be missing fingers and to have big scars, but lots of scabs and scrapes.

Part of the reason I retired from teaching boys last year after 23 years was brought home to me when I was looking at my phone pictures from the last couple of years. It wasn't as much fun teaching them as when they used to set off fireworks at home in the back yard, because they were tense as hell, cautious around adults, overstressed, and anxious about grades. Really anxious. Likely to burst into tears when they got a C. Parents would call or email me to tell me their son was "devastated" by a bad grade and could not stop weeping.

But the dangerous things we did as kids were not deliberately set up by adults, which is one of the things that bothers me about this guy. And bullying was not seen as a plus. And the other thing that bothers me is that I'm female, and one of the things that messed me up growing up during that awful, sexist period was the knowledge that everything I was doing was "tomboy" stuff that I wasn't really supposed to be doing, and was supposed to grow out of anyway.
posted by Peach at 12:02 PM on October 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

What I remember as a child was that the boys hogged the fun climbing stuff and would not let girls play. I wanted to do all kinds of stuff but could not because of boy/girl (or boy/masculine spectrum trans person being read as a girl, whatever) dynamics.

The other thing is that while boys "played differently" on the exciting climbing stuff, it was much more "boys shove and roughhouse and yell on the climbing stuff while girls play on the climbing stuff less roughly", not "girls don't want to do exciting climbing things".

When I remember how I used to keep an eye on the fun playground stuff all recess to see if it would be boy-free or at least less crowded so that I could have a chance, I find myself doubting that boys and girls play as "differently" as all that. I mean, I played with girls and only girls, and we were always waiting for a chance to use stuff and getting crowded out by gangs of roughousing boys.
posted by Frowner at 12:02 PM on October 19, 2016 [26 favorites]

"Hi, I'm Mike. I'm apparently an asshole, but more importantly, I built an app (by which I mean, other people built an app for me), which means I know more about everything than the people who spend their careers studying how kids seriously hurt themselves on trampolines, so I figured why bother with that safety net?"

Sometime in the future: "Hi, I'm Mike's insurance company. I read an article about Mike in the New York Times and realized I was asking for trouble with this guy, so I declined to renew his homeowners insurance."
posted by zachlipton at 12:03 PM on October 19, 2016 [15 favorites]

Really? Rousseau?

Let's hope he doesn't spank his kids.
posted by Carillon at 12:04 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

"Did you grow up during the 30 Years War?"

No, but we were the only Catholic Family in the village.
posted by NiteMayr at 12:06 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

In Mike’s worldview, boys today (his focus is on boys) are being deprived of masculine experiences by overprotective moms, who are allowed to dominate passive dads.

To me, this reads a lot like the line from Fight Club: "we're a generation of men raised by women... maybe another woman isn't what we need" (cue montage of men in dive-bar basement punching the crap out of each other).
posted by theorique at 12:07 PM on October 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

Gladly - he was making a statement about boys. He was referring to his experiences as a boy and what he wanted his boys to be. There was no statement regarding girls and if he thinks whether or not girls should be shielded from physical dangers that I can discern.

rtha - I do believe he was relating to his thought process that he had when he was a boy.

Look...I'm not defending this guy. But I also think there are shortcomings that are attributed to him with little basis.
posted by 7life at 12:07 PM on October 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

The language he himself uses is a fantastic basis on which to judge him by, actually.
posted by erratic meatsack at 12:19 PM on October 19, 2016 [29 favorites]

You are defending him. Perhaps because you find him sympathetic -- you're not reading very critically:

In Mike’s worldview, boys today (his focus is on boys) are being deprived of masculine experiences by overprotective moms, who are allowed to dominate passive dads.

He doesn't care about girls. They can have 'mom philosophy,' probably because he's unconcerned with them doing anything but supporting male endeavors.

He's a traditionally minded prick who subscribes to a bunch of toxic verities, and wants his boys to be pricks like him, not PC sissy boys who have apparently been ruining society under their helicopter moms and touchy-feely dad's 'retarded' tutelage since the '90s.

This is nothing but /redpill/ in a Pez dispenser. Give me a break.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:20 PM on October 19, 2016 [28 favorites]

There is nothing free range about this kind of parenting, it's helicopter parenting reimagined by someone who doesn't want the manifestation of his control issues to be seen as overly feminine. True free range parenting means giving children responsibility for aspects of their own lives, beyond what their parents are personally comfortable with, not crafting new and more sophisticated ways to keep them in bubbles, which is absolutely what Lanza is doing whether he recognizes it or not.

Free range parenting (for lack of a better phrase) means allowing your eight year old to ride his bike to school by himself. Or allowing your six and nine year old to walk unsupervised to the nearest store to buy milk. Or letting them go to the park (no need to build one in your own backyard when perfectly dangerous ones already exist out in the big bad world!) by themselves, with no cellphone, and let them stay there for an hour.

That's legitimate childhood independence and I'm guessing Mike Lanza wants nothing of it. It's also pretty unglamorous and doesn't provide many opportunities for anxious rich parents to pat themselves on the back with glossy spreads in the New York Times about what bold iconoclasts they are.
posted by scantee at 12:22 PM on October 19, 2016 [49 favorites]

Nothing teaches your children independence like building them a specially-designed more dangerous set of expensive toys than just letting them roam around the neighborhood.

My impression from the article is that 1) he would like the children to be able to roam around the neighborhood, but there are some property owners to don't want kids playing in or passing through their yards and 2) he built expensive toys so that when the kids in the neighborhood were roaming, there would be someplace cool for them to go.

I agree with lots of folks that Mike seems to be a jerk in many ways, (at least as reported by a journalist who has some fundamental disagreements with him), but he seems to be getting blamed in the comments for a number of things he might not be guilty of.

I would love to have heard more about Perla Ni, who seems to share some interest in the Playborhood concept but is almost absent from the story.
posted by layceepee at 12:29 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

There is nothing free range about this kind of parenting

I think you've hit the nail on the head on what is bothering me about this. His yard smacks of having nothing to do with the kids having freedom to roam and invent and do on their own, and everything with them being in his carefully planned walled garden.
posted by fimbulvetr at 12:29 PM on October 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

boys today (his focus is on boys) are being deprived of masculine experiences by overprotective moms, who are allowed to dominate passive dads.

OH SHIT WHAT AM I
oh no
I'm a mom
who likes free range
melting
melting
meeeeeeelting
posted by corb at 12:29 PM on October 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

UPDATE: I got the chronology of my punches wrong. I missed the first time, landed the second time. So I guess the first time taught me how to aim.

I still haven't punched anyone since then, though.
posted by grumpybear69 at 12:31 PM on October 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

No, you're supposed to be having feminine experiences, like dominating sissified men.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:31 PM on October 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

corb would u say this is one weird trick discovered by a mom
posted by beefetish at 12:32 PM on October 19, 2016 [5 favorites]

it's helicopter parenting reimagined by someone who doesn't want the manifestation of his control issues to be seen as overly feminine.

Scantee, EXACTLY.

But the dangerous things we did as kids were not deliberately set up by adults, which is one of the things that bothers me about this guy.

Corb and cron, I agree with most of what you're saying about the value of life experiences that may be risky or dangerous, but I don't think that's what is happening here. " Mike says. “Am I going to brag my kids are jumping on their trampoline, or went to the store by themselves? Parents don’t measure themselves according to their kids’ independence, as they used to, but according to accomplishments. To me, that’s part of how I judge myself.”" This guy isn't teaching his children life skills or doing cool/dangerous things with them because he wants them to have those valuable and life-enriching experiences. He's deliberately creating a dangerous environment for them because having boys who aren't "sissies" feeds his ego. It's not about his children; it's all about how his children reflect on him. About his feelings of coolness and transgressiveness, about how special it makes him feel to have the "playborhood" house where he can give smothering helicopter moms the middle finger. It's like a macho version of that sad scene in Mean Girls where Regina George's mom wants her daughter's teenage friends to think she's cool and offers them booze and tells them to think of her like one of the girls.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 12:32 PM on October 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

It's a well written article. I like that the author is conflicted about Mike's philosophies, and expresses those feelings in the piece itself. At the end of the day he's right about probability (the chances of any individual kid getting hurt in his yard are small), but she can't forget that her kids are risking everything - their safety and maybe their lives, and doesn't want to take even a small chance with stakes like that. Most parents probably feel the same way. In ye olden days just being alive was risky because you could always starve or drop dead of a fever, so parents had no choice but to accept some risk, and that was reflected in the more daring things that kids got to do with their free time. Today we've conquered most of the dangers that used to kill children, which makes the remaining risks to them feel much less acceptable.

Still though, his philosophy bothers me a bit. It's true that kids benefit from a certain amount of "benign neglect" and making their own play world without the intervention of adults helps them develop executive functions which will serve them well in later life. But everything has a limit, and too much ignorance of what the kids are up to can easily stop being benign. Bullying does happen, and kids aren't all the same. Some might hate the idea of jumping off a roof onto a trampoline, but go wild when they're left alone in the library. Parents should be aware of what their kids are going through in a general way, and intervene when it looks like they need help. (Especially when the children themselves can't verbalize what's going on. They may not be able to ask for help because they don't understand why they're unhappy.)
posted by Kevin Street at 12:33 PM on October 19, 2016

I would love to have heard more about Perla Ni, who seems to share some interest in the Playborhood concept but is almost absent from the story.

No Mom Philosophy is needed in the Playbrohood.

Where Mike has a loud, large and boisterous presence... Perla is quiet, petite, deliberate and self-contained. The only child of Chinese immigrants, she wants her sons to have considerably more fun than she had.

I'm profoundly unsurprised.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:33 PM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's not a great community if women aren't welcome to be part of it, it's not an awesome space for kids if it's not safe for them to be there, and it's neither if girls are made to feel like they aren't equal to boys.

Mrs. Pterodactyl:
I completely agree with this. But I didn't get the impression from the article that girls are not welcome or are made to not feel equal. Perhaps I'm wrong. "Safe" is part of the issue though. There are legitimate disagreements about how safe is safe enough, and he is obviously towards one end of the spectrum.

Carillon:
OK, I take your point. However, I learned the hard way that political views are not always a good way to measure people either. I would guess that you may have learned this lesson too. I'll stick with things like generosity, loyalty, courage, etc. as my primary measures for my friends, and I'll look at actions more strongly than words.

I have been sad to see how neighborhood-based, free-range play has largely vanished from the environments that I see and I was glad to see someone doing something about it in his own neighborhood.

Maybe he's an asshole. But there's a vibe here that the guy is on trial and we should be grabbing our pitchforks to hunt him down for his evil ways based on an article where he is trying to encourage kids to play.
posted by cron at 12:35 PM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

Maybe he's an asshole. But there's a vibe here that the guy is on trial and we should be grabbing our pitchforks to hunt him down for his evil ways based on an article where he is trying to encourage kids to play.

"But I could see Leo brandishing a long rubber tube, as if he were about to whack my son, who looked worried. Beneath the pleasantries, it was clear that Mike thought I was putting my son at risk of turning into what used to be called a sissy — a concept whose demise he regrets. And I was of the opinion that Mike was putting his son at risk of being a bully, a label Mike thinks is now used to pathologize normal, healthy, boyish aggression."

He's encouraging something, all right.

*goes back to wrapping pitchfork in kerosene soaked rags*
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:37 PM on October 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

corb would u say this is one weird trick discovered by a mom

Misogynists hate her!
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:41 PM on October 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

I like that the author is conflicted about Mike's philosophies, and expresses those feelings in the piece itself.

it read to me like she flat-out dislikes him and wrote a takedown piece. I don't think she's really the conflicted about what she thinks. I wonder if she quotes him selectively and that he's only a slight asshole, but I'm usually wrong when I give people the benefit of this kind of doubt so I'm not wondering too much.

But this quote:

"But I could see Leo brandishing a long rubber tube, as if he were about to whack my son, who looked worried. Beneath the pleasantries, it was clear that Mike thought I was putting my son at risk of turning into what used to be called a sissy — a concept whose demise he regrets. And I was of the opinion that Mike was putting his son at risk of being a bully, a label Mike thinks is now used to pathologize normal, healthy, boyish aggression."

She's speculating what the dad thinks... and the son is at risk of being a bully... it all sounds pretty hypothetical once you start parsing it. Maybe Mike doesn't think that and maybe two 8 year-old kids can smack each other with rubber tubes and not be bullies. Sure, maybe Mike's completely retrograde and maybe his kids are psychos. It seems like a lot of fairly personal editorializing.
posted by GuyZero at 12:41 PM on October 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

masculine experiences

what a maroon.

There's something so very helicopter about the idea of trying to create a non-helicopter risk space ... in your own house. :\

Also, from what I see of kids, helicopter parents are not a problem. It's nice to see parents who care. Parents who don't give a fucking shit about their kids are more of a problem for me. I'll take a helicopter parent (though I'm not quite sure what that means - overprotective?) over a negligent one any day.

I have been sad to see how neighborhood-based, free-range play has largely vanished from the environments that I see

I obviously live in a different place. I see elementary and junior high youths (YOUTHS!) roaming the streets by themselves constantly. (However I do live near a Rec Center so that could explain it ..)

Helicopter parents didn't replace "free-range play" - TV, Internet, and video games did. These kids are "overscheduled"? Maybe some of the 1%. The rest are watching screens (like their parents.)
posted by mrgrimm at 12:43 PM on October 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

I agree with scantee's take on it being faux free-range.

For perspective, if you go down to the end of Yale Road you'll find it dumps into San Francisquito Creek which is I think the sort of NO RULES ALL ADVENTURE ALL THE TIME childhood he was seeking. Its like a block away with apparently unfettered access. Lots of open space beyond. Its dry, so no poking about with salamanders or whevs, but REBEL, CHILDREN. CAST OFF YOUR COSTCO CRAP AND CLIMB TREES. YOU DON'T NEED RUBBER HOSES WHEN YOU HAVE DIRT CLODS TO THROW AT YOUR ENEMIES.

As others have pointed out, you can't make chapter three about how you were your children's hero letting 'em go down to the creek again that way though.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 12:44 PM on October 19, 2016 [14 favorites]

I would have some respect for his position if he promised that he would take on the enormously expensive, emotionally draining, and time consuming task of taking any injured kid to the ER. Not to mention dealing with all the related paperwork, and keeping in touch with the child's teachers to make sure the kid does homework while recuperating, and doing the panicked late night Internet research about pain medication dosage or changing wound dressings, etc.

SOMEHOW, though, I'm guessing Mike considers dealing with injuries the sole domain of those over-protective moms.
posted by Wavelet at 12:46 PM on October 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

This is completely anecdotal, but the kids in my son's cohort that have been the most mean, the most likely to disrupt class, the most likely to physically attack other kids without provocation have been the ones with "free range" parents. In some cases, it seems to me when I'm being my most judgey that the free-range-ism really seems to be about parents abdicating their responsibility to help their children learn how to engage in society in a civil way. The free rangers are on their smartphones when little Jimmy is grinding Suzy's face into the wood chips. What lesson does either child learn from that being allowed to continue without adult intervention? Grade school kids, I'm talking about.
posted by Cassford at 12:46 PM on October 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

I will say that I do know one thing very definitely from reading this article: that tensions between parents in this neighbourhood are going to be RUNNING HIGH. Other parents in the pre-k program the author shares with the subject will be choosing sides.
posted by GuyZero at 12:47 PM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I really did get the impression that she was conflicted about Mike's ideas, mainly because of this passage:

Mike has influenced our family as well. My kids and I made friends on our block by playing a game from Camp Yale in which we asked neighbors to contribute one ingredient to what turned out to be an apple-pear-blueberry-strawberry cobbler; when it was baked, we brought each of them a piece. My daughter liked the game so much, she recently asked to make her birthday cake that way. Then, when our next-door neighbors generously passed along their trampoline, I spread the word that other children were welcome to play in our yard anytime. Sometimes visitors will be surprised when my children aren’t home and they hear shrieks of laughter coming from our yard, as neighborhood kids bounce and squirt water guns they filled in our fountain, and I feel grateful to Mike for his vision.

And others like the one where she talks to a pro-Mike psychologist, and her attempt at the end to work out just what her objection to his ideas is, and how they defer. And her reasoning isn't a reflexive "he's a sexist ass," but rather a fairly nuanced look at how they assess risk differently.
posted by Kevin Street at 12:49 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

She's speculating what the dad thinks... and the son is at risk of being a bully... it all sounds pretty hypothetical once you start parsing it. Maybe Mike doesn't think that and maybe two 8 year-old kids can smack each other with rubber tubes and not be bullies. Sure, maybe Mike's completely retrograde and maybe his kids are psychos. It seems like a lot of fairly personal editorializing.

How are "a concept whose demise he regrets" and "a label Mike thinks is now used to pathologize normal aggression" (my itals) editorializing -- unless that's completely fabricating what Mike thinks or says? I get it that it's not in quotes, so it's not actually what he said, but I don't think there's any evidence from the way she phrased this that she's "speculating" what he thinks at all, nor is it editorializing, until that part at the end where she writes that she'll never let her kid go to Mike's libertarian playworld again (at least that's what it sounded to me like she was saying; it was rather vague).
posted by blucevalo at 12:49 PM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

She's speculating what the dad thinks

She interviewed him, so presumably these are opinions he expressed even if it's not direct quotation.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:51 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Thought immediately of City Museum.
posted by the marble index at 12:53 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Christ, what a shithead.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:53 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

The other thing is that they appear to be using a trampoline unsupervised, and that is ridiculously risky.

a trampoline, at ground level, with padding around the edge.

ridiculously risky

...

I just took a moment to work out what the most dangerous bit of kit at my (1970s) school was and i'd probably give it to the telegraph pole with car tires stapled to it all the way to the top (on concrete, obviously) over the truck tires, on chains, that would slam into the concrete wall if you pushed them hard enough. Though the climbing frame on concrete that girls would hang from upside down by their knees was pretty good, I guess.

We had a good time. Noone died. I imagine there were a few more broken bones than would be considered optimal these days.

oh god i just back-in-my-day'd, didn't i.

*retreats to rocker on porch, muttering*
posted by Sebmojo at 12:53 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

until that part at the end where she writes that she'll never let her kid go to Mike's libertarian playworld again (at least that's what it sounded to me like she was saying; it was rather vague).

I couldn't work that out either.
Was she saying her kids wouldn't play in the backyard again, or they wouldn't play on the roof again or _she_ wouldn't play on the roof again?
posted by madajb at 12:54 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

This is completely anecdotal, but the kids in my son's cohort that have been the most mean, the most likely to disrupt class, the most likely to physically attack other kids without provocation have been the ones with "free range" parents.

It's interesting to note that Mike moved away from his own dewily remembered 'free-range' 'leave-it-to-beaver' environment, to which he credits his Herculean greatness -- instead of, say, his Stanford connections -- when he entered 7th grade.

Local parents often talk about the rash of suicides among Palo Alto high school students in recent years. “It’s been pretty clear to me since I moved here eight years ago that kids are just not happy here,” Mike says, and “the suicides are just the extreme examples of the broader problem.” He believes “the poor quality of children’s lives around here” stems from their lack of autonomy. Basic developmental psychology posits that if children develop a fundamental sense that they (not their parents) are masters of their own destiny, they will be successful adults, and that without that belief they will flounder: It’s easy to want to rid yourself of a life that doesn’t feel truly your own.

His YOUNGEST was five at the time of the authors visit. He literally doesn't even know what the fuck he's talking about, on either end of things.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:57 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

It's left uncertain, but the impression I got was that she would never play there again. That she saw the appeal of it for a second, but in the end decided it wasn't for her. It doesn't say anything about if she'd let her children come back or not. That's probably a private family decision.
posted by Kevin Street at 12:58 PM on October 19, 2016

I'm a mom
who likes free range
melting
melting
meeeeeeelting

#notallmoms
posted by fader at 12:58 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Mike comes across as kind of a jerk, but it's hard to say whether he actually is a jerk or if he's 90% bluster and purposeful trolling.
Personally, I suspect the latter, especially when he knows he's being interviewed.
posted by madajb at 12:59 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

a trampoline, at ground level, with padding around the edge.

Here's some stuff about trampoline risk from the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Trampolines are uniquely risky not because you're high in the air but because you can bounce into the air and then land on your head, basically. Or land wrenching your spine, or your shoulder, etc. This is different from just falling off something, or even jumping off swings, a favorite childhood pass-time of mine. The point is that you have this bounce/twist uncontrolled landing, plus people bouncing into each other and then twisting/landing in uncontrolled ways. It's well documented that trampolines are risky - this isn't some kind of paranoia.

You're far better off letting your kids go on the roof or jump off swings because there isn't that uncontrolled bounce/twist or the amplification of force that come from trampolines.
posted by Frowner at 12:59 PM on October 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Mike comes across as kind of a jerk, but it's hard to say whether he actually is a jerk or if he's 90% bluster and purposeful trolling.

Eh, 90% bluster and purposeful trolling seems like a pretty good definition of a flavour of jerk.
posted by ODiV at 1:08 PM on October 19, 2016 [8 favorites]

Sebmojo: "a trampoline, at ground level, with padding around the edge. "

Most of the 90,000+ trampoline injuries that result in a doctor visit in the US annually are from kids colliding with each other or objects on the trampoline not from falling to the ground.

AAP: Most trampoline injuries (75 percent) occur when multiple people are jumping on the mat. The smallest and youngest participants are usually at greater risk for significant injury, specifically children 5 years of age or younger. Forty-eight percent of injuries in this age group resulted in fractures or dislocations.

posted by Mitheral at 1:10 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

That Mike is right about some of the value of free play is just an accident, and entirely outweighed by the fact that he's an asshole. I grew up as free as is possible, with a beaver pond and bears in the front yard. It made me a better person, but in several other universes I drowned in the pond or got eaten by a bear. Fair enough. It wasn't a choice my parents made explicitly to make a political point about masculinity or to aggrandize themselves in the eyes of adoring neighbours... It was a case of lack of parenting resources and probably a lack of interest in governorship...

I guarantee, the instant some freer, rangier kid comes along and knocks his precious Roark down, things will change.
posted by klanawa at 1:10 PM on October 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

We had a good time. Noone died.

My mother watched one of her elementary school classmates die after a fall on one of those types of playgrounds. It's haunted her all her life. One kid dying of easily preventable injuries is too many for me.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 1:11 PM on October 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

My impression from the article is that 1) he would like the children to be able to roam around the neighborhood, but there are some property owners to don't want kids playing in or passing through their yards and 2) he built expensive toys so that when the kids in the neighborhood were roaming, there would be someplace cool for them to go.

This is actually my main criticism of this whole thing. He put together a vision for his community that depends on the participation of other children (other boys, at least), and put up attractive nuisances to draw them in, but he doesn't seem to have gotten anyone's buy-in first. This isn't a collaboration or community effort; this is all just Mike foisting his Worldview upon his neighbors.
posted by mama casserole at 1:11 PM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

I read this and immediately, like instantly, thought of KathrynT's comment from the emotional labor thread.

"You know who does the labor to keep all that together? The women. The kids can all be out in the street playing because there are a lot of stay at home moms, and the older kids (10-14) are OK being left home alone because there are moms on the street during the afternoon. "
posted by cadge at 1:11 PM on October 19, 2016 [23 favorites]

That Mike is right about some of the value of free play is just an accident, and entirely outweighed by the fact that he's an asshole.

Well he did write a book and research neighbourhood-based play in 8 different communities.

Now, I haven't read the book, so maybe it's 254 pages of self-published nonsense, but it's not like he made all this up just for the purpose of this article. There is some reason to believe that he has actually done some research.
posted by GuyZero at 1:18 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

cadge I think that is something that a lot of suburban, free-range types don't get; as kids they weren't quite as totally unsupervised as they thought. My daughter is 12. Last year my father (who was living with us in a garden suite) passed away. Prior to that we'd leave our daughter home "alone" while we walked down to the store or what have you for increasingly longer periods of time as she got older. My daughter was really mad that we'd no longer let her stay at home alone for as long after my father died because she didn't realize I'd been telling dad every time we'd leave her "alone" and how long we'd be gone. Even though she had been instructed to go to grandpas if she needed anything.
posted by Mitheral at 1:22 PM on October 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

while complaining that his idea of normal is no longer normal.

Define "normal," friend. There are a lot of working class and lower middle class neighborhoods (hello, I live in one) that look exactly like what my childhood in the 70s and 80s looked like. No one has the time or money for a thousand extra-curriculars and wild packs of children still roam wild and free on my street.
posted by soren_lorensen at 1:26 PM on October 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

This is completely anecdotal, but the kids in my son's cohort that have been the most mean, the most likely to disrupt class, the most likely to physically attack other kids without provocation have been the ones with "free range" parents.

Ditto. Anecdotally as well, the kids who act out in class are desperate for attention from adults. Whether that's a result of "free ranging" (which I agree with theoretically) or plain old ignoring doesn't seem to matter.

With my kids as well, it doesn't matter if we're free ranging (i.e. you can do whatever you want in the local vicinity) and I'm semi-watching them and grab-assing (my own) or perhaps drinking a beer or two, vs. I'm busy and working on something and ignoring them--I think they sorta take it the same way. Shrug.

Give kids agency and privacy to make their own risks. Just how much? Well, I have an online course with a very small subscription fee ... pm me. ;)
posted by mrgrimm at 1:28 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

There are a lot of working class and lower middle class neighborhoods (hello, I live in one) that look exactly like what my childhood in the 70s and 80s looked like. No one has the time or money for a thousand extra-curriculars and wild packs of children still roam wild and free on my street.

I see this disappearing as housing prices rise. Obv. but still sad.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:29 PM on October 19, 2016

Someone whose bluster consists of "OUR BOYS ARE BEING EMASCULATED BY MODERN WOMEN", or who thinks it's fun to "troll" with that, is a jerk. [ed: or as ODiV says. Me slow.]

Regarding "helicopter parents", my own instinct is to associate the phrase with extreme levels of interference such as -- to take an example from people I have known -- making eight-year-olds sit through 8-hour tutoring sessions on a daily basis during the summer, or personally going through older teenagers' backpacks to pack their homework and writing utensils on their behalf (in the absence of any kind of physical or psychological need for that assistance). There are also stories I have heard about parents attempting to elbow in on adult children's job interviews, which seems beyond even what I can imagine, but there you go.

To me it isn't about protectiveness so much as interference and micromanagement. One of my mother's favorite sayings was "you could just learn from your mistakes, but isn't it better to completely avoid that pain and trouble?" (rough translation) -- but actions speak alongside words. We were permitted to roam the neighborhood and nearby park on our own as long as we said where we were going. We were permitted to play with and bring home all manner of creepy-crawly as long as it didn't mess up the house. Etc.
posted by inconstant at 1:32 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

As a child of the 70s I remember this mayhem all too well, but nobody misses the trips to the ER.

As a child of the 90s I also remember this mayhem. I also vividly remember my sister literally almost losing an eye due to us playing around with a bungee cord. That ER trip was . . . not fun. My sister still has bits missing from her iris, and she's lucky she isn't blind.

I also remember being attacked by a dog, being pushed down and kicked repeatedly by two boys that lived down the street, and falling out of a tree. I'm still scared of big dogs, wary around strange men, and hesitant of heights. I think it would have promoted my growth as a risk taker more if I had had more positive, rather than dangerous, experiences around these things.
posted by chainsofreedom at 1:41 PM on October 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

Define "normal," friend. There are a lot of working class and lower middle class neighborhoods (hello, I live in one) that look exactly like what my childhood in the 70s and 80s looked like. No one has the time or money for a thousand extra-curriculars and wild packs of children still roam wild and free on my street.

In my neighborhood, it's sort of a feedback loop.

I live near an elementary school, it has ~250 kids. School is out at 2, by 2:15 the place is deserted. Not a kid to be seen, no one to play with.

So as a parent, what do you do? You take our child to the playground and intentionally talk to every parent, trying to find someone who lives close by.

Successful in that mission, you figure "job done", your kid has playmates.

But no, Billy has tap class, Joanie has soccer, Wally has homework club.

So, now what? You can let your kid mope around the house, you can sit them in front of the TV or you can take them to activity, where they at least have a chance to interact with other children.

Of course, now, you're part of the problem, so when you meet Susan at the park and she wants to come over and play, "Sorry, we have karate after school" and now Susan begins the cycle all over again.
posted by madajb at 1:41 PM on October 19, 2016 [13 favorites]

I want to know to how he can afford a house with a lot that size in Menlo Park where the median is 1.5M.
posted by plinth at 1:47 PM on October 19, 2016

madajab, you have your finger on it. There are plenty of kids in our neighborhood, but they're never home when our kid is, so he doesn't do the free-roaming thing because he doesn't want to go alone.
posted by emjaybee at 1:49 PM on October 19, 2016

I want to know to how he can afford a house with a lot that size in Menlo Park where the median is 1.5M.

Tautologically, someone owns all those houses, irrespective of how much they cost.

From TFA:
After acquiring three Stanford degrees (a B.A., an M.B.A. and a master’s in education) and selling a handful of modestly successful start-ups, Mike decided to focus on his ideas about parenting.
posted by GuyZero at 1:49 PM on October 19, 2016

FTA: "I remember that when the grown-ups came over, we stopped playing and waited for them to go away. But moms nowadays never go away.”

How's that marriage going, Mike??
posted by rmless at 1:59 PM on October 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

We had a good time. Noone died.

A lot of people don't know this so don't feel bad, but he's actually still alive and touring the US starting later this month.
posted by phunniemee at 1:59 PM on October 19, 2016 [7 favorites]

After acquiring three Stanford degrees (a B.A., an M.B.A. and a master’s in education) and selling a handful of modestly successful start-ups, Mike decided to focus on his ideas about parenting.

Sounds like another of these self made people from money.
posted by Artw at 2:00 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

That Mike is right about some of the value of free play is just an accident, and entirely outweighed by the fact that he's an asshole.

Yes.

EVERYTHING WAS BETTER IN THE GLORIOUSLY RECALLED MEMORIES OF MY YOUTH.

not EVERYTHING. We didn't have the internet or vid-games that, when you shot someone they actually got holes in them and bled. But the danger element inherent in growing up in a pre-helicopter-parent era was not entirely a bad thing. And it's not as if lines weren't drawn. They just got drawn in different places. For instance, when I was in grade seven, the boys were eventually banned from playing tag on the embankment that separated our school from the high school maybe a hundred feet below (70 percent grade, lots of trees and roots to grab onto) . But someone had to fall from the top of one of the trees and break their arm first. He also probably got a concussion but, thinking back on that guy's approach to danger, he probably always had a concussion.

One kid dying of easily preventable injuries is too many for me.

Then I guess we better make them wear helmets EVERYWHERE, and wrap them up in styrofoam suits for good measure.
posted by philip-random at 2:00 PM on October 19, 2016

What TFA describes is typical Silicon Valley: they take what sounds like a cool idea and make it so sexist and horrible that you rapidly wind up hating the asshole who is pushing it.
posted by medusa at 2:04 PM on October 19, 2016 [25 favorites]

Sounds like another of these self made people from money.

The article literally says the opposite:

"Despite having achieved a higher socioeconomic status for his family than he had as a kid, Mike felt his sons were at risk of having a worse childhood. "

Maybe he went from comfortably middle-class to millionaire but I'm not sure if we're in Trump territory here.

I feel like people read what they want to read in this article. People are quick to point out how men don't do enough emotional labour, but this:

Mike also made another simple-but-radical move: In a neighborhood in which front yards are for admiration only, Mike installed a picnic table, close to the sidewalk, where he and his family often sat, so that people walking by would have to talk to them. Mike put a white board on the fence and started projecting videos and slide shows onto it, in hope of luring neighborhood children. And it worked: Dogs stop to drink at a fountain made from a large, flat millstone in the shape of a hockey puck, children wander over to the play river and people pause to read the quotes on the mosaics he had an artist design. One is from the children’s book “The Big Orange Splot”: “Our street is us and we are it. Our street is where we like to be, and it looks like all our dreams.”

doesn't elicit any comments. Now sure, you can read it as the guy being a busybody. But you could also read it as the guy putting in time and effort into getting to know his neighbours and inviting his neighbours to get to know him. And in the hyper-scheduled busyness-as-a-religion that is Silicon Valley, this is no small amount of emotional labour.

Yes, his playground remains a bad idea and putting kids on roofs is just asking for a serious injury. And he says some objectionable things.
posted by GuyZero at 2:11 PM on October 19, 2016 [12 favorites]

True: Silicon Valley youth are overcommitted and under tremendous pressure to "succeed." They could benefit from more sleep, less homework, and a more holistic view of what the good life actually is.

Mike has basically taken that kernel of truth and been like, "SO THE SOLUTION IS TO BREAK OUR HEADS ON PURPOSE."

No, dude. That's an extreme over-correction.
posted by delight at 2:18 PM on October 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

Then I guess we better make them wear helmets EVERYWHERE, and wrap them up in styrofoam suits for good measure.

"Then I guess we better put seat belts in EVERY car, and then make it illegal to not wear one! *snort*" - Auto Executive, 1955
posted by Bromius at 2:24 PM on October 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Also, if you want to see someone who has addressed the problem of today's high-achieving but anxious youth without the misogynistic, gladiatorial bluster of Mike, please see Julie Lythcott-Haims. I haven't yet had a chance to read her book, How to Raise an Adult, but she worked with college students for many years and is a thoughtful, wise person who wants to see children who are prepared for life in healthy and sustainable ways.
posted by delight at 2:25 PM on October 19, 2016 [3 favorites]

One kid dying of easily preventable injuries is too many for me.

Then I guess we better make them wear helmets EVERYWHERE, and wrap them up in styrofoam suits for good measure.

I guess our definitions of "easily preventable" are probably different. I think there's a big difference between not sending kids out to play unsupervised on obvious death traps, and constant helmeting.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:32 PM on October 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

That Mike is right about some of the value of free play is just an accident, and entirely outweighed by the fact that he's an asshole.

QFT. I understand that we've been over this, but really, Mike thinks it's clever to refer to a child as "whatever the P.C. way to describe what used to be called 'mentally retarded.'"

Mike is a colossal asshole. The rest of what Mike has to say is of no interest whatsoever, whether it contains a kernel of truth or not.
posted by The Bellman at 3:24 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jesus, I couldn't even read this article entirely. I'm not sure what privileged childhood this guy had but my "free-range" childhood was anything but idyllic and awesome. That isn't to say it was terrible, I had a lot of fun as a kid and some of those memories are the greatest and closest to my heart, but this guy's entire setup is...well, it's manufactured as a system, instead of being a real libertarian setup. Trigger warning for abuse going forward.

When I was a kid my grandparents had to watch my cousins and I. We lived in Flagler Beach, FL and because we were poor and my grandmother couldn't watch us properly we use to run around the ocean, steal food from the convenience store, hang around the pier, the VFW hall, dirt lots with rusty nails and debris from hurricanes that never got picked up, etc. As far as I know this is far from the norm. I was regularly running around the streets doing dicey and literally illegal shit ever since I was able to. When my parents and I moved to DeLand, FL all that changed. I had a neighborhood to play around in and a huge backyard that I could run around with my dog. My best friend throughout elementary school had an even bigger yard, and we spent days hanging out, running around the woods, shooting each other with squirt guns, falling and getting cut up, climbing trees, and loads of other things. They had a trampoline as well as a pool and we were largely unsupervised. In my limited world view these things were much safer.

However, I played alone at my house a lot, and there were shitty people in my neighborhood. When my dog got loose I ran after him as fast as I could in order to bring him home. My dog ran through a neighbor's yard (which was about a quarter of a mile down a dirt road) and I behind him, until this neighbor got up off his porch with a shotgun, cocked it, pointed it at both of us and yelled "you better get that damn mutt off my yard." Being the white Florida cracker that I was this didn't phase me, but when I told my ex-Navy SEAL father what had happened he went over and made sure that shit didn't happen again. Of course, that neighbor's kid was always around in the neighborhood, and it was inevitable that I would meet him. He was older than me and I didn't know many other kids around. We became hesitant friends, I met his friends, rode bikes around, blew shit up, watched them smoke cigarettes and succeeded in not smoking the ones they tried to convince me to smoke (this of course made me a target of insults). My parents were at home, which I was never too far from, and I did these things because I wasn't too phased by any of them. I was an awkward, lonely kid and I just wanted to be doing something. At some point in time the neighborhood kid and one of his friends came and found me playing in my backyard and asked me what was in the shed in my driveway. We went in there, looked around at my dad's power tools and shit we carried for hurricanes, until they asked me if I had grown any hair "down there". I told them no. They wanted to see. I told them I wasn't lying. They continually told me to pull my pants down to see, while I backed myself into a corner. I didn't want to scream because I knew I wasn't allowed in the shed and I didn't want to get in trouble. I reluctantly pulled my pants down and showed them. They wanted to touch me. While they encroached upon me and I knew I was in danger I finally flipped, grabbed a hammer and hit one of them in the face with it. They got freaked out and ran off. His blood was all over the place. I pulled my pants up and went home and played computer games and never went inside the shed ever again. I saw the neighborhood kid once after that and kept my distance, as he told me he wasn't friends with the other guy anymore. I was scared to play outside after this incident and returned to being reclusive, sitting in my room to play Quake 2 and other things.

Now, I'm not saying this is going to happen to everyone, but at 27 these incidences have left a mark on me and they are what I return to when I think about having children. I want my kids to be able to run around, to have fun, to experience dangers on their own. I DON'T want them to have this shit happen to them. Playing around my friend's yard with his older brother and any of our classmates was ALWAYS a great experience, even when we got hurt, and we weren't supervised. If something sexual had happened between us I think it would have been more of a curiosity between friends, instead of a massive conflict that happened to me, alone in my parents' shed.

On top of all this, my classmates and I always played on playgrounds and the adults were always some ways away, but within earshot. If someone got hurt (and people did!) it would have been dealt with quickly. We regularly climbed and abused playground structures beyond what they were built for, but if something happened we would be okay.

The issue here is nuance. On one end you don't want your kids to be abused by other kids. You also want them to have the freedom to run around by themselves, to ride bikes, meet other kids, etc. There has got to be a middle ground for safety as well as freedom of play.

What this guy has created is a manufactured system where he is basically a warden surveilling his subjects as they create their own social system. That's fine, but bullies erupt and I find it hard to believe that if I was a kid hanging out there that people would have my back if I was being bullied. Would he really help me out, or would he tell me to stop being a pussy?

I also really don't like the fact that he considered children consumers. He objectified a group of children into a capitalistic hierarchy. The fuck is that? Of course he thinks there isn't an issue with bullying, because if a kid gets bullied then that kid is a defective product. I was bullied and it has ruined me as an adult. Where's my normal, human behavior? When I'm frightened of men or wake up literally shaking and the bed is drenched in my sweat, that's my prize for what someone considers normal, human behavior? I'm not a fucking "sissy" either. How many 8-year-olds don't even bat an eye when someone pulls a shotgun on them with the intention to shoot?

I don't know, this whole article and the issues surrounding it have left a bad taste in my mouth.
posted by gucci mane at 3:46 PM on October 19, 2016 [20 favorites]

I guess our definitions of "easily preventable" are probably different. I think there's a big difference between not sending kids out to play unsupervised on obvious death traps, and constant helmeting.

A. apologies for my snarky dismissal of the original comment.

B. I grew up in a mostly unsupervised environment ... and yes, the dangers were always there. As a six year old, I was exploring the railway cut that ran behind the houses one block over. As a seven or eight year old, I was crawling through the culverts of an abandoned sewage plant. As an eleven or twelve year old, I was bushwacking my way up the mountain that was effectively my backyard, climbing up waterfalls, sliding down scree slopes. As a twelve-sixteen year old, I was doing most of my danger time on ski hills, helping do my bit to invent hot dog skiing (as we called it at the time). And so on. Not aiming to brag here. Just pointing out that there was a lot of of preventable danger in my childhood (and that of many of my friends). And yet I can't think of a single fatality. Not even a life threatening injury*. The only four premature deaths that come to mind from my childhood were a kid who died of cancer (kindergarten), a kid who died of appendicitis (Grade Six) and a couple of suicides (later teen years). So yeah, my immediate concern whenever I hear a "one is too many" sort of comment on the topic of kid safety is what's lurking in its shadow, which is all the healthy living-learning-FUN that can get quashed in its wake.

* not counting car and motorcycle wrecks, but those came later in the game.
posted by philip-random at 3:46 PM on October 19, 2016

TRAMAMPOLINE!

TRAMBOPOLINE!
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 3:53 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

free range parenting is great for kids who are adventrous, but how do you help kids who are timid, or who don't like their bodies, or who read queer or feminine, who would prefer to read, or sit and draw, or be interior.

I don't know why they have to be mutually exclusive.
I think even quiet kids would like the freedom to find a place they can do whatever without a parental gaze.
I know I spent a lot of days just tossing rocks in the creek or staring at clouds by myself during my largely unsupervised childhood.
"Free range" doesn't imply continuous action.
posted by madajb at 4:19 PM on October 19, 2016 [4 favorites]

this is a real rorschach thread.
posted by andrewcooke at 4:31 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

free range parenting is great for kids who are adventrous, but how do you help kids who are timid, or who don't like their bodies, or who read queer or feminine, who would prefer to read, or sit and draw, or be interior

what do you mean, help? The whole point of the woods is if you go deep enough into them that nobody can find you except the coyotes, nobody can come yell at you to stop reading a book before you miss the bus to school. as long as you circle back towards the house by 4:00 in the afternoon and are carefully vague about what you learned in class today, you need no help from nobody.

n.b. I was not devoured by coyotes although one or two of our cats may or may not have been. so my final judgment is: wilderness lax parenting is great for bookish girls and so-so for cats.

p.s. my mom was a bleak poverty-childhood farm girl who would have kicked this guy's ass from one end of his dumb back yard to the other in spite of being like fifty years older than he is.
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:40 PM on October 19, 2016 [9 favorites]

Hanging out in the forest, lifting up rocks and seeing what's under them, eating things you find and climbing trees is pretty inclusive; provided you live in the country, which less and less people do these days.
posted by Ferreous at 5:24 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

the question i have about this--is what if you are the kind of kid who is interior, free range parenting is great for kids who are adventrous, but how do you help kids who are timid, or who don't like their bodies, or who read queer or feminine, who would prefer to read, or sit and draw, or be interior. this guys an asshole, but risk needs to be negotiated.

This is my kid to a certain extent. I mean, she's seven and has weathered two sprained ankles from rough-housing (1: awkward landing on tiled floor while being a kangaroo, 2: fucking trampolines), a concussion (swing broke at apogee, landed on her head on a brick path), has permanently scarred up knees and elbows from racing around, and broke her wrist (fucking trampoline, again, this time bouncing through the safety net where the zip had broken). She goes outside to play, mostly creatively with either making stuff out of dirt and seeds and leaves, or intensely creative games with her friends. She has a range of friends, boys and girls. She loves playing the PS4 and the DS, games on my phone, reading, stealing all my fancy colouring in books, making stuff.

Risk isn't just physical. The risk of people is there to be negotiated too. The risk of failure. It's easier to see the risks and failures of physical activities, and culture likes to prioritise them. I still remember when she worked out how to get across the monkey bars - she was seven, has a four year old friend who manages it, but she kept going. That's easy to see. The risk of friendships going sour, the slow progress of one's art skills, the leaps and bounds of reading, those are less visible unless you're actively paying attention. That's the downside of the 'boy focus' on physical activity and 'own society' shit that this guy proselytizes. He actively makes quiet, interior, slow progress something 'sissy' and 'mom-like' and 'boring' when it is vital.

Personally, I am all for free-range as long as it isn't with dangerous people. Like, there's the proto-sociopath kid who belongs to an asshole I used to play games with. The kind of kid who lies, reactively and reflexively, who quietly hurts smaller children. Who engages and entices other kids to follow him. My nephew got a lot of 'free range' play with that kid - I stopped it after the second time I found the kid trying to isolate my daughter away from adults and the other kids, and any time I talked about my fears it was me being a 'helicopter' and 'over-protective' since 'nothing really happened'. I watched my nephew begin to exhibit the same vicious behaviour, punching smaller kids for no reason when he thought he was unobserved, pinching, that kind of thing. But again, I am being judgemental and over-protective.

I shrugged, kept her away, and did crazy mothering things like 'grocery shopping and can you help decide what to cook' and 'lets create some art' and 'yoga' and 'library' instead. She still can't understand why I keep her away from that kid, or his family, because I didn't let her learn who not to trust with her own body at 5. That's a lesson she will learn at some point, but yeah. Free-range with whoever was around learned me that one good and young and I don't regret protecting her from that.

Oh, and there's no way my kid is going to the shops on her own for a long time - she has to cross an incredibly busy road to get there and I am not willing to place her safety on the head of speeding, distracted, asshole drivers. Same with our closest park. Cars are unsafe, plain and simple. Wandering around my mother's house and yard, on a river, with cows and chickens and hawks and dogs? That she does, with glee. i was grateful they fenced their house when she was younger so she couldn't wander into the river, and now to keep the cows from trampling her, but she gets to light the fire with her grandmother, and art with her grandfather, and talk about all sorts of things and learn them and collect chicken eggs. Will I leave her there unsupervised? Not any more, not since they've proven to have no sense when it comes to media they expose the kids to, but the outside isn't the problem.

But yeah, free range historically has relied on a lot of those social factors about women's invisible labour, the creation of community, which needs more than a whiteboard and 'my house, my rules'.
posted by geek anachronism at 5:27 PM on October 19, 2016 [21 favorites]

There's unsupervised and unsupervised. We lived on a canal and I had a little rowboat that I was told not to get into when alone. But I did, was gone for hours, and got in a shitload of trouble. And got a little scared because it was a lot longer row back than I thought it would be. But I still got to run around the neighborhood, but only on my street, and only to friends' houses and I had to tell someone. And I couldn't go wander if no one was at my house. Then I had to stay at home and lock the front door.

If my mom needed to find me, she generally knew which houses to call and where I was likely to be. And she did come find me, on occasion. The other kids' families knew me, the nextdoor neighbors and across the street neighbors knew me.

Which is to say we had a situation a little like N Street, and it worked pretty well. It was not at all the same as "live next to a rich guy with a semisafe playground and laissez-faire attitude."
posted by emjaybee at 5:45 PM on October 19, 2016

Oh I read this guy's book! I was home with both my kids this summer so I got a couple of books about encouraging free range play in neighborhoods from the library. The others were about communities coming together to make streets safer. This one was about all the cool equipment the dude bought for his front yard.
posted by betsybetsy at 5:50 PM on October 19, 2016 [10 favorites]

I am not a mom, but I am completely done with people who use "mom" as a synonym for "uncool".
posted by betweenthebars at 6:52 PM on October 19, 2016 [32 favorites]

I find it hard to believe that if I was a kid hanging out there that people would have my back if I was being bullied. Would he really help me out, or would he tell me to stop being a pussy?

And Heaven help you if you happened to be a girl!

And yet I can't think of a single fatality. Not even a life threatening injury*.

Well, that's great for you and your friends, but it's not much comfort to the people who haven't been so fortunate.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:45 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

The guy's philosophy: one or two partially chewed maraschino cherries mixed into a giant sundae made entirely of poop.

I happen to like maraschino cherries, but I can get them elsewhere, thanks.
posted by Cozybee at 9:12 PM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]

Sometime in the future: "Hi, I'm Mike's insurance company. I read an article about Mike in the New York Times and realized I was asking for trouble with this guy, so I declined to renew his homeowners insurance."
posted by zachlipton at 12:03 PM on October 19 [6 favorites +]

Unfortunately for Mike, the playground would result in a "cause cancel" / "group reject" instead of a non-renewal. A non-renewal means Mike would get to continue being insured for the rest of the policy term, while a CC would mean immediate (or retroactive) cancellation- along with the whole deal being logged in the centralized reporting service that any future insurer would check before selling Mike a policy.

The property insurance agent who told me all this went on to say that the pics from this story made her week and her month.
posted by Hiding From Goro at 11:03 PM on October 19, 2016 [6 favorites]

I'm not actually sure how you retroactively cancel someone's insurance - is this a thing?
posted by corb at 11:09 PM on October 19, 2016

Sounds like buddy is working out his own issues via this thing but hey free trampoline.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:21 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]

If your insurance policy says "No Trampolines" or "No business use" or something and you install/do one of those things your insurance can be void back to the point you did that thing even though the company doesn't notice until you try to make a claim.
posted by Mitheral at 1:53 AM on October 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I am against helicopter parents as much as the next guy, but this guys arguments are a terrible smoothie of toxic masculinity, ayn randisms and Bro-egocentrism. He may not boast about his kids accomplishments like those "sissy"-moms, but makes up for it in telling everyone how manly and great he is. He may have visited all those great open playgrounds, but I am afraid he did not learn anything from it.

i know so many people that hurt themselves on trampolines and seeing that unsecured one in his garden made me cringe. He would probably also argue against seat-belts if he were born 50 years earlier, because only women and losers get into car-accidents... Christ, what a douche.

You can let kids explore the world for themselves without fostering a toxic environment or reward bad behavior, which is what he's doing in my eyes.
posted by Megustalations at 2:23 AM on October 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Thernstrom is an amazing writer and she manages to sound admirably open-minded while making this guy look like a crank who is projecting his own multiple problems onto his kids.

In addition to all the other issues, is there anybody watching these kids who does not have a drink in their hand? I mean, as a society we normalize drinking playdates, but there's been a lot in the news lately about how this can go badly wrong. There may be nothing wrong with the amount of drinking going on at this gathering but the guy sounds too intemperate in general to be paying a lot of attention in this one regard. This is one of the things Thernstrom is just suggestive about: "My smile was thin and conveyed, For the love of God, can you please put your drink down and watch the kids?"
posted by BibiRose at 6:02 AM on October 20, 2016

Well, for anyone who likes the idea of free-range risky play, but is put off by the approach this guy is taking (and I am firmly in the camp of strongly disliking his approach), here's a much better example of how it's being done elsewhere.

Heh. I was going to mention Adventure Playground. There's an old (old) picture of it in your link.

That's certainly a very good example of how to balance free play and risk with safety and inclusion. We don't go there a whole lot, but it's a great space.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:14 AM on October 20, 2016

in America's cities and suburbs, play itself is in decline.

I've seen this (PDF from American Journal of Play on decline in playing in U.S.) first-hand in a very progressive, pro-child community. It's always ironic to see all the "Drive Like Your Children Live Here" or "Careful: Kids At Play" signs and then never ever see any kids playing outside in those neighborhoods.

The sad part is that kids *do* want to play outside. Look at the research (in that linked PDF) and you'll see "playing at a park with friends" outranks playing video games or watching movies, etc.

The biggest difference between my childhood and my kids is that more parents are working more hours. Kids get dropped off at 7am and picked up at 6pm. These kids are getting their "free-range" time with other child-care providers ... who are mostly starting at their phones. (That's the second biggest difference with this generation. '80s parents may have been drunk/stoned/coked all the time, but '10 parents do the same thing with phones (I'm not quite sure which is worse yet ...).

We're only beginning to see the massive impact of screens on kids. I mean, what do you miss most about your childhood? I certainly remember video games and good times playing them with friends, but my favorite, most cherished, wish-i-could-go-back-there memories are the times of free play with cousins or kids in the neighborhood. I mean that's when the real change-your-life-forever shit went down (for good or for bad, as several have shared.)
posted by mrgrimm at 10:28 AM on October 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

> B. I grew up in a mostly unsupervised environment ... and yes, the dangers were always there.

> Risk isn't just physical. The risk of people is there to be negotiated too.

I was a free-range kid, growing up on the outskirts of Honolulu. Had to stay within calling distance if we were playing outside, and tell my mom if I was going to someone's house, but it was otherwise me and the other neighborhood kids running around doing stuff, boys and girls both.

There was a flood control channel on the other side of the street, and when it wasn't flooded, it was a little stream full of guppies and tadpoles, with wild sugarcane where mongooses roamed, and some banana plants that sometimes provided us with bananas. We played explorer and discoverer. We dammed the stream and caught the guppies to take home for our fishbowls, and made a sort of tree house-fort thing. That was where the older brother (maybe 12 or 13 to my 7 or 8) took me one day when somehow it was just the two of us, saying he wanted to show me something. He made me lie down and he started to pull his shorts down. I got up and ran home. I left the baggie of guppies I'd caught, and felt terrible about that for years. I only told my mom years later.
posted by rtha at 11:06 AM on October 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I wonder how this parenting philosophy will play as his boys get older.

I grew up in a northeastern railroad suburb full of divorced, unhappy, overworked, cash-strapped professional single moms and their latchkey only-children. We kids were free-range by default; our folks were middle-class, but didn't have the resources to helicopter us.

Our part of town was safe, walkable and fun for youngsters. I have many warm, positive memories of summer evening tag games at the observatory, playing ninjas in the woods near the reservoir, and pedaling our bikes endlessly around the neighborhood. I also fondly recall some of the mischief we got up to. One afternoon after school we tried to make fried dough on the stove top, then wandered off to play Nintendo leaving the vegetable shortening to bubble unattended. This was actually lucky because otherwise someone might have lost an eye when the pyrex dish exploded moments later. The afternoon following our 8th grade graduation we decided to burn our algebra text books in the hibachi, then tried to hide the evidence by sucking up the the charred chunks with a vacuum cleaner, prompting a jet of black smoke to envelop the porch just as mom's car pulled into the driveway. Cute stuff. No casualties.

By middle school our hormones were in full rage, and bullying, put-downs and one-upsmanship had gotten rougher. For a while my mom would hire a sitter for me when she had to work late, but my friends gave me such a hard time about it I told her to stop. One night neighbors called the cops because we boys were shredding up heaps of wild bamboo that grew by the railroad tracks. Another night my friend stole a cellular phone (a curiosity in 1989) out of an unlocked car.

By the time sex and drugs entered the picture in high school, I could have used more concerned adults in my life. My mom tried her absolute best, but she worked all the time. I felt isolated. I knew I needed guidance but the only people around were checked-out school administrators and other kids making even worse decisions that I was. Relationship advice was "use a condom." Friends got into drugs and drifted away.

My best friend and I enjoyed a little reprieve during the spring of our freshmen year of high school. His mom had perma-grounded him for pot and I was the only friend she allowed over because she knew I didn't get high. After a winter in a teenage wasteland, he and I spent the spring playing on his computer and listening the Hitchhiker's Trilogy on cassette. Far and away my happiest memory of that year.
posted by ducky l'orange at 12:59 PM on October 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

I wonder how this parenting philosophy will play as his boys get older.

His kids will join organized competitive high school sports teams like 100% of the kids in the area. They won't give a shit about their dad's opinions and all their friends will be on a sports team.

I'm sure they'll tell stories about their crazy backyard playground when they're in college though.
posted by GuyZero at 1:16 PM on October 20, 2016

That's the second biggest difference with this generation. '80s parents may have been drunk/stoned/coked all the time, but '10 parents do the same thing with phones (I'm not quite sure which is worse yet ...).

Well, I can throw my phone aside with ease, can't shake off the high/drunk and drive my kid to the hospital/bandage her up/assess the wound/speak sense.

I remember drunk and stoned parents. I'd rather distracted then able to focus than drunk and thinking they're focusing but it turns out they just ate dog food (memory from childhood).

I don't have fond memories of playing outside, for the most part. Not when I was young. I grew up regional and rural and you got the playmates geography or parental friendships gave you, and you made do. Probably why wee baby me read so much - it made me boring so they left me alone. Even when it comes to outdoor stuff, exploring on my own was much more preferable to the people around me.
posted by geek anachronism at 4:02 PM on October 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

a two-story log-cabin playhouse with a sleeping loft, whiteboard walls inside for coloring and really good speakers, blasting Talking Heads.

And you may tell yourself
This is not my beautiful playhouse!
posted by theorique at 5:51 PM on October 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Just as a note, a thing that occurred to me as I sat trying to deepen stretches in vinyasa yoga with a dude breathing heavily and noisily beside me:

for all the women, and all the victims, in this discussion who were harmed as a result of lassez-faire parentalism, there are a lot of people crying out for it and praising it and somehow never addressing those issues. I mean, statistically, there's gotta be a few people who were the ones demanding 'show me if you have hair' or whatever particular brand of sadism running through that childhood, because I don't imagine I am the only victim of my 'bully' for want of a better word. Yet surely, there was more than one of him as well.
posted by geek anachronism at 8:00 PM on October 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

The guy comes across as a bit of a zealot, deeply steeped in the kind of blithe instrumentalism that embraces evo-psychological and sociobiological explanations that are clear, simple and wrong, but I'm a little baffled that his pontificating is met here with expressions of such visceral disgust.
posted by dmh at 4:47 PM on October 21, 2016

Why do we find him disgusting? Because he clearly finds women to be lesser, disabled people to be lesser. Free kids? I care little. Bigotry? A lot.
posted by ch1x0r at 7:12 PM on October 21, 2016

I have re-read the article. I like the connection with emotional labor that was brought up. This guy has imagined that the world is too emotionally laborious and he has decided to expend quite a bit of effort to create a fantasy that is supposed to teach kids about reality. That in itself is ironic and a bit absurd.

But I can also see a connection between his notion of emotional overinvolvement and the exasperation that was expressed in the Mefi emotional labor thread. Many expressed the sense that it is never enough, that it is never acknowledged, and that it reinforces patterns of gender inequality. Some spoke about the need for a gendered enclave not entirely unlike what this guy is doing. In a way he is saying that yes, there is a limit to the amount of emotional labor that can or should be expected of people, and that that's okay.
posted by dmh at 10:16 AM on October 22, 2016

As far as gendered play goes, I was heavily socialized to play cooperatively from the time I was very small. Any time I tried to play with boys, the whole experience was pure hell because the boys espoused ideas like this guy's: that girls are inferior, that girls should conform to masculine norms but also accept that we can never be as good, that boys should dominate play and conversation, that being a girl meant I was weak and stupid and should always let the boys win, while not appearing to let them win. Further, any time I was as loud or aggressive as the boys were, adults punished me for not being "ladylike" but of course the boys were not punished for the same behaviors or even for more extreme behaviors, because "boys will be boys!"

Left to my own devices, I ran around down by the river, climbed every tree I could get near, biked all over the place, and had no trouble keeping up with anyone else. I just learned to do this out of the sight of adults, and to avoid both boys who thought bullying me was their right and girls who had internalized that they had to put up with that shit.

I loathe people who think gendered behavior is just "natural" and not something that gets beaten into us.
posted by bile and syntax at 5:14 PM on October 22, 2016 [2 favorites]

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