Free-range parenting is a style that promotes independent thought and decision-making in children while allowing them to do things unsupervised when it is age-appropriate. Critics compare this style to permissive or neglectful parenting and point to the danger of allowing children the same freedoms that previous generations had, as contemporary risks are different.

Where does the term “free-range parenting” come from?

Free-range parenting was first spread as a term because of journalist and blogger Lenore Skenazy, who inadvertently became a parenting thought leader on this subject through the strong response to a 2008 New York Sun column about letting her nine-year-old ride the subway unsupervised. She didn’t come up with the term, but it was used in the media to describe her parenting. Making lemons of lemonade, she has since embraced free-range parenting as a topic and remains the writer most associated with it. While some dubbed Ms. Skenazy “America’s Worst Mom,” others support her thinking to the extent that “free range” is now a recognised parenting style, and she has gone on to publish two editions of a book about it and co-found a charity called Let Grow to promote independence and free play for children. Free-range parenting has gained international media attention and even been recognised as a term in law, as the state of Utah now employs it to describe behaviour that does not constitute child neglect.

Why do some parents feel this style of parenting is necessary?

Some parents think that children are overprotected.

This view may be based on comparison with previous generations as well as a recognition of the technology that allows parents to monitor their children around the clock. Technology gives parents omniscience, so they feel they must be omniscient (a hallmark of helicopter parenting) and that if something bad happens when they could have been tracking their children through this app or that device, it must be their fault. This is tied to the intensive parenting idea that exerting as much control as possible over your child’s life will ultimately lead to better outcomes. The media also plays a role, with 24-hour news reporting dangers to children in a manner that makes modern parents acutely aware of the wide variety of risks to their children’s health and safety. The Let Grow foundation highlights statistics on how small the risks of kidnapping and serious harm to unaccompanied children really are. Free-range parenting aims to instill the self-reliance, problem-solving, and independence a traditionalist might suggest were required of all children before childhood became as structured and child-led as it is today.

Technology isn’t a substitute for physical friendships and play.

Free play is advocated by both free-range and Montessori parents. It is defined as play without phones or other technology, and the reasons for it may be obvious to you. Social skills beyond the family are mainly learned face-to-face and when children are interacting without adult intervention. Outdoor play and exposure to nature are promoted by the Let Grow charities suggested activities and free-range parenting advocates, and there are well-established benefits from both for a child’s health and development.

Child creativity is on the decline.

Some academic research suggests that as childhood freedom has decreased since the mid-1980s, so has children’s creativity, though this is complicated by the impact of technology on our lives, whether state-based interventions help or hinder creativity, and the challenging nature of measuring creativity in general. Even if you believe that there is a childhood “creativity crisis,” free-range parenting is not necessarily the answer, and suggestions from advocates for that style that it does are speculative.

Child safety is an industry that scares people.

There is a large market for products that keep our children safe, many of which free-range parenting advocates argue are unnecessary and marketed in a manner designed to encourage parental anxiety. While some safety precautions for one’s child are reasonable, free-range parents believe the best approach is to worldproof your child, not childproof the world. In addition, free-parenting aims to promote growth and resilience through occasional adversity—the way they develop in adult life—so getting hurt sometimes isn’t necessarily considered a problem. Safetyism: The Coddling of the American Mind (2018, Penguin), a book on how parental obsession with eliminating threats is weakening and even harming a generation of children, is co-authored by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and lawyer Greg Lukianoff. They suggest economist Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s theory of antifragility—the idea that organisms thrive in response to adversity exposure—is applicable in raising children. “If we protect children from various classes of potentially upsetting experiences, we make it far less likely that they will be able to cope with such experiences when they leave our protective umbrella,” they write.

We don’t have the village enjoyed by previous generations, but this doesn’t necessarily mean children are in more danger.

Once upon a time, you knew all your neighbours and trusted them to look out for your child if they saw them lost or at risk in the street. These days, people live in a way that is more siloed and may be closer to people in online communities than those who live in their apartment block, and parents are more concerned about their children walking and playing alone even when it is very close to home. Free-range parenting advocates again point out that your child is statistically unlikely to be harmed or kidnapped when allowed what you believe to be an appropriate amount of independence to suit their age and maturity level.

Is free-style parenting permissive or neglectful?

This depends on your point of view, your child, and where you are in the world. Clearly, given their perceived risks of allowing children on public transport unaccompanied, a lot of parents responded badly to Ms. Skenazy’s column in 2008, and there are parts of the United States, for example, where it is against the law to allow children under certain ages to travel or participate in other activities unaccompanied, suggesting a legislative belief that such behaviour is neglectful. Ms. Skenazy, on the other hand, has repeatedly argued that she and her husband know their child; he asked for the freedom to take the subway home, and he made it there just fine.

In the UK, there is no specified legal age below which a child cannot be left unaccompanied, but, somewhat confusingly, it is considered an offense to leave any child alone if it places them at risk. One could argue that any child left alone is at some measure of risk. The UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children offers guidelines (that are not law), recommending that children under 12 should not be left alone and children under sixteen should not be left alone overnight. The child’s individual traits—their maturity, mental and physical health, and behavioural development—also matter to a decision on whether a child over 12 should be left alone, as well as the boundaries you set for them.

However, even if you disagree with the unaccompanied elements of free-range parenting, there are still aspects of this style you can use to encourage independence, resilience, and creativity in your child. As with all parenting styles, free-range parenting is not prescriptive, and you need only take from it what is right for your child and your family.

How do I engage in free-range parenting?

Give your child chores and make them stick to them. Doing chores for them won’t help them in adult life.
Create time, supplies, and an environment for “free play.” Simple arts and crafts supplies and the freedom to explore an outdoor space are all you need to encourage fruitful free play.
Give your child age-appropriate freedoms. Whatever you deem those freedoms to be based on your knowledge of their maturity, wellbeing, and level of personal responsibility.
Let your child solve problems. Don’t step in before they can achieve something independently. It doesn’t necessarily need to be perfect for them to learn a valuable lesson.
Teach your child life skills. These can range from cooking basic meals and managing their pocket money to doing laundry and riding a bike—all things your child will need to learn to live independently in most cities in the world.
Let your child make mistakes. Mistakes can be embarrassing, but they are a part of life and a layover on the way to problem solving.

For more information on supporting your child’s best start in life, check out Unii’s Toddler Health and Development Journey with Dr. Nisha Patel.

Parenting Styles: What is free-range parenting?