Traffic accidents have decreased compared to the years when I played on the road, and street surveillance has proliferated — CCTV cameras are everywhere — so why has our mistrust and anxiety increased along with it? Random but rare kidnapping attempts and knife attacks like the recent one in London don’t help: they feed into a primal fear about the lost child, the child taken by wolves, by witches — and it seems our fears beat back the logic of our own experiences and also the deep, abiding wish that our kids get to have some of the fun of our own childhoods.
A mum being reported to social services for letting her teen travel Europe is a sad sign of today’s risk-averse parenting by Virginia Trioli