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2012 Utah L. Rev. 947 (2012)
Criminal Child Neglect and the Free Range Kid: Is Overprotective Parenting the New Standard of Care

handle is hein.journals/utahlr2012 and id is 963 raw text is: CRIMINAL CHILD NEGLECT AND THE FREE RANGE KID: IS OVERPROTECTIVE PARENTING THE NEW STANDARD OF CARE? David Pimentel* INTRODUCTION Parenting in American society is a far more demanding enterprise than it once was, and the changes over a single generation are startling.' Intensive Parenting is becoming the norm in the dominant American subcultures,2 which are embracing safety-conscious parenting approaches that might once have been viewed disapprovingly as overprotective parenting.3 Most of the change is motivated by a well-intentioned desire to protect and promote children's safety and welfare- more specifically to (1) insulate them from risks of physical harm and victimization,4 and (2) increase their access to educational and cultural advantage.5 De facto legal standards appear to be evolving right along with these attitudes about proper parenting,6 with individual parental choices increasingly second- guessed by a society now willing to pass judgment on them.7 * C 2012 David Pimentel. Visiting Associate Professor, Ohio Northern University; B.A., Brigham Young University; M.A., University of California, Berkeley; J.D., Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. Thanks to Lenore Skenazy for inspiration, and to Lydia Sturgis and Lance Davies for research assistance. 1 Over-parenting likely emerged by the 1990s. Nancy Gibbs, The Growing Backlash Against Overparenting, TIME (Nov. 20, 2009), http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ article/0,9171,1940697,00.html (From peace and prosperity, there arose fear and anxiety; crime went down, yet parents stopped letting kids out of their sight; the percentage of kids walking or biking to school dropped from 41% in 1969 to 13% in 2001. Death by injury has dropped more than 50% since 1980, yet parents lobbied to take the jungle gyms out of playgrounds.. . .). 2 See Gaia Bernstein & Zvi Triger, Over-Parenting, 44 U.C. DAVIS L. REV. 1221, 1268, 1270-71 (2011) (stating that Intensive Parenting is culture specific, which is troubling because there can be discrimination against non-white, lower socio-economic class parents who may think of parenting differently). Id. at 1265. As early as the 1930s, a parenting expert counseled against the dangers of over-parenting. Id. 4 See Gibbs, supra note 1 (describing extreme measures parents have taken in attempts make the world safer for their children; for example, a Connecticut mayor agreed to cut down three hickory trees on one block because a grandmother was afraid a stray nut might fly into her pool where her nut-allergic grandson occasionally swam). 5 Wendy S. Grolnick & Richard M. Ryan, Parent Styles Associated with Children's Self-Regulation and Competence in School, 81 J. EDUC. PSYCHOL. 143, 151-52 (1989) (claiming that mothers who were extremely involved produced children with better grades). 6 See Bernstein & Triger, supra note 2, at 1244-48 (explaining that family-law governing custody disputes essentially forces Intensive Parenting norms on parents 947

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