WELL-TO-DO parents fear two things: that their children will die in a freak accident, and that they will not get into Harvard. The first fear is wildly exaggerated. The second is not, but staying awake all night worrying about it will not help—and it will make you miserable.Modern parents see risks that their own parents never considered. They put gates at the top of stairs, affix cushions to table corners and jam plastic guards into sockets to stop small fingers from getting electrocuted. Those guards are “potential choking hazards”, jests Lenore Skenazy, the author of “Free-Range Kids”. Ms Skenazy let her nine-year-old son ride the New York subway on his own. He was thrilled; but when she spoke about it on TV, a mob of worrywarts called her “America’s worst mom”.Yet in fact American children are staggeringly safe. A kid under five in the 1950s was five times as likely to die (of disease, in an accident, etc) than the same kid today. The chance of a child being kidnapped and murdered by a stranger is a minuscule one in 1.5m.What about academic success? Surely the possibility of getting into Harvard justifies any amount of driving junior from violin lesson to...
from The Economist: United States http://ift.tt/1pfFJA4
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