This was published 7 years ago
What the playborhood's Mike Lanza gets wrong about 'helicopter mothers'
By Kasey Edwards
In a backlash against "helicopter parenting" Silicon Valley dad Mike Lanza has created a "playborhood" in his backyard. It's full of high-risk play equipment where any kid in the neighbourhood can come over and experience physical danger and the law of the jungle.
Lanza says he created the playborhood because he wants his three sons and their mates to have a childhood like the good old days, where kids roamed the streets in gangs without the burden of structured activities and parental supervision.
There is a dark side to unsupervised play that should not be overshadowed by climbing walls and mosaics. Credit: Stocksy
Highlights of the playborhood include a 12-foot playhouse where kids leap off the roof onto a trampoline and kids even climb onto the roof of his double storey house. The playborhood also has artist-designed literary quotes on mosaics, and yellow signs given to neighbours to warn car drivers to watch out for kids.
Lanza's vision has also been heavily criticised for being a hyper-masculine, sexist fantasy. Melanie Thernstrom wrote in the New York Times: "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."
Lanza's vision has also been heavily criticised for being a hyper-masculine, sexist fantasy.Credit: Stocksy
Lanza has since denied making these, and other, sexist comments attributed to him by the Times report in a statement on Facebook. However, he appears to still be advocating and normalising what he calls "healthy, boyish aggression".
In a blog post Lanza laments that the female teachers and mothers at his kids' school have created an environment that is "too safe and non-competitive" and that they make children "sit at the snack table and take turns."
Let's face it, when Lanza criticises parents for mollycoddling their kids, he is in fact taking a swipe at mothers. One revealing quote from the Times feature that Lanza hasn't since denied is: "Moms nowadays never go away."
I'm sure I'm not the only mother who can do without yet another self-proclaimed male parenting expert telling mothers how to mother — especially one that is trying to recreate a golden era that never even existed.
I was a kid in the 1970s-80s and I can testify that Lanza's playborhood doesn't even come close to an authentic suburban play experience. Where, for example, is the rusty old car or fence that will give you tetanus? Where's the rickety iron slide that gives you third degree burns on a hot day? For that matter, where's the open drain, dirty syringes or broken glass?
And there is a dark side to unsupervised play that should not be overshadowed by climbing walls and mosaics. As one woman commented on Facebook: "My memories of unsupervised play as an under 10 and youngest of three include being sexually molested by older kids in cupboards; being beaten by my brother."
When my younger cousin climbed onto the roof of my double storey house, every adult in vicinity freaked out and then took precautions so that it would never happen again. My parents did not install ladders for easy roof access, as Lanza has done, and then encourage my cousin have another go.
When it comes to allowing kids to have more free time to play, instead of over-scheduling children with achievement-oriented activities, Lanza does have a point. Kids need the time and freedom to play, explore, and makes mistakes.
But I'm not going to apologise for not orchestrating scenarios and play equipment to deliberately expose my children to the unnecessary risk of physical harm. And I consider it my duty to teach my children to take turns, to be inclusive, empathetic and to manage conflicts without violence or cruelty.
Mike Lanza is not the first person to think about and research parenting approaches. Most mothers are acutely aware of the importance of striking the right balance between raising safe and civil children and exposing them to an appropriate level of freedom and risk. We agonise over these decisions almost on a daily basis, and make the best decisions we can depending on the situation and our individual child's needs and temperament.
Lanza worries that interventionist parenting is ruining kids childhoods. Perhaps he should be more worried that non-interventionist parenting could ruin their adulthoods.
A 20-year study published in the American Journal of Public Health shows children who learned to share or be helpful in kindergarten had greater wellbeing in adulthood. They were less likely to suffer from substance abuse problems, be unemployed or have run-ins with the law.
For many children, particularly boys, these skills need to be taught to them by adults because our culture instils the opposite.
Male entitlement, survival-of-the-fittest, and winner-takes all behaviour isn't some obscure idea buried in the past. It's still our dominant culture. From advertising, sporting fields, porn — which is often boys' first sex ed lesson — men who catcall and objectify women, boys who 'bond' over humiliating women online, and the thousands of times every day someone excuses male violence and dominance by saying 'boys will be boys', hyper-masculinity is everywhere.
It's modelled, even celebrated by millions of people, in the current US Republican presidential candidate. Even one Australian senator thinks it's appropriate to talk tough about letting "police bleed to death".
As US journalist Steven I. Weiss writes: "Left up to their own devices, we know what boys will grow up to do."
In Australia, 59 women have been killed by violence this year and one in three Australian women has experienced physical violence since the age of 15. We know that 17 per cent of women and 4 per cent of men experienced sexual assault since the age of 15 and that 93 per cent of offenders are male. And eight out of ten women aged 18 to 24 were harassed on the street in the past year.
The last thing we need to encourage is more "boyish aggression" in the playground — or anywhere, for that matter.
Kasey Edwards is a writer and best-selling author. www.kaseyedwards.com