“The idea is to make sure that our childhood welfare laws are aligned with reasonable childhood independence and that parents child care providers, first responders, schools, day cares, everyone has the right information about what is neglect and abuse and what is not, so that we can reduce the number of false reports and unneeded investigations,” said committee chair Sen. Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor), who sponsored one of the bills.
“Ultimately, one of my goals is to make sure that single mothers, single fathers, parents who are low income are not victimized by a system that when it looks at their condition, sees neglect with no neglect is there,” Irwin continued, adding that the idea of the bill came about because of a rule in his own local school district that said that elementary school students could not walk to school.
State Sen. Ed McBroom (R-Waucedah), who sponsored the other bill in the package, similarly said that he wanted children to have the chance to take part in “free range opportunities” that he saw as a valuable part of his own upbringing.
“We now live in a society that’s become so litigious and so overly concerned, at times, whether they be well meaning neighbors, or even government officials. There is some effort at times to really restrict that because it’s seen as too dangerous,” McBroom said. “These children are not doing anything that’s unreasonable and these parents are making a reasonable and informed choice.”
Dr. Sarah Clark, a research scientist at the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Michigan, said that based on polls and studies in her field, she believes that reasonable childhood independence laws, like this one, are important.
“A key parent responsibility is to prepare their needs for adulthood, and this should be a gradual process where parents allow children increasing the amount of freedom to do things themselves,” Clark said. “Children learn a lot from these situations when a parent isn’t standing right there, making the decisions for them and smoothing over all the obstacles.”
McBroom added that he has had a number of constituents tell him that they are being investigated by Child Protective Services just because a neighbor called to say that children were playing alone outside or similar situations.
While those cases almost never go anywhere against those parents, he continued, “It’s a major panic for these families during that time where they’re being investigated, and we would all be far better off if CPS could not have to spend so much time investigating these kind of situations and focus its attention instead on the cases that are truly difficult and dangerous to children.”
“These situations cause distress for the family involved, but they also create a lot of fear in the mind of other parents, and they interfere with parents allowing their kids to be kids,” Clark added. “They don’t make children safer. They just impede their ability to grow and develop.”
