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August 25, 2024 - 5:30pm
The TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp has been reported to social services for allowing her then 15-year-old son Oscar to go on a post-GCSEs interrailing trip with his 16-year-old friend. Earlier this week she posted on X celebrating Oscar’s safe return from his travels, leading to a predictable furore about parental irresponsibility and the dangers of the world out there. She has retaliated by raising her own concerns about the problems caused for teenagers by the “risk-averse” parenting culture in the UK and US, compared to other societies in which children are “encouraged to learn early to be self-sufficient, and trusted to make sensible choices”.
Allsopp has referred to the work of the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of the influential recent book The Anxious Generation, which holds the decline of children’s free play and the growing use of social media responsible for an “epidemic” of mental illness among young people. She argued that Oscar’s trip was “inspiring”, and in any case was “what so many, many young people did after O-levels, and now after GCSEs”.
So well done Kirstie — and Oscar. A growing number of commentators are now writing about the implications of our safetyist parenting culture for parents and children alike. The more we try to “protect” children from the dangers and pleasures of everyday life, the less we prepare them for the joys, challenges and responsibilities of adulthood. An interrail trip around Europe, in the age of mobile phones and ApplePay, is hardly the kind of dangerous neglect that overstretched social services should be worrying about; indeed, the performative, knee-jerk referral poses a far greater danger to the nation’s kids than a mother who trusts her son to go on holiday. Which children aren’t being “safeguarded” when social workers are reacting to a celebrity’s X account?
Allsopp is also right about the importance of these rites of passage in marking teenagers’ entry into the adult world. Not so long ago, the ritual of going on your first holiday without parents was put on hold by the Covid lockdowns, along with festivals, proms, driving tests, clubbing and all the other small but significant steps towards independence. This resulted in dull misery at the time, and frantic “revenge socialising” afterwards. Anybody who cares about teenagers should be frankly delighted that they are picking up the reins and trotting round the globe: we saw what happened when we made them stay at home, kept captive by our fears.
There is some welcome pushback against safetyism by grown-ups, too. Allsopp may have taken inspiration from the US writer Lenore Skenazy who, 16 years ago, was branded “America’s worst mom” for writing a column titled “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone”. Her son wanted the adventure and Skenazy wanted to encourage his independence. The ensuing outcry provoked her to set up the “free-range kids” movement, “fighting the belief that our children are in constant danger from creeps, kidnapping, germs, grades, flashers, frustration, failure, baby snatchers, bugs, bullies, men, sleepovers and/or the perils of a non-organic grape”, and pushing for greater cultural and legal support for children’s freedom and independence. In other words: the ability to “let grow”.
If we want our kids to flourish, we need more feisty parents and commentators to push against the paranoid parenting culture we have allowed to take hold. There’s nothing actually safe or responsible about holding children back: they have to learn to navigate the risks of everyday life at some point, and pushing this further into adulthood carries problems of its own, as employers and university lectures will confirm. Encouraging the desire for independent travel is a great step in the right direction.
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SubscribeAnniesland Cross, Great Western Road, Glasgow, 1960 – 1963, sign waving hitch-hikers … remember them? … young girls 16 to 19 … hitchhikers … going up the ‘hielans’ with a tent … and NO DANGER from us mountaineers with a ‘motor car’ … only too welcome of the temporary company. Genuine, innocent, probably could be the same today but for the risk-averse.
No problem at all with a 15 year old going interailling with a mate, assuming they are sufficiently mature. At that age some are and some are not. Their parents are best placed to judge.
Whoever reported this to social services is a pillock.
Whoever took action in Social Services is an even bigger pillock.
I don’t blame RBKC social services for this one so much.
There is no getting round their legal obligation to address every report of made to them of suspected child neglect or abuse. A phone call to establish the facts of the matter is pretty much the minimum action they can take to discharge that duty.
That is assuming this ends here, of course. If they take this further then I’ll agree with you.
Allsopp got some trolling on X after she posted up her boy’s travel plans. They were basically travelling through all the ‘third world’ cities of Europe. Someone said ‘girls couldn’t do that though’. Allsopp responded with “why not?”, oblivious to the sub-text.
Maybe the social services are ‘racist’ for caring.
Of course boys that want to do that at 15 can, after all can’t they join the army at 16? but it would be irresponsible to let a girl that age to do so. Sadly not because they wouldn’t equally enjoy the experience but because some men and boys are a threat to girls of that age. Sad but true. That Allsop pretended she didn’t know that (why not girls?) was bizarre.
Perhaps she was thinking about “girls” with dangly bits that she fully supports rather than actual female girls?
It seems like you spend a lot of time thinking about that since you bring it up when it has zero relevance to the topic at hand.
My daughter would have loved to do this but 2 problems: no friends allowed to, and no accommodation would, it seemed, accept an unaccompanied U18, not even youth hostels. Ridiculous.
Or does anyone know suitable accommodation?
The Swedish Tourist Society accepts you as a member at at 16. Become a member and stay at the members rate in any of their accommodations.
https://www.swedishtouristassociation.com/join-stf/
If you are under 16 but staying with a member, you also get the rate. I know of 15 and 16 years old who have travelled together like this.
I’m currently reading the remarkable Abigail Shrier’s “Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up,” which should be of interest to anyone concerned about parental safetyism. While it’s based on American parenting practices, it’s a broadly relevant and illuminating read about harms done by modern abdication of authoritative (not authoritarian) parenting to therapists, schools and other so-called experts. As she demonstrated in “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing our Daughters,” Shrier is a thorough, insightful journalist unafraid to speak truth to power. We — and our children — need more voices like hers.
Another good read is John Taylor Gatto for his views on the negative impact of state schooling on our children and consequently society. Also Choice Theory by William Glasser. Choice theory is excellent in that it’s all about taking responsibility for our choices, which is, in my view, the true sign of maturity. It is frightening how many cannot take responsibility for their choices, and then want to take control of other peoples! Much stems from helicopter parenting and an inability to cut the apron strings!
Just over 100 years ago our youth were lying about their age so they could run out of the trenches towards machine gun nests.
Today parents are being reported for letting their kids travel on well maintained trains through first world countries, with modern communication on tap for the best part of 24 hours a day.
Where on earth will we be in another 100 years?…
That would seem like 100 years of progress to me? Unless you think charging machine guns is the kind of thing we should be encouraging? Since it worked out so well at the Somme and many other places….
“An RBKC spokesperson said: “Safeguarding children is an absolute priority. We take any referral we receive very seriously and we have a statutory responsibility for children under 18 years of age.””
And there’s the problem. We’ve given more power to unaccountable bureaucrats than to the actual parents. And the apparatchiks either lack any common sense and judgement or the ability or courage to use it.
This is all of a piece with Keir’s brave new world. Individual responsibility and judgement count for nothing. Instead, absolutely everything must be regulated by law – and not guidelines or common sense. Good luck with raising national productivity when the law needs to be involved in every fine detail of life. Then add on top the gradual ratcheting down on free speech. And the active encouragement of witch-hunting activities and malicious persecution this case illustrates.
Was Kirstie Allsopp’s judgement correct here ? I don’t know. But she’s better placed to judge than any of us and holds and takes responsibility for it. Do I like here or her politics ? Possibly not. But it shouldn’t matter.
In the school holidays, between junior school and big school, a friend and I bought Red Rover tickets (remember them?) and spent a day traversing London by bus. I was 10.
No doubt my mother was a little anxious but she didn’t show it.
I regularly did that from rhe age of about 9 back in the late 60s.
I cannot believe it but unfortunately then again I can: on reading about Kirstie Allsopp being reported to social services for allowing her son, 15, to travel abroad on the trains.
In the 1960s from aged 14 I would hitch hike usually alone, often to the Lake District, from home in Lancashire. Aged17 (still theoretically a child) , I wanted to see Venice so with my Blacks Good Companion tent and my parents blessing, I hitch hiked there and many places in-between and beyond for 5 weeks in the school Summer holidays spending on average about 25p a day (in today’s money).
These trips and many more subsequent world-wide adventures during my formative years were arguable the most influential experiences in forming who I am. The freely given hospitality and good will shown to me gave me a love and trust in humanity and a belief and confidence in myself.
‘Stranger danger’ is exaggerated and stunts development. Parents need to let go, give space and trust their offspring before the wish to explore and seek adventure is extinguished from our children.
Dr Richard Colman (Retired)
Cowl House, Bransdale N Yorkshire YO62 7JW Tel 01751 432342
When I was 9 I went to school across the other side of the city on bus and tram and returned home the same way ..I often walked the first half to town on the way home to save the 2d fare …that was half a Mars bar….I’m still here
Allowing your kid to take some risks good. Posting it on social media …. a whole different story.
I agree with 2plus2, the person who reported Ms. Allsopp is an idiot.
Beyond that, I have every sympathy for the people in Social Services who had to waste their precious time in dealing with the complaint. We all know from previous experience, that if child is mistreated (especially a photogenic toddler – and yes, I am being a bit cynical here), then Social Services is hung out to dry. “Why were the vital clues ignored or overlooked?”, cry the armchair critics. No mercy is shown to these overworked people.
If we want social workers to show what we would call common sense, then we will have to refrain from jumping down their throats the moment something goes seriously wrong.
Or encourage them to use some common sense? There’s a world of difference between a toddler with multiple long bone fractures and a 15 year old going inter-railing.
Because we rely on computers and are policed by lawyers, we forget the plusses of life (hard to measure in the short term) and focus only on the minuses, which are more easily quantified.
Until we learn how to incorporate the unmeasurable benefits in our calculations, we will be slaves to Mr Risk.
I have a colleague who has run scout camps for many years. She told me that kids now don’t know how to risk assess because we have made the world so safe for them. She said this results in greater harm when they find themselves in situations that require safety skills.
At 17 I took a gap year before university and had a proper “walk about”. Returned home to hit the books 18 months later, travel weary and brimming with confidence. It was truly a life-changing experience and served me well as an adult and parent. Would I be turned in today if I were to allow my 17 year old son or daughter the same freedom?