"If you're sending your kid out to trick or treat for Halloween this year, the list of suggested safety measures is probably not quite as long as what to do when locking the nuclear device onto the submarine, but it's close.
Here's my favorite tip from a suburban paper this year: "Before bobbing for apples—a favorite Halloween game—reduce the risk of bacteria by thoroughly rinsing the apples under cool running water. As an added precaution, use a produce brush to remove surface dirt."
That's right.
Wash the apple in water, scrub it within an inch of becoming applesauce, and then place it in yet more water.
But that's how we approach childhood today: nothing is safe enough.
Wash the apple in water, scrub it within an inch of becoming applesauce, and then place it in yet more water.
But that's how we approach childhood today: nothing is safe enough.
As New York University Stern School of Business Professor Jonathan Haidt and I argue in "The Fragile Generation," our cover story for the December 2017 issue of Reason magazine:
Read on!Beginning in the 1980s, American childhood changed. For a variety of reasons—including shifts in parenting norms, new academic expectations, increased regulation, technological advances, and especially a heightened fear of abduction (missing kids on milk cartons made it feel as if this exceedingly rare crime was rampant)—children largely lost the experience of having large swaths of unsupervised time to play, explore, and resolve conflicts on their own. This has left them more fragile, more easily offended, and more reliant on others. They have been taught to seek authority figures to solve their problems and shield them from discomfort, a condition sociologists call "moral dependency."
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