Every few months, Lenore Skenazy’s tale of allowing her nine-year-old son to ride the subways alone rears it head. In fact, few stories about New York City parenting generate as much discussion as this one did.
A few weeks after the story first broke, I defended Skenazy. I grew up in New York City when the subways weren’t as safe as they are now, and I first started riding alone during the Giuliani years. As long as children are taught safety tricks and tips of the trains, there should be no problems.
Today, Beliefet’s Hillary Fields, author of the subway ethics posts we’ve discussed lately, chimed in on the topic. In theory, she says, she supports Skenazy and believes that children — especially those growing up in urban environments — need to foster their independence. In practice, though, her answer is different:
However. I also live in NYC. And I take the subway. As you’ll have seen from my prior posts on the subject, my commute is not exactly my favorite part of my day. And my faith in my fellow man is at a lowwww ebb whenever I head underground. I tend to see everyone around me as a perv, a stalker, and a loony. As a teen riding on the train to school, I can’t tell you the number of times I had my bum grabbed or saw some guy flashing his privates (or worse). Maybe I’m being a wuss, but I really could have done without those ‘learning experiences.’ So, stats or no stats, I don’t think I’d have done what this mum did.
Now, Hillary was a teen in the subways during a different era in New York City history. Today’s teens don’t suffer the same fears or insecurities underground that those of us who grew up in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s did. The subways are more crowded and better patrolled than they used to be. Still, groping is a very big problem.
Maybe the answer to this underground ethical quandary is a sexist one. Maybe younger boys can ride the subways alone before young girls can. Maybe girls need to be taught a different set of subway safety and self-defense skills than boys do. I’m not a parent; I don’t know.
In the end, I still haven’t changed my mind since last April. The subway is an integral part of life in New York, and parents should teach their children how to ride the rails alone as soon as the parents feel their children can handle it. I was probably around 11 or 12 when I first rode the subway alone. It turned out to be empowering and ultimately safe.
7 comments
I was most recently in New York for just a couple weeks in 2007, but it was my impression that the subways were among the safer places to be, at least on the busier sections, during the day (in New York, “the day” seems like pretty much anytime except like 12-5am). I think you’d run into problems the later and less crowded it gets, but if they’re just part of the crowd it’s not too likely for anything really bad to happen.
Take that for what you will, coming from a visitor with no kids. :p
You do what you have to do. If the youngster has to go to school, and you can’t take him or her, then maybe a solo subway trip is the best option. It’s better than giving Sonny the keys to the car.
Here in Frisco young children ride alone in the subway all the time. Yes, it’s not NYC and all that. But anyone who lives here can tell you that we have far more than our share of whackos of EVERY variety. And they love to ride the trains. Here, they’re nurtured. The whackos, I mean, not the young subway riders. Something to thrill the tourists, I guess.
I’ve been riding alone regularly since 14 and occasionally before then, and I’d be willing to bet good money that the subway is actually as safe as or even safer than walking outside, in terms of number of crimes per amount of people. In general, there are always plenty of other people around, even late at night, and that contributes to a lot. I’d much rather take the subway home at 2 a.m. than walk.
Strange as it may seem, 10 year old girl may be better off on the subway than a 14 year old girl. The 10 year old is a bit young to be getting ogled and otherwise harassed. Then they go through puberty and that becomes a problem.
One solution would be pepper spray.
Interestingly, I’ve noticed that subway riders overall skew somewhat male (and this varies by time of day: I saw a nice breakdown of the data somewhere), while bus riders in NYC are predominantly female. I suspect that the safety from perverts aspect is definitely a part of it, and if you’re male you just have no idea, while if you’re female you may well have stories wherein someone ejaculated on your shoe.
It could just be work patterns, rather than safety. Maybe the kind of jobs dominated by men, like office and factory work, are more accessible by subway, whereas the jobs dominated by women, like domestic service, are more diffuse throughout the city and more amenable to buses.