Out of the blue, I've become a lightning rod in the parenting wars. Mention my story and millions of people not only know about it, they have a very strong opinion about it, and me, and my parenting skills - or utter, shameful lack thereof.

Here's how it happened.

In April I wrote a column for the newspaper I work for, the New York Sun, entitled “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride The Subway Alone”. I explained that my younger son, Izzy, had been begging me to let him try to find his way home on his own from somewhere - anywhere - by subway. Here in New York City we're on public transport all the time. Moreover, despite what you see in the movies, it's safe. Not only is New York not among the 10 most dangerous cities in America, it's not even in the top 100. When it comes to crimes per capita, New York is 136th on the list - almost pathetically civil. Our murder rate is back where it was in 1963.

That's why letting Izzy find his way home alone just seemed like a fun idea. Not dangerous. Not crazy. Not even very hard. My husband agreed.

So on that sunny Sunday, I took the boy to a big, bright Manhattan department store - Bloomingdale's - and left him in ladies' handbags.

Bye-bye!

I didn't leave him defenceless, of course. I gave him a subway map, a transit card and $20 in case of emergencies. I also gave him some change to make a call. But here's the thing I have yet to hear the end of: I did not give him a mobile phone.

It's not just that I think mobile phones turn even grown-ups into babies (always checking in, always asking permission to eat a KitKat before dinner). It's also that while I very much trusted my son to get himself home, I was less sure he'd get the phone there. Who wants to lose a phone?

Anyway, it all turned out fine. One subway ride, one bus ride and an hour or so later, my son was back, fairly levitating with pride. I wrote about his little adventure only because when I told other mothers at the schoolyard about it, they all said the same thing. “You let him do WHAT?” That's when I realised that a lot of parents have different ideas about what is safe and appropriate for kids to do today. I realised it even more the day my column ran. “Hello, is this Lenore Skenazy?” asked a young woman ringing my home that night. She was a producer from The Today Show, America's most-watched morning news programme. Would I be willing to come on the day after tomorrow to talk about my son? Sure! She called back the next morning. Would I be willing to let my son come on, too? Sure! She called back yet again: would I be willing to have a camera crew follow him on to the subway to re-enact his historic trip?

Sure, but - come on! My son had not climbed Mt Fuji in flip-flops. He did not decode his own DNA. He'd simply done what most people my age had done routinely when they were his age: gone somewhere on his own, without a security detail.

Growing up in the suburbs, I'd cycled to the library and walked solo to school. Friends who grew up in the city took the subway to baseball, the bus to ballet. We all played in parks without our parents. No one thought anything of it. But somehow, in just one generation, these normal, unsupervised activities had morphed into daring deeds on a par with filling cougar cavities. Let your child out of your sight? Amid strangers? Before the age of 35?

When my son did it and lived to tell the tale, he not only broke a taboo - it seemed he'd broken a spell. America wanted to hear his story. So on to The Today Show we went. By way of introduction, the hostess turned to the camera and asked, “Is she an enlightened mom, or a really bad one?” - a question that has framed the debate ever since.

The show had paired Izzy and me with a “parenting expert” - a term I have grown to loathe, because this breed seems to exist only to tell us parents what we're doing wrong and why this will warp our kids for ever. The one on the couch next to us said that I could have given my son the exact same experience of independence in a “safer” way - by, for instance, following him, or having him go with a group of friends.

“How is that the ‘exact same experience' if it's different?” I demanded. “Besides, he WAS safe! That's why I let him go, you fear-mongering hypocrite, preaching independence while warning against it! And why do TV shows automatically put you guys on anyway, lecturing us like two-year-olds? And where are YOUR kids, by the way? Hiding under the bed, whimpering for mommy?” Well, truth be told, I didn't get most of that out. I did get out a very cogent “Gee, um...”

But it didn't even matter, because as soon as we left the set, my phone rang (I do allow myself to carry a mobile). It was another TV station, MSNBC. Could I be there in an hour? Sure! Then Fox News called. Could I be there with Izzy that afternoon? MSNBC called back: if I did the show today would I still promise to come back with Izzy to do it again over the weekend, same place, same story?

TV could not get enough of this topic. It made their phones ring. It flooded their in-boxes. They couldn't get enough of Izzy, who stuck to his story: “It was fun.” And they couldn't get enough of me: “America's Worst Mom?” Google me. That's what I became.

I also became, to my shock, the de-facto spearhead of a “movement”. That's all the next wave of media wanted to talk about: in my exalted opinion, had parents really become too overprotective? Did I see a growing backlash against “helicopter parenting?” “Heck yes!” I replied (articulate as ever) as interviewers queried from Hong Kong, Israel, Austria, Malta (Malta! An island! Who's stalking their kids there? Pirates?). TV stations across Canada threw together specials. Radio shows called from across the States. Magazines, blogs, newspapers - even the BBC had me on. Twice! Then, on one of the talk shows here in America, a caller asked why I'd chosen to give my son one memorable afternoon of fun that would probably end up with him sodomised and dead, instead of trying to help him to live a long and happy life. I got off that one, shaking.

Starting my blog, called Free Range Kids (freerangekids.com), made me feel sane again - a feeling that I hope the blog gives other parents like me. I posted my story there, along with my philosophy (as it were): let's give our children the freedom we had. Not that the 1970s and 1980s were so great - just that our parents didn't spend all their time worrying that we were about to be abducted.

The response was just as overwhelming as everything else has been. Tens of thousands of people logged on and tons of them wrote about their own scrappy childhoods. They said they're trying to raise their kids just as “free-range” - except now there's no one outside for them to play with.

Meanwhile, other parents keep butting in: an unwatched child is a tragedy waiting to happen! Those other parents are scared to death. I heard from a mother in Atlanta who won't let her daughter walk outside to the mailbox, and a father in the New York suburbs who won't let his son play in his own driveway. One woman told me she was out on the lawn with her kids, reading, when a neighbor scolded: “Put down that book! Your kids could be snatched right out from under you!” That's how wild the fear is running. And if you want to know the culprit, I'll tell you: satellite TV.

Yes, there are other factors, too: mothers off at work, baby-product companies inventing fears they can allay for a price. But until satellite TV news came along with 24 hours to fill, the story of a child missing in, say, Portugal was not a saga to be followed, day after day, by strangers continents away. Today, it's ratings gold. It's scary, it's heartbreaking. But most of all, it's a “lesson”: If you EVER leave your child alone, the very worst could happen in the blink of an eye and it will be ALL YOUR FAULT.

As with most lessons endlessly repeated (except, apparently, the ones about statistics and probability), this one got internalised. I really think that the only reason I'm not as afraid as some of my friends is that I'm too cheap to pay for cable TV.

So does that make me a “hero,” as enthusiastic notes to Free Range Kids insist? Please. I love the letters that say, “Sanity at last!” And, “I thought I was the only one who felt this way!” And, “Now how do I get my wife to let our daughter walk to school?” But I find it hard to bear the ones assuming my son must be “very brave,” and “mature,” - ditto me - when the fact is, he's no more confident than the other kids he goes to school with. The ones whose mothers won't let them out alone until they're balding. And if I'm so brave, why do I keep “forgetting” to get my kids a skateboard (for the past five years)? I really don't know how to raise children any more self-reliant than anyone else's. I'll bet that “parenting expert” doesn't either.

All I know is that our fears aren't in line with reality any more, and lately a lot of people seem to be realising that. If the first step toward change is realising there's a problem, then here we are, taking the first step.

Provided no one abducts us, I guess we're on our way.

lskenazy@yahoo.com

Lenore Skenazy is a columnist for the New York Sun and founder of freerangekids.com

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