'Latchkey Kids': What's Different About Leaving Children Home ...

Growing up in the suburbs of Madison, Wisconsin in the mid-1970s, Julie Lythcott-Haims didn't know she was a latchkey kid. All she knew was that mom and dad both worked, so it was up to her to come home from school, let herself in, make a snack and get started on homework before running out to play with the neighborhood kids.

"I don't recall ever feeling neglected," says Lythcott-Haims. "I felt trusted, competent, it was very normal."

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Lythcott-Haims sees great psychological value in the freedom she was afforded as a latchkey child of the 1970s, especially compared with what she views as the hyper-controlled and over-monitored existence of kids today. Her book, "How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success," is a rebuke of this overinvolved parenting style — prevalent today in upper-middle-class families — that she says produces young adults who can't think or act for themselves.

"I loved my free childhood," says Lythcott-Haims, who witnessed the ill-effects of overparenting as dean of freshman at Stanford University. "I loved the fact that my parents weren't involved in the minutia of every playdate, that they didn't feel they had to take me everywhere and stand on the sidelines of my life."

In contrast, Lythcott-Haims says, many of the students she met at Stanford were brilliant on paper — sky high grades and test scores, endless lists of activities — "But they couldn't think for themselves. They couldn't solve a simple problem without checking in with a parent. They couldn't make a choice."

Lenore Skenazy didn't grow up as a latchkey kid, but is a vocal advocate for the type of unsupervised, unstructured time that kids enjoyed 30 to 40 years ago. Her organization (or movement, some say) is called Free-Range Kids and her mission is to combat what she terms as the "hysteria" among parents that their children are constantly in danger and should never be left alone.

"When my mom let me walk to school by myself, she couldn't name ten children who had been kidnapped by strangers the way all of us can today," says Skenazy, "and therefore she wasn't burdened with the idea that what she was doing was irrational bordering on dangerous letting me have any unsupervised time."

Both Skenazy and Lythcott-Haims see overparenting as the enemy, not latchkey kids. They cite studies linking intrusive parenting with stunted psychological development, particularly in the area of "self-efficacy," the feeling that you have control over your life and that your actions lead to outcomes. Lacking that sense of control leads to anxiety and depression, conditions that are on the rise among young adults.

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