As a grade schooler in the ‘50s, I took a couple of trips to San Francisco and Portland when he led his commercial art students there on extended field trips. Despite my provincial upbringing in a small southern Oregon town (where my friends and I would take our .22’s on a Saturday to prowl the surrounding hillsides), Dad frequently left me to roam the cities alone while he and his class were touring some advertising agency. Today, I suppose, he’d be hauled in by CPS. There were never any horror stories.
I reflected on those days after hearing about this Web site .
Columnist Rosa Brooks will have more to say on Friday’s Opinion page, but the theme has to do with whether we are smothering our kids these days.