A Georgia mother has been arrested for letting her 10-year-old child walk into the city. What is this about 'safetyism'?
A Georgia woman was arrested late last month after her 10-year-old child walked alone to her rural town, sparking debate over whether fears for children's safety are overblown.
According to the warrant, seen by CBC News, Brittany Patterson, 41, of Mineral Bluff, Ga., was arrested on Oct. 30 and was charged with one count of disorderly conduct.
It says he “willfully and willfully endangered the physical safety of his young, 10-year-old son, in willful disregard of grave and unjustifiable danger,” it said.
According to GoFundMe, her son walked less than a mile from their home to the town of Mineral Bluff – population 370 – before a concerned citizen reported him. The road he was walking on didn't have a road, so he walked on the shoulder.
The GoFundMe adds that Patterson was arrested in front of his children, and that his son feels guilty. The fundraiser was presented by Parents USA, which bills itself as a parents' rights group and supports its cause.
In an interview with NBC News posted on Wednesday, Patterson explained that she was taking her oldest child to the city for a doctor's appointment, and her youngest son Soren did not want to come. He told the Libertarian Reason magazine that he thought Soren was outside playing on the 16 acres he shared with his father, or maybe he was at his mother's house, two minutes away.
“The concept here is relaxed,” he told Reason.
So he left, and later he got a call from the police that Soren had gone to town. He was on his way home when the woman called the police, Patterson wrote to Business Insider.
Police drove Soren home, he told NBC, and police returned later that night to arrest him.
“They asked me to put my hands behind my back and all that stuff and see what happened,” Patterson told NBC.
“It's not right that I didn't do anything.”
The child safety debate
Patterson's case has affected the parenting community, where children's safety and independence are discussed.
“Let that sink in. A child walking alone in their neighborhood is treated like a disaster,” wrote parenting news website Motherly.
Running free, taking chances and even getting hurt are essential to healthy child development, says the Canadian Pediatric Society. New research says engaging in risky outdoor behaviors with peers is key to children's mental, physical and social health.
In Georgia, children under the age of eight should not be left alone, according to the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services' child guidance guidelines. Children between nine and 12 can be left alone for short periods of time, “depending on the level of maturity.”
In Canada, the issue is a gray area. Many states and territories do not set a minimum age, but social services often advise that no child under 12 be left at home unsupervised, according to a 2021 study.
Similar cases have made recent headlines. In Canada, for example, Winnipeg mother Jacqui Kendrick was investigated in 2016 by Child and Family Services due to a complaint about her children playing unsupervised in their yard.
In 2020, a single mother was arrested in Georgia after leaving her 14-year-old daughter to care for her siblings while daycare and schools were closed due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Melissa Shields Henderson was called to work, and while she was gone, her four-year-old child went next door to play with a friend. The charges were dropped after three years.
And in 2015, a BC court ruled that a Terrace mother could no longer leave her nine-year-old son home alone after school. He argued in court that his son is mature enough to be supervised between 3 pm and 5 pm, so the decision should be left to the parents.
Charges will be dropped if he signs the security plan: attorney
In the Georgia case, Patterson told Business Insider that a case manager from the Division of Family and Children Services allegedly asked her to sign a child safety plan on Nov. 5, but she refused.
CBC News has seen a copy of the proposed safety plan, which was provided in an email by her attorney, David DeLugas, who founded ParentsUSA, an organization that supports her fundraiser.
The plan includes requirements for assigning a “safe person” to be an informed participant and guardian when he leaves the home without the children, as well as downloading a location-tracking app to Soren's phone.
DeLugas told CBC News via email that an assistant district attorney told him Patterson's charges would be dropped if he signed the plan, and he shared his reaction.
“Do you say every time a child says, 'Mom, I'm going to play with my friends,' and they go, 'Okay, come home for dinner!' is that somehow criminal?
“Does it really protect the children if we lock up their mother?”
A public health consultant says today's parents face unique challenges that can impact their mental health. Some parents from older generations say that raising children has always been, and always will be, a struggle. Can we really say which generation has had the worst?
Modern concerns
For those who grew up as latchkey kids – allowing themselves two hours of unsupervised chocolate milk and cartoons until their parents got home from work – the modern anxiety about leaving children alone may seem paradoxical.
In parenting literature, the term “safetyism” has been used to describe the modern culture of overprotecting children by using methods such as soft, low-lying play areas and frequent walks, also known as “helicopter parenting.”
Previous generations of children enjoyed more freedom even though crime rates were high at the time, noted psychologist Simon Sherry in a 2023 article from Dalhousie University. But today's parents grew up in a time of unknown danger and television shows like that America's Most Wantedsaid Sherry.
“It is no wonder that parents have remained fearful and protective,” he wrote.
And while there have been horrific cases of child abandonment and neglect — such as an Ohio mother who left her toddler alone for 10 days on vacation and is now being charged with his death — Brittany Patterson of Georgia says what happened to her son was far from trivial.
“We are liberal parents who want the same kind of life for our children,” he wrote in a first-person article for Business Insider.
“They're allowed to go back into the woods and dig and build forts. They ride their dirt bikes or go next door, where there's a nice flat area to play basketball.”
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