The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Case for Lucky Parenting?

I ‘ve enjoyed every word of the helicopter parents versus adventure-parents conversation, and while I am probably just echoing Liza’s great post of this morning, I’ll say that there’s a microversion of the heli-debate that isn’t about class or income or education. It goes like this: Just about every time my kids have made some huge developmental leap, it’s happened around their cousins or grandparents. Like the time I left my then-baby with my dad for a few hours while I ran to a doctor's’appointment. After about 45 minutes I dutifully called home to see how it was all going.

Me: How’s Coby?

My Dad: Oh he’s climbing up and down the stairs.

Me [flipping out]: He doesn’t know how to climb up and down the stairs

My Dad: He does now.

Like Emily B, I’ve been hugely influenced by Blessings of a Skinned Knee. It doesn’t incline me toward sending my kids out to roam the local creeks unescorted. But I am constantly aware that my boys really do have better adventures when I am waaaay out of range. That said, this Coby-stairs story is funny only because he didn't fall on his head and injure himself. Which makes me wonder whether the over-/underparenting calculus just comes down to blind luck.