The XX Factor: What women really think.

In Defense of Regular Old Public Day School

E.J., Bonnie, let me be the voice of dissent. What a teen is missing when he or she boards is the joy of belonging to a community with deep roots. I lived in the same small, suburban town of 6,000 residents for my first 18 years, and even though I was quite ready to leave at age 18, I found great pleasure and solace in our little village. I loved being part of the town sports teams with girls I had known since I was five; I loved biking to my friends' houses and being welcomed by their parents, who knew my parents, who all attended town hall meetings together; I loved sneaking through the woods at night to clandestine keg parties, knowing that ultimately there was little danger in our experimenting.

Yes, Dayo, boarding school may let teens have deeper relationships with teachers, but actually when kids go to boarding school and college, they end up interacting exclusively with their peers much more than they do when they are at home or in the workplace. E.J., I think it's a little histrionic to ask whether or not it's "healthy" for anyone to live at home while they're minors. I was a reasonably mature, well-adjusted teen, and I know that I wasn't ready to leave home before college. I have friends who discovered cocaine for the first time at their tony New England boarding schools, and because there was no adult checking in on them and only them, they really drifted into some dangerously unfettered behavior.  I guess what I'm saying is that when teens are sent away and don't rise to the occasion as Bonnie's daughter did, it could do more harm than good.