Off The Rails | A Short Film On Parenting in the Age of Fear | Dad Saves America

0:00 (light music) - I'm not immune to, (laughing) I'm not immune to worry. I'm a worrier and I'm not immune to fear. But somehow, I still let my kids do things. We have two sons.

0:30 Our older son is Maury and then two years later, we had Izzy. So, Izzy was probably about eight when he started asking me and my husband, could he take the subway alone ever? What did we think? And we didn't think about it much at all, but the questions escalated and finally, when he was nine, my husband and I turned to each other and said, "Well, if he feels he's ready to take the subway alone, let's think about whether that makes sense," and we decided it did.

0:53 Which, I don't know if it sounded more like an adventure or adulthood, but somehow, that was something that meant a lot to him. (light music) So, the big day came, I took him to Bloomingdale's. I went one way, he went the other way, and thus began the adventure.

1:38 So, I leave Izzy and there's the subway. And you walk down the steps into the subway station and then there's turnstiles, and you have to take out your MetroCard, swipe it through, and then the turnstile opens up and you are on the platform. But this is a station where there are six different lines and actually 12 if you consider that they're uptown and downtown, so maybe it is a little confusing.

2:10 So, he was on one of the platforms and he wasn't sure he was on the right place, so he asked some guy, random person, "Is this the downtown number six train?" And the man said, "No," and I guess he pointed where Izzy should go and, so you have to go up and over and down, and there are different tunnels leading to different places, but they're well-lit. He found his way to the downtown subway line, and he's waiting for the train.

2:38 The trains are kinda slow on Sunday, but one obviously came eventually. (train screeching) (train beeping) Somehow, he got on the train, it goes one, two, three, four stations. (light music) Gets off at the correct place, which is 33rd Street. - [Train Announcer] Stand clear of the closing doors please.

3:12 - And then he climbs back up to the sunlight again (laughing) and he goes and he waits for a bus that goes across town on 34th Street, the "Miracle on 34th Street" street and comes to our apartment. So, Izzy gets home, he's happy, I'm happy. It was just a sort of mini milestone. This was a sense of now the world is mine.

3:43 He was pretty proud. It was like a month and a half later and I was sitting at my desk at "The New York Sun," and I didn't have an idea for a column. And I asked my editor, I give her a list of ideas and one of 'em is like, maybe I should write about Izzy taking the subway by himself. My editor, who is a young woman without kids, said, "Oh yeah, it sounds like a nice local story."

4:05 So, I wrote it and it was titled as "Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone." And two days after this runs in the paper, I'm on the "Today" show, MSNBC, Fox News, and NPR being asked, why did I do this? - So, is she an enlightened mom or a really bad one? - Dubbed the world's worst mom. - World's worst mom. - [Man] The world's worst mom. - [Dr. Phil] Would you let a nine-year-old take the subway alone?

4:33 - Well, our next guest says yes. - But for example, parents, many parents don't want their child to walk to school alone, to go on the bus alone, even to play outside alone. - We're like brainwashed because of all the stories we hear that it isn't safe, but those are the exceptions. That's why they make it to the news. The killer question that I didn't realize would haunt me for the next 10 years in almost every interview is, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was fine, it was fine, but how would you have felt if he never came home?"

5:05 And this was a question that was asked with me having no good answer (laughing) until I finally realized why. The reason I didn't have a good answer is 'cause it wasn't a question. Because everybody knows exactly how I would feel if he never came home, so you're just trying to make me feel it. And the fact that it's hypothetical almost doesn't matter, because now, the story is back to the favorite story of the media, which is mom took her eyes off the kid and the kid didn't live.

5:38 (electronic music) Someone wrote to my blog and said, "Lenore, did you watch 'Law & Order' last night?" I was like, "No." She said, "Go watch it." So, I download the "Law & Order" episode and (laughing) you would not believe it. The kid that they cast to be this nine-year-old who says to his mom, "Mom, can I take the subway by myself?" is so, looks so much like Izzy that when Izzy was walking by and I'm like, "Hey, look at this kid," he's like, "Oh my god."

6:07 - I can't believe I'm letting you go to school on your own. - Everybody else in fourth grade goes to school on their own. - So, that was kind of funny and possibly even flattering, but was really a disturbing episode because not only is he murdered, but in the episode, they take out this body of a kid who looks like my kid who's now pale and in a morgue and covered with cigarette burns, and I didn't even want Izzy to see that.

6:35 The fact that it looked so much like my kid was awful. It's like wish fulfillment for the society that wants to teach me a lesson. You let your kid take the subway, you're gonna regret it, watch. (light music) A perfectly safe society is also a perfectly frozen society. And that's not America. America is cool because think of who it's populated by. All these people took risks to come here. They left their country, they left their language, they left their families and came to the New World, and we've been really successful because we're a country filled with these brave risk-takers and now we're saying, no more risk.

7:17 Well, that means no more America. (light music) I grew up with a mom who quit her job to be a stay-at-home mom with me and my sister, so all her efforts and all her love and all her concern was directed exactly to us. And that's been great. I mean, she let me do so many wonderful things, but one of the things she let me do when I was five was walk to school by myself. So, what changed from my mom, who only wanted us to be safe and happy but was willing to let us go, to now, when you can't do that?

7:56 Nowadays, if you're not thinking about the scariest, saddest stories before you decide to let your kids do something, it's almost like you've done it wrong. Look at the FBI statistics. Crime has been higher in every decade 'til now. If you were walking to school in the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, or '00s, you were in more danger than the kids who'd be walking to school today. So, if you're a parent and your kid says, "I'm ready to do this," or you think they're ready to do this and you don't let them do it, what you're telling them is, "I don't believe in you."

8:33 It is loving to let your child have some experiences in the world that aren't gonna be perfect, because you're not there to make them perfect. And to think that your kids only can have the safe part and not some of the confusing, upsetting parts, mixed in in this whole mash of life, you're saying, "You don't deserve life. All you deserve is a bubble." To me, love means recognizing that there's a whole person there, not just a precious object, and the person deserves to grow.

9:08 (light music)