A Time to Relinquish Child Abduction Nightmares?

(photo courtesy of ifc.com)

“Are parents who allow children to walk or bike to school by themselves being irresponsible?” is the question posed by today’s New York Times – following a provocative story by Jan Hoffman that asks whether parental fears of child abduction have gone too far. The writer cites the case of Etan Patz, a six-year-old boy never seen again after walking to catch a school bus in his Manhattan neighborhood more than 30 years ago.

Daphne was three years old when Etan Patz disappeared. I could imagine the pain his parents felt, holding my daughter’s hand as we walked to brunch at the Soho Charcuterie -- not far from where he had lived. We saw images of an adorable Etan Patz on posters plastered to lampposts, with pleas for information.

We fear losing those whom we hold most dear. Knowing it’s our duty to protect our children, regardless of age, we imagine all the bad things that could befall them, including abduction. I confess that at different stages of Daphne’s development, headline abductions and other crimes – both relatively recent and in the distant past – have fueled my anxiety of losing my only child.

We lived on the block of my daughter’s elementary school. So I allowed Daphne to walk to kindergarten, but the deal was that she had to walk with Sarah Pildis, her five-year-old neighbor friend and neighbor. The two of them became part of a caravan of children and parents heading for school.

Day camp was another story. The bus stopped directly in front of our home. Still I was convinced that unless I sat in front of the house in my green, webbed beach chair to watch her come off the bus, some psychopath might grab her.

The year Daphne entered third grade, I took a full time public relations job, and knew I would not be available to meet her day camp bus the following summer. Her dad and I decided to send her to a 7-week overnight camp, alleviating my anxiety.

Daphne loved camp. If I needed any further justification, the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald provided it shortly after her return to school that year. Little Sarah Pryor, the same age as Daphne, disappeared while walking not far from her parents’ home in Wayland, Massachusetts. Years later a fragment of Sarah’s skull was found nearby in the woods.

The disappearance of Joan Webster, a student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, haunted me for years. According to accounts in the Globe and Herald, Joan was returning from Thanksgiving vacation with her family in New Jersey in 1985, got off the plane at Logan Airport, and was never seen again -- until her remains were discovered in wooded Hamilton, Massachusetts nearly nine years later.

Though Daphne was just a fourth grader when Joan disappeared, the memory was etched in my brain, becoming especially vivid during my daughter’s years at Barnard. Depending on my own finances, Daphne took the Peter Pan bus or Amtrak between Boston and New York. But I always gave her cab fare, knowing it would after dark by the time she arrived in Manhattan.

Daphne resists motherly, but perhaps neurotic expressions of love and concern. Given her own lean finances in those years, I can understand her wanting to divert at least a portion of the cab fare. Yet she knew it made me unhappy when she reported taking the subway back to the dorm – despite being accompanied by a few other girls.

In the interest of disclosure, I should say I’m fascinated by crime, and even did a stint covering murder trials for United Press International. Kitty Genovese, a young bar manager, was raped and stabbed repeatedly as she walked from her car to her apartment on Austin Street in Kew Gardens. What was so horrifying about Kitty's murder was that neighbors reportedly heard her screams and failed to call the police until it was too late.

Though I was fourteen years old when the crime occurred, it wasn’t until I became a mom that the attack on Kitty became larger than life. For a brief period in 2002, Daphne had an apartment off Austin Street in neighboring Forest Hills. My daughter seemed so happy with her spacious studio with hardwood floors and elegant arches in a pre-World War II building that I didn’t have the heart to raise the subject about what happened to Kitty.

There comes a time in your child’s life when you still worry. But you know it’s time to keep your fantasies to yourself.

What fantasies do you have that prevent you from letting your children become more independent?

As an adult, do you recall your own parents’ fantasies/warnings?

Please use the comments section to share them.