Abby Sunderland is safe again, except from media hounding and a sea of critics.
"It seems everybody is eager to pounce on my story now that something bad has happened," the 16-year-old California sailor blogged a few days ago. "The truth is, I was in a storm and you don't sail through the Indian Ocean without getting in at least one storm."
After largely ignoring Abby's story, I'm guilty of pouncing, but not in the way most others are. I'm now a fan.
On June 10, Sunderland was alone in the Indian Ocean when a wave broke the mast of her boat. Satellite phone communication was lost. She set off emergency beacons and waited for two days -- two days -- for emergency crews to reach her.
I want to break out laughing when I think about this, not to shame her parents for putting their precious child in peril, but to honor the fact that Abby, focused, fearless and fine, is not much of a child at all. At least not like most children I know.
Am I suggesting that we send all of our kids out to sea? Are you nuts?
I'm saying that first, we get them to make their beds, and second, we use Abby's tale to push ourselves into safe middle ground, somewhere between Abby and chronic over-parenting. Speaking of the latter, that, too, was a big story this week, albeit largely ignored.
A new study from the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Transition to Adulthood (yep, "transition to adulthood") says that people ages 20 to 34 are stretching out childhood in impressive fashion. They are taking longer to finish college, find careers, marry, have children (if they have children at all), and become financially independent.
The median age for marriage, one common indicator of being a grown-up, is 27 for men, and 26 for women. In 1980, it was 23. Frankly, I see no harm in most of these delays. We're living a lot longer now, so really, what's the hurry?
But as parents, teachers and others who love kids, we do need to help them grow up at some point, and the best way to do that is to give them opportunities to experience that electric sensation called independence.
It's tricky, to be sure. When is a child old enough to cross the street alone? Attend sleep-overs? Stay home alone? Bike to a friend's house? Baby-sit other people's children? Sail solo around Cape Horn?
Wouldn't we love a universal checklist!? But it doesn't exist. Parenting is the most subjective game on earth, so a better question to ask is:
Which kid are we talking about?
Even children reared under the same roof rarely scale the rungs of adulthood in anything resembling unity. Some kids ride a bike at 3, others at 8 or 10. Some read before kindergarten; for others, the light doesn't go on until third grade or beyond.
I just heard about a 15-year-old Twin Cities boy heading to Harvard in the fall. While his won't be a test of physical endurance, it certainly will be the social and intellectual equivalent of sailing the high seas.
Some high school juniors are attending military boot camp as their peers sleep the summer away, waking up to ask Mom or Dad for money to buy a Slushee.
Again, which kid are we talking about?
I believe that much of our modern reluctance to shoo kids out the door is perpetuated by my own media, playing up exceedingly rare horror tales such as stranger abductions and school shootings. Most American kids today have never been safer, yet our instinct is to hold them back.
We're hardly a generation of parents in danger of sending more of our children out to sea in little boats. We're more in danger of never letting them cross the street alone, or ride their bike to the park.
I love outliers like Abby, who remind me of who I never was, and never will be. But she's given me the push I need to rock the boat a little bit, and ask my own kids:
If you weren't afraid, what would you really like to do?
Gail Rosenblum • 612-673-7350 • gail.rosenblum@startribune.com
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