“Play is the work of the child,” wrote Maria Montessori, pushing back against the tendency of adults to trivialize the child’s constant quest for movement and exploration. “It is work he must do in order to grow up.”
Tell that to New York City.
A few weeks ago, we received a rare spring Sunday amid a harsh and brutal February. After Mass, my son — a squirmy, active 2½-year-old — my husband and friends walked to the Pier 26 playground along the Hudson River to let Zev run around after he exhibited extraordinary skill at sitting still in church.
Signs declared the padlocked playground was closed due to icy conditions.
The remaining snow on the ground was quickly melting. It was 45 degrees.
And I have the unfortunate quality of being a Texan who doesn’t like to be told what to do, so I hiked up my skirt, took off my shoes and scaled the fence. My friend boosted my son across the fence before following suit.
Then, the most beautiful thing happened: Other parents and kids saw how much fun we were having and we offered to help get their kids over the fence, too.
Naturally, such a good thing cannot last in modern-day New York: I came whooshing down the slide in my fancy church dress to be greeted by authorities demanding my ID and threatening to fine me.
I argued for a while, pointing to the fact that it’s 45 degrees and there’s no ice on the playground and suggesting that maybe, just maybe, children deserve just a morsel of freedom.
Then they started threatening arrest.
One complicating factor is that the playground is managed by a trust set up as a public benefit corporation, governed by a board of directors appointed by the governor, mayor and borough president. The funding is a mix of private and public.
They’re legally within their rights to decide what liability they wish to assume.
But this incident — as well as the COVID-era padlocking of public playgrounds by city officials for a virus that was neither especially deadly to children nor easily spread outdoors — is a good reminder of why this city is hemorrhaging its child population.
Since 2020, NYC’s 5-and-under population has fallen 18%, and it isn’t shocking why: High cost of living, a culture intolerant toward children, and extreme risk aversion have led to an untenable situation for parents.
If the first half of the 20th century was termed “the golden age of child play,” the first quarter of the 21st feels like a death rattle.
The mid-’80s brought milk carton kids. Amber Alerts, messages about missing or abducted children in suspected danger sent out via cable news, radio and text message, were invented a decade later.
In the 2000s, certain prosecutors started cracking down on child truancy.
In the 2020s, that icon of American ingenuity — the McDonald’s PlayPlace — is being replaced by screens. Glorious plastic kingdoms torn down across America!
The culture shifted from one of widespread permissiveness to one of extreme scrutiny and worry.
And nothing was exempt from this parenting culture shift, not even the playgrounds.
Since 1981, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has published the “Public Playground Safety Handbook,” which contains such dictates as “bare metal slides, platforms, and steps should be shaded or located out of direct sun.”
These federal playground guidelines are used as evidence in court. Take the kindergartener in New Jersey who, in 2014, got injured on a slide that was five degrees steeper than the federal 30-degree guideline; her family won a $170,000 settlement.
In New York City, an East Harlem dad scored $75,000 from his kid’s fractured forearm after she fell off a spinning wheel.
Perhaps most ridiculous was a 2010 scandal over “The Mountain,” a metal climbing structure in Union Square Park, which the Department of Parks and Recreation cordoned off, claiming it got too hot in the summer.
This prompted a bill in the Legislature that would’ve required temperature measurements of play structures during summer months.
Of course, some spaces were too risky. The emphasis on child safety in the 20th century led to a two-thirds decline in childhood deaths from accidents between 1900 and 2000.
But near the start of the 21st century, the culture embraced a new goal: Totally eradicating any risk from childhood.
As Maria Montessori recognized 100 years ago, we lose something important when we crack down on kids’ ability to play — and parents’ ability to decide for themselves what conditions their kids can handle.
“Since it is through movement that the will realizes itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into act,” wrote Montessori.
I’m happy to assist. The only question is whether modern-day New York City will let me.
Liz Wolfe is an associate editor at Reason magazine. Adapted from Reason.
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