This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, November 23rd,

2023. I'm Caleb Brown. It's become increasingly difficult for many

parents to deliver to their kids the kinds of independence that they

enjoyed when they were kids. Why is that? Andrea Keith is executive director of

Let Grow. We discussed independence for young people and the challenges to fully embracing it.

I live in a cul-de-sac in a residential neighborhood, non-H-O-A, thank you very much.

Mm-hmm. But it's not really close to downtown. And there are huge gaps

between the sidewalks in our lovely little neighborhood where my kids can go out and play and with their friends and hang out

and downtown.

It's not that far away.

It's just the ability for them to get from one place to another is it's difficult and

they'd have to walk in ditches and there's no way to transition there's not it's not a really good path for them to get downtown easily and safely.

But I desperately want my children to be able to engage outside of our home in civil society alone.

Absolutely.

It's important.

And it's difficult and I feel like, and maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm overly sensitive, it feels like that is not viewed as an important thing. And maybe it was never viewed as an important thing and maybe it was never viewed as an important

thing but we we nonetheless had it and now that we the people like me say this is an important thing, it feels like people aren't really

viewing that as a really important tool for young people to have of like engaging with the broader society without parental

imposition. I think that the roaming and the in the ability to go places is something that goes back to when you either lived

in a city where everything was accessible, or you lived in, started moving into, you know, rural areas

where it was a little farther away, but it was still a community and there was the store and people knew each other.

Part of what I think has happened that maybe has been a problem to bring the kind of freedom to kids now has to do with

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