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The Utah “free-range parenting” law, which went into effect this month, states that it doesn’t constitute neglect if parents allow their children to do activities such as walking to school, riding their bikes or playing on a playground without adult supervision, provided that the children are “of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm.” It also says leaving a child 6 years old or older alone in a car temporarily does not constitute neglect. 

Arkansas State Senator Alan Clark authored a similar bill last year but hit a wall in the lower house because of concerns it could endanger children. He is optimistic that Utah’s law will show that that isn’t the case. “It’s always the fear factor…but people are beginning to see we have too much fear,” he said. Support cuts across party lines. New York Assemblyman Phil Steck is pushing similar legislation. “When I was a child, you let your dogs and your children out after breakfast and…they had to be home for dinner. I felt I gained a lot more from just playing on the street than my children did from being in organized sports activities,” he said. Such practices had been the norm for decades, but parental neglect laws were strengthened starting the 1980s amid growing concerns of child abduction and abuse, symbolized by the use of milk cartons to profile missing children. 

The issue recently has led to episodes of parents being charged with criminal neglect for allowing their children to play outdoors on their own. In one highly publicized case, a Maryland couple, Danielle and Leonard Meitiv, were investigated by state child protective services in 2014 for letting their children, ages 10 and 6, walk home from their local park. Utah Senator Lincoln Fillmore said such overzealousness does not benefit anyone. “As a society, we’ve kind of erred as our pendulum has swung for children’s safety a little bit too much to the side of helicopter parenting, right? We want kids to be able to learn how to navigate the world so when they’re adults they’re fully prepared to handle things on their own,” he told a reporter after the law was passed.