Poll results: Parents wary of 6th graders alone on subway

One mom explains why she’s at odds with her independent 6th grader

One of the more vexing quandaries of urban parenting involves the inevitable question of how much independence children should have – and when they are ready to travel alone by bus or subway.

A menu of anxieties exists about why they should not: gangs, disasters, terrorist threats. Then there’s the general savvy and maturity required to negotiate this city of nine million.

Equally compelling are the practical arguments about why they should: Many working parents simply cannot manage it all and need their children to get around by themselves at a certain age.

Through it all comes the unwavering, consistent plea from my 11-year-old sixth grader: “ Everyone else in my school travels by themselves.’’

Except, they don’t.

An Insideschools poll answered by some 450 parents found that 66 percent of adults do not believe it’s safe for a sixth grader to travel alone to school by subway; only 35 percent feel that it’s fine. Those numbers basically flipped when adults considered 6th graders traveling alone by bus: 61 percent felt it was fine for them to travel by bus alone, while 39 percent said no. (For more information see the parent poll results.)

Kids’ opinion on subway travel, on the other hand, was more evenly divided. Of the 60 students who took the poll, about half (48 percent) thought it was okay for 6th graders to travel alone by subway; 52 percent thought it was not. Bus travel was considered safer: 73 percent thought it was safe to travel alone by bus; 27 percent said it was not. (For more information see the student poll results.)

Since my oldest child entered middle school this fall, I have often wondered if I’m being overprotective and unreasonable (probably because my son constantly tells me that I am). Still, my husband and I agree that travel without an adult is okay only as long as he’s with a few other classmates – until he gets a little taller and a little more street smart. Exceptions can be made on a case-by-case basis.

After talking to lots of other parents, school officials, and middle schoolers, my only conclusion is that developing the right answer for your family is really an individual process, based on necessity, trust and a lot of caveats. The size of your child, the amount of distance he or she must travel and the number of bus and/or subway switches all come into play.

Trust has to be earned; it means your child must prove he or she can be in agreed-upon locations and remember to call, send a text-message from a cell phone, or find another way of notifying you upon arrival at destinations other than school.

Many parents don’t make a big deal out of all this. They feel confident in their children’s ability to travel alone to and from school from the time they enter middle school, or even earlier. Regardless, going alone rarely happens without some strong parental directives: No headphones on the subway , no crossing streets at a red light, an idea of how to react if a train is stalled or re-routed, instructions on how to read bus and subway maps and deal with suspicious strangers.

I’m no longer surprised when I hear how families have worked out elaborate solutions and justifications; the question of freedom and independence is really a work in progress for parents of young adolescents, with no right or wrong answer.

I was, however, taken aback on a recent night when I found myself riding the subway home from Times Square at 8 p.m. with my 11-year-old and another student the same age in his after school music program.

“Are you alone?’’ I asked him.

He smiled and said he’s been riding the subway by himself all year. He stepped off after a few stops and waved.

I heard about it the rest of the way home.

Liz Willen, May 1, 2007. A former education reporter for New York Newsday, Willen is the assistant director of the Hechinger Institute on Education and the Media at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is the mother of boys in 4th and 6th grades.

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