The Parental Safetyism Arms Race

From sleepovers, to camp, to splash pads, there is always something new for parents to fear (and ban) if they want to be safety-conscious.

Photo by Chiara F on Unsplash

As parents and non-parents alike criticize rampant “safetyism” taking over Parent World and making it impossible for kids to live normal lives, one particular controversy comes up time and time again: sleepovers. Specifically, whether or not they should be allowed. The danger referenced is mostly sexual assault (usually from a sibling, or an adult relative living in the house.) But sometimes, the dangers are less severe, like the fear that your child could be exposed to porn or even just media that isn’t age appropriate.

Some people say that only having sleepovers with cousins or close friends whose families you know ameliorates the issue. But others will retort that this doesn’t matter, given that extended family and other closely trusted people are more likely to molest your children than strangers. Some people have taken it a step further: if you’re worried about sexual assault or exposure to porn, you shouldn’t let your kids go to camp, ride the school bus, or even go to school at all. If you’re willing to accept the risk of your child being molested or bullied, you clearly don’t care about them, and there is no benefit that is outweighed by even a small risk of serious harm.

I have to say, even as a neurotic parent, the sleepover thing never occurred to me until recently. You could say it’s because I was never cool enough to attend a good amount of sleepovers, or because my kids are young, but the majority of the comments I’ve seen in the sleepover conversation have been from people whose kids are the same age as mine, people who don’t even have kids yet, and nobody who screams “I was cool in middle school.” Some of them are citing fearmongering TikToks from law enforcement who insist sleepovers are a hotbed of sex abuse—the DARE of our generation, I suppose. Others are drawing on things that happened to them when they were kids, or kids they knew about. I’m not saying they’re wrong—I haven’t made up my mind about this yet—but a common credential they cite is their own childhood trauma. Respectfully, I’m not sure someone’s trauma is a good barometer for what’s safe or not. It’s like asking if it’s safe to fly, and inexplicably only sourcing information from people who have survived plane crashes.

But therein lies the issue. To say “Actually, I think sleepovers with families you know are probably fine,” is to invalidate other people’s trauma, or worse—to prioritize unnecessary fun and convenience over your child’s safety. And nobody wants to be the parent who seems like they don’t care about sexual assault or other serious dangers. As I read through a great deal of the sleepover discourse, I found myself buckling under the pressure. Maybe I shouldn’t let my kids have sleepovers. If that’s what everyone is deciding, maybe I’m a bad parent if I allow it. What if, in ten years, the only people who allow sleepovers are the parents who don’t care about safety at all, and they go from “maybe unsafe” to “actually unsafe because only reckless people do them?” I have a prediction that allowing your child to sleep over at a friend’s house will, in our lifetimes, be considered wildly neglectful and unsafe, and might even trigger a call to CPS.

In fact, this has happened before with several other things—things which we used to consider safe, but are now taboo or even criminalized, starting with a smallish group of parents deciding they were unsafe. It’s happened before, and it’ll happen again.