A Georgia mother was arrested for letting her 10-year-old walk into town. What does this say about 'safetyism'?

A Georgia woman was arrested late last month after her 10-year-old walked alone to their rural town. provoke a debate about or fears for children's safety have gone too far.

According to the arrest warrant, which CBC News viewed, Brittany Patterson, 41, of Mineral Bluff, Georgia, was arrested on Oct. 30 and charged with one felony count of reckless endangerment.

She “knowingly endangered the physical safety of her young son, 10 years old, by knowingly ignoring a substantial and unjustifiable risk,” it said.

According to a GoFundMe, her son walked less than a mile from their home to downtown Mineral Bluff — where a population of 370 – before a concerned citizen reported it. The road he was walking on had no sidewalk, so he walked on the shoulder.

The GoFundMe adds that Patterson was arrested in front of her children, and that her son feels responsible. The fundraiser was launched by Parents USA, which bills itself as a parental rights group and supports its cause.

In one interview with NBC News Posted Wednesday, Patterson explained that she was taking her oldest child into town for a medical appointment, and her youngest son Soren did not want to come. She told the libertarian Reason magazine that she assumed Soren was playing outside on the 40 acres she shares with her father, or perhaps was at her mother's house two minutes away.

“The mentality here is more free-range,” she told Reason.

So she left and later got a call from the police that Soren had walked into town. He was on his way home when a woman called police, Patterson wrote Business insider.

Police brought Soren back home, she told NBC, and officers returned later that evening to arrest her.

“They asked me to put my hands behind my back and all that stuff, and I realized what was going on,” Patterson told NBC.

'This isn't right. I didn't do anything wrong.'

The child safety debate

Patterson's case has struck a chord in the parenting news community, where issues of child safety versus independence are hotly debated.

“Let that sink in. A child walking alone in his own neighborhood was treated like a crisis,” wrote the parenting news website Motherly.

LOOK | Why children need risky outdoor play:

The key to healthy children is risky outdoor play, researchers say

Roaming freely, taking risks and even getting hurt are essential for healthy child development, says the Canadian Pediatric Society. A new study says risky outdoor behavior with peers is key to children's mental, physical and social health.

In Georgia, children under the age of eight are not allowed to be left alone, the organization said Child Supervision Guidelines from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services. Children between the ages of nine and 12 can be left alone for short periods of time, “depending on their maturity level.”

In Canada the issue is a bit of a problem gray area. Most provinces and territories do not set a minimum agebut social services generally advise that no child under the age of 12 should be left at home unattended 2021 study.

Similar cases have made headlines recently. In Canada, for example, Winnipeg mother Jacqui Kendrick was investigated by Child and Family Services in 2016 over a complaint about her children playing unsupervised in their own backyard.

In 2020, a single mother in Georgia was arrested after leaving her 14-year-old daughter in charge of her younger siblings while daycares and schools were closed due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Melissa Shields Henderson had been called to work and while she was gone, her four-year-old son walked next door to play with a friend. The charges were dropped three years later.

And in 2015, a BC court ruled that a mother in Terrace could no longer leave her nine-year-old son home alone after school. She had argued in court that her son was mature enough to be unsupervised between 3pm and 5pm, and that the decision should be left to the parents.

The charges would be dropped if she signed the safety plan: attorney

In the Georgia case, Patterson told Business Insider that a case manager from the Division of Family and Children Services allegedly asked her to sign a child safety plan on Nov. 5, but she refused.

CBC News has seen a copy of the proposed safety plan, provided via email by her lawyer, David DeLugas, who founded ParentsUSA, the organization supporting her fundraiser.

The plan includes requirements to delegate a “safety person” as a knowing participant and guardian when she leaves the house without the children, and to download a location tracking app on Soren's phone.

DeLugas told CBC News via email that the assistant district attorney told him that Patterson's charges would be dropped if she signed the plan, and shared his response.

“You mean every time a kid says, 'Mom, I'm going to play with my friends,' and they say, 'Okay, come home at dinner!' that's somehow criminal?

“Is it really protecting children if we lock up their mother?”

LOOK | How stressful is modern parenthood?:

Is parenting more difficult today than it used to be?

A public health advisory says today's parents face unique challenges that can impact their mental health. Some parents of older generations say raising children has always been and always will be a struggle. Can we really say which generation has had it the worst?

Modern fears

For those who grew up as latchkey kids — who allowed themselves unsupervised cocoa and cartoons for two hours until their parents got home from work — modern concerns about leaving children alone can seem confusing.

In the parenting literature, the term 'safetyism' has been used to describe the modern culture of overprotecting children through methods such as softer, lower playgrounds and constant floating, which has been called 'helicopter parenting'.

Previous generations of children enjoyed more freedom, even though crime rates were higher at the time, noted clinical psychologist Simon Sherry Article from Dalhousie University from 2023. But today's parents grew up in a time of stranger danger and television shows America's Most Wantedsaid Sherry.

“It is no wonder that parents became increasingly anxious and protective,” he wrote.

And while there have been some horrific cases of child neglect and abandonment — like an Ohio mother who left her toddler home alone for 10 days to go on vacation and now accused of her death — Brittany Patterson in Georgia says what happened to her son was far from neglectful.

“We are free-range parents who want the same kind of life for our children,” she wrote in a first-person article Business insider.

'They can go back into the forest and dig and build forts. They ride their dirt bikes or walk to the neighbor's house where there's a nice flat place to play basketball.”