Parenting and opinions go hand in hand. Where children are involved, everyone, it seems - whether a parent or not - has advice or criticism. The circumstances are such that when I was put in a situation where my two, then pre-teenage sons had to go to school by themselves on public transport, I kept it to myself. That afternoon, they came home from school enthusing about their achievement and with a desire to repeat it. I let them. Five years later, they confidently go to every part of Hong Kong with their friends, to run errands and shop. Without adult supervision. New York newspaper columnist Lenore Skenazy's mind was brimming with such thoughts when, a few months ago, she let her then nine-year-old son go home by himself on the subway. She had reasoned that her two sons needed to be more able to think and make decisions for themselves. New York, she believed, was not as perilous as it was perceived to be, thanks to anti-crime drives started in the mid-1990s; with rates down to the levels of when she was growing up, there was no reason why her children should not do as she had done, and get around by themselves. Other mothers did not agree. They said that she was crazy, negligent and not caring. Annoyed, she wrote about the incident in her New York Sun column - and was swamped by a storm of comment, some of it hostile. Soon she was appearing on television, defending herself against accusations that she was a child abuser. Some people tagged her 'America's worst mother'. The attention was such that, in mid-April, Skenazy started her own blog, Free Range Kids, spelling out her views. They hinge on the need for the child-rearing pendulum to swing back to when parents were not constantly keeping tabs on sons and daughters because of safety fears. She told me this week that the pendulum had swung so far that the situation was now 'ridiculous'. 'You shouldn't have to track your child with a GPS system in your brain every second of the day,' she said. A growing number of parents agree. So much positive comment is coming in that she contends a movement akin to that started by women espousing feminism in the 1960s is under way. I stumbled on her blog recently and found myself in agreement with her sentiments. My younger son is now 14 - old enough, an impromptu office straw poll revealed, to travel on the MTR by himself. Some colleagues suggested a year or two older. A few contended 11 or 12. My revelation that my children had been doing this since before they had even become teenagers was, at times, met with silence, then a shocked: 'That's way too young.' Hong Kong is by far the safest city I have lived in. Our children must one day leave home for college, travel or work. To do this, they need independence and the ability to cope in unfamiliar situations. What better place to learn how to do this than in a city where crime is low, children and the elderly receive the highest respect and travel is inexpensive and convenient? A child obviously cannot do this with a maid a few steps behind or orders to phone in every time a destination is reached. Nor does our government's 'nanny state' approach - where we are bombarded with public service announcements not to block drains, that if we quit smoking we will be rewarded with marriage, children and wealth, and that we should take care of our friend, the aluminium window - help infuse the right thinking. At what age a child should be given the right to travel by him or her self depends on factors including maturity, neighbourhood, health and parents' beliefs. I am sure that most children are ready for this by the time they reach 14. To give this freedom is necessary to engender a society that can better think for itself, be more open to ideas, less suspicious and not be overly protective. The message so often heard in the media of a parent who let their child out of their sight for five seconds with the result that tragedy ensued is rare in much of the world; and it is certainly rare in Hong Kong. Skenazy has had the sense to point this out. By joining her, we can get the pendulum back to where it belongs. Peter Kammerer is the Post's foreign editor
