EPTEMBER 20, 2013
What Your Neighborhood List-Serv Tells You About The Demise of America
When did mowing the lawn become a bridge too far?
By Mollie Hemingway
I read the subject line for the latest message on my neighborhood listserv with interest: “Kids Cutting Grass?”
A few years ago I’d used a post with a similar headline to find someone to do some yard work. My husband and I hired a neighborhood kid whose Dad had died the year prior after a long illness. Maybe 13 years old, he’d taken to doing yard work to raise much-needed money and have something to do.
But this email was very different. It read:
“We just had a group of adorable and entrepreneurial kids (young, maybe 9-11 years old) offer to mow our grass. Not to be Scrooges in the neighborhood, but what is the general consensus on this around [the neighborhood] re: safety? They looked pretty young, and we didn’t see a parent with them supervising. I realize kids want to earn spending money, but I was interested in getting the pulse on this sort of thing. Teenagers, maybe. But these kids looked like they may be older elementary school aged (guess). We had a family member lose a couple of toes mowing while a young kid, so maybe I’m just overly sensitive.”
The next email read, “For anyone whose interested, the [American Academy of Pediatrics] recommends that children be at least 12 years old before operating a push mower and 16 for a ride-on mower, along with a list of safety precautions. Just FYI.”
A link was provided to a page on the AAP web site headlined “Mowing the Lawn Can Be a Dangerous Chore.” Injury prevention tips there include: “Have anyone who uses a mower or is in the vicinity wear polycarbonate protective eyewear at all times.”
I repeat. One tip was that everyone in the vicinity of a lawn mower should be wearing polycarbonate protective eyewear at all times.
A neighbor weighed in: “That’s a good age recommendation, probably. I would also suggest not having any age kid mow if there are any pesticides, herbicides, or insecticides involved. The American Cancer Society considers those to be a risk factor for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, possibly more.”
My mouth dropped open. Was I really reading this right? My older brother and I had done lawn work from a young age growing up in Colorado. He’d mow the grass and I’d weed. We made enough money to buy music, candy and stickers. My brother kept with it long enough to save funds for college. It wasn’t just lawn mowing. Every snowstorm was an opportunity to make some money. After we shoveled the elderly next-door neighbor’s walk for free, we’d venture down the road and try to find takers.
Never had the 1980s seemed so idyllic. Imagine being a kid in these times in my neighborhood, a cheery, liberal suburb of Washington, D.C. (How cheery? We have the delightful Dairy Godmother custard shop. How liberal? More than three-quarters of my neighbors voted for Obama in 2012.)
I weighed in on the neighborhood list-serv as well.
“My brother and I did lawn mowing jobs—completely unsupervised by our parents, though with their encouragement—from a young age. There are, as with all things, health and safety risks. But we learned how money and business worked. We developed a work ethic. We interacted with our neighbors and honed our yard work skills. We gained independence and confidence. And we made money! It’s all about trade-offs. In our case, the positive far outweighed the negative. Also, as it happens, I could use some lawn mowing as our lawn mower broke down. So if anyone sees these young entrepreneurs, perhaps they could be pointed our way.”
Tricycle helmets for all
David Frum eloquently pointed out one problem with over-protecting children in his book What’s Right. Reflecting on the hordes of preschoolers wearing helmets as they rode 1-2 miles per hour down the sidewalk, he wondered if his fellow parents hadn’t gone mad.
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