Polly Gillespie: When did we become so afraid as parents?

How did we go from the freedom of walking to school to the paranoia that no child could walk anywhere without the threat of molestation or murder? Photo / Supplied

Lupins. Acres and acres of lupins. I was six when we moved to Christchurch for a year. My father left early for work at a business selling fire safety equipment in the city. Mum worked part time at the department store McKenzies.

My mother was of a generation that, despite IQ and education, you became a teacher, a nurse, or you got married. She got married. And despite speaking fluent French, worked part time at a department store.

We lived in the Christcurch suburb of Burwood. I thought at the time that the house we rented was quite fancy after our small house in Papatoetoe. I can't recall why I thought it was fancy. It wasn't. It may have been because it had a wood shed or a pebble imbedded driveway. I thought it was very swanky. I wish I still had such modest views of "swanky and stylish".

The house was in the heart of working class suburbia. In Christchurch that year the summer was hot and the sky was always blue. It seemed bigger than any sky I could ever imagine.

In winter the puddles froze and our entire family huddled around a bar heater we'd brought with us from Auckland. None of us were used to the cold, least of all my painfully thin sister who would sit in the lounge under piles and piles of blankets looking miserable.

This was a different time. Parents did not drive their children to school. There was generally one car per family, and Dad drove ours to work. We walked to school, which was a good distance away. In my Mum's minds eye she probably believed my older sister walked with me. But generally she tore off with her friends and I meandered by myself across fences and through lupins fields to get to school.

At the end of the school day it was the same deal. I always walked by myself through the lupin fields. One day I found a toilet seat. I thought it was the most incredible treasure to discover, so I wore it around my neck, like some lavatory ceremonial collar, and presented it to my mother as a gift. She didn't appreciate the treasure in quite the way I expected.

Something happened. Somehow we all got scared. Especially parents. Suddenly we stopped walking to school because children were abducted, abused, and murdered. All of a sudden, walking to and from school was more dangerous than sky diving. Why?

Did things slowly get more dangerous? Did creepy perverts develop on the back of an LSD epidemic in the 70s? Was it the fluoride? Was it the media blowing everything out of proportion? How did we go from the freedom of walking to school to the paranoia that no child could walk anywhere without the threat of molestation or murder?

Recently, a horrifying attack followed by a spate of potential abductions have taken place in West Auckland.

It brings back memories from the 80s when it seemed there was a new case in the media every week. How do we, as parents, keep our children safe without helicoptering so closely that we bring up another generation of young adults afraid of their own shadows?

Of course, the idea of a six-year-old walking miles by themselves to and from school in 2016 seems terrifying, but have we gone too far?

With the horror of molestation cases rife again in the news, one would argue it's better to molly coddle our wee darlings than risk attack. But why is it more dangerous now than 30 years ago? Surely it's not. Surely it's perception.

Or has something happened that has made it more dangerous for our children to ever be alone? I loved my independent, lazy, long day walks through the lupin fields when I was six, but thinking about it now gives me uneasy chills. What was my mother thinking? What were all our mothers thinking?