Children

Why Do I Keep Finding Padlocked Playgrounds in New York City?

We're hemorrhaging our child population for a reason.

|

padlocked out | Illustration: Lex Villena
(Illustration: Lex Villena)

"Play is the work of the child," wrote Maria Montessori, pushing back against the perennial tendency of adults to trivialize the child's constant quest for movement and exploration. "It is work he must do in order to grow up."

Tell that to New York City.

About two weeks ago, we received a rare spring day in the midst of a harsh and brutal February. After Mass, my son—a squirmy, active, skateboarding two-and-a-half-year-old—my husband, and a few of our friends walked a mile or two to the Pier 26 playground along the Hudson River to let Zev run around after he exhibited extraordinary skill at sitting still in church.

Signs declared the playground closed due to icy conditions. There was a small amount of snow on the ground still, but it was quickly melting. It was 45 degrees outside. And I have the unfortunate quality of being a Texan lady who doesn't like to be told what to do, so I hiked up my skirt, took off my shoes, and scaled the fence. Boom, freedom. My friend boosted my son across the fence before following suit.

Then the most beautiful thing started to happen: Other parents and kids saw how much fun we were having and we offered to help get their kids over the fence too. We liberated maybe two dozen kids.

Naturally, such a good thing cannot last in modern-day New York: I came whooshing down the slide in my fancy church dress to be greeted by the authorities demanding my ID and threatening to fine me. I argued for a while, pointing to the fact that it's 45 degrees outside and there's no ice on the playground and suggesting that maybe, just maybe, children deserve just a morsel of red hot freedom. Then they started threatening arrest.

Just a few weeks prior, my son and I had encountered the same thing in Madison Square Park.

One complicating factor for libertarians is that both of these playgrounds are managed by trusts set up as public benefit corporations, governed by boards of directors appointed by the governor, mayor, and borough president. The trust is in charge of designing, building, operating, and maintaining the area, and the funding is a mix of private and public. Though these types of parks are supposed to have their own security, the person patrolling the Hudson River Park/Pier 26 playground was NYC Parks law enforcement. (The Hudson River Park Trust did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)

Though they're legally within their rights to decide what type of liability they wish to assume, these two incidents—as well as the COVID-era padlocking of public playgrounds by city officials for a virus that was neither especially deadly to children nor easily spreads outdoors—are good reminders of why this city is hemorrhaging its child population (and why Hasidic dads took bolt cutters to playgrounds during the virus days).

Since 2020, the five-and-under population in the city has fallen by 18 percent, and it shouldn't be shocking why: High cost of living, a culture intolerant toward children, and extreme risk aversion have led to an untenable situation for parents.

If the first half of the 20th century was termed "the golden age of child play," the first quarter of the 21st feels like a death rattle. The mid-'80s brought milk carton kids. Amber Alerts, which send out messages about missing or abducted children in suspected danger via cable news, radio, and text message, were invented a decade later. In the early 2000s, certain prosecutors started cracking down on child truancy. Now, in the 2020s, that icon of American ingenuity—the McDonald's PlayPlace—has started to become replaced by screens, with glorious plastic kingdoms torn down all across America. The culture shifted from one of widespread permissiveness to one of extreme scrutiny and worry. And nothing was exempt from this parenting culture shift, not even the playgrounds.

Since 1981, the federal Consumer Product Safety Commission has been publishing the Public Playground Safety Handbook, which contains such dictates as "bare metal slides, platforms, and steps should be shaded or located out of direct sun." If you cannot do so, you must "provide warnings that equipment and surfacing exposed to intense sun can burn." Free-swinging ropes "present a potential strangulation hazard" as they could "fray" or "form a loop." Handrails meant for toddlers "should have a diameter or maximum cross-section between 0.60 and 1.20 inches" and "a diameter or maximum cross-section of 0.90 inches is preferred to achieve maximal grip strength and benefit the weakest children." For toddlers, balance beams are not recommended. For school-age kids, they should be no higher than 16 inches off the ground. And, "because of the complex way children are required to cooperate and combine their actions, fulcrum seesaws are not recommended for toddlers or preschool-age children." What the regulators won't admit is that children have an uncanny ability to turn all kinds of every day (and unsafe!) objects into playthings; that board out in the backyard, with rusty nails poking out, balanced on a tree stump sure looks like a magnificent canoe to the eyes of the enterprising 7-year-old.

Of course, the federal playground guidelines are used as evidence in court. Take the kindergartener in New Jersey who, in 2014, got injured on a slide that was five degrees steeper than the federal guideline recommendation of 30 degrees; her family won a $170,000 settlement. In New York City, an East Harlem dad scored $75,000 from his kid's fractured forearm after she fell off a spinning wheel. In Brooklyn, five kids fell off a swing in 2013 at Slope Park Playground, leading to complaints; the city removed the swing. 

Even structures not meant for child play have been destroyed in the suing craze. In my husband's hometown on nearby Long Island, an older kid—late middle school, early high school, he recalls—got injured on a half-pipe in the yard of the local skate shop; the parents sued. The shop closed a year or so later, possibly from this court-mandated cash hemorrhage; the town's lone half-pipe disappeared with it.

Perhaps most ridiculous was a 2010 scandal over "The Mountain," a metal climbing structure in Union Square Park playground in Manhattan, which the city's Department of Parks and Recreation cordoned off, claiming it got too hot in the summer. This prompted a bill in the state legislature that would have required temperature measurements of different play structures during the summer. "The issue of heat exists in any playground," reminded the snarky landscape architect who had acquired the structure from Germany.

Of course, some spaces meant for play had legitimately been too risky. Amusement parks in the '80s and '90s faced tons of lawsuits, with many shutting down. "People were bleeding all over the place," recalled one now-grown patron of Action Park, in New Jersey, which reported 14 broken bones and 26 head injuries in 1984 and 1985 alone. The growing emphasis on child safety throughout the 20th century led to a two-thirds decline in childhood deaths from accidents between 1900 and 2000. But somewhere near the start of the 21st century, the culture embraced a new goal: Totally eradicating any accidents—and thus any risk—from childhood.

This is a goal I can't get behind. As Maria Montessori recognized a hundred years ago, we lose something quite important when we crack down on kids' ability to play—and parents' ability to decide for themselves what type of conditions their individual child can handle. Even if the playground had been icy and it had been 30 degrees that day, I would have still allowed my son to play; I would have simply dressed him in more wool layers and maybe watched him more closely (or recognized that that skateboarding child of mine can handle a fall or two). If the trusts that manage these playgrounds (or their insurers) are so afraid of liability, I'd note that the above incidents—the Slope Park swing, the too-hot Mountain—stand out in part because they're relatively rare. Be bold, take heart, and choose to foster a culture of childrearing in which parents accept risk and responsibility.

"Since it is through movement that the will realizes itself, we should assist a child in his attempts to put his will into act," wrote Montessori. I'm happy to assist; the only question is whether modern-day New York City will let me.