The fattening of America’s children demonstrates the truth of the Law of Unintended Consequences.

An article in the Wall Street Journal confirms once again that the pursuit of a safe, painless world is a search for an impossible utopia and only makes us less human, less healthy, and less happy. The author points out that authorities’ fear that children will suffer unnecessary accidents at play is actually stunting kids’ development and will create physical problems for them in adulthood:

The headlong drive for safety has indeed created dangers, but not those identified by the safety zealots. Risk is important in child development. Allowing children to test their limits in unstructured play, according to the American Association of Pediatrics, "develop[s] their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength." Scrapes and bruises are how children learn their limits, and the need to take personal responsibility.

The harmful effects of our national safety obsession ripple outward into society. One in six children in America is obese, and many of them will face a lifetime of chronic illness. According to the Center for Disease Control, this problem would basically cure itself if children engaged in the informal outdoor activities that used to be normal. But how do we lure children off the sofa? One key attraction is risk.

"Risk is fun," the author notes, acknowledging the time-honored truth that nearly every good thing has its price:

An informal survey of children by the University of Toronto’s Institute of Child Studies found that "merry-go-rounds . . . anecdotally the most hated piece of playground equipment in hospital emergency rooms — topped the list of most desired bits of playground equipment." Those of us of a certain age can remember sprinting to get the contraption really moving. That was fun. And a lot of exercise.

One great irony is that the building of playgrounds was originally intended to create a safer place for kids to play, so that they wouldn’t be as tempted to prowl about in old mineshafts, abandoned warehouses, and the like, after the fashion of the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. But of course the places can never be truly safe until they are all made entirely virtual, with the children sitting in padded chairs, using their thumbs to perform simulated physical activities on computer games.

The solution imposed by our safety nazis, well-intentioned though they be, is to take away this thing that brings great pleasure and exercise to multitudes of children in order to prevent a very, very few from being hurt in the course of play.

Certainly we don’t want children to be injured unnecessarily, but that’s precisely the point: allowing the small risk of harm is indeed necessary if kids are to get exercise and enjoy themselves doing anything involving physical activity.

What is even more important is that the safety nazis’ success in preventing such risks may actually be the most damaging thing they could do to the nation’s children. The process of experiencing and enduring little hurts is what teaches us the practical physics of life, to know the various levels of physical danger we run into day after day and how to avoid them. Preventing children from testing the world and learning the consequences of their choices makes them dangerously ignorant and will ultimately bring far more harm to themselves and those around them.

That’s the real consequence of the snugly cocooned existence the safety nazis want to inflict on our nation’s children and even us adults.

As the WSJ author notes, 

America unfortunately is going in the opposite direction. There is nothing left in playgrounds that would attract the interest of a child over the age of four. Exercise in schools is carefully programmed, when it exists at all. Some schools have banned tag. Broward County, Fla., banned running at recess. (How else can we guard against a child falling down?) Little Leagues forbid sliding into base. Some towns ban sledding. High diving boards are history, and it’s only a matter of time before all diving boards disappear.

Safety is meaningful only in the context of other benefits and risks. Safety always involves trade-offs — of opportunities, of scarce resources and, especially in the case of children’s play, of learning to manage risk. The question is whether the trade-off makes sense.

The WSJ author calls for "someone" to be given the authority to make these choices. But that is what we already have. We are the ones who are responsible for putting them in place.

What is called for is for citizens to elect authorities who have common sense and understand that the creation of a perfect world for human habitation is not just a fool’s errand—it is hubris of an astonishing degree.