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On May 25, 1979, 6-year-old Etan Patz was taken from his school bus stop in Manhattan and never seen again. A few years later, he became one of the first missing children whose face appeared on milk cartons.

His story has haunted Americans ever since. In fact, after I let my 9-year-old ride the subway alone, there were folks who said, "How could you? Don't you remember Etan?"

Two weeks ago Pedro Hernandez, the man found guilty of Etan's murder, had his conviction overturned. That reopened some old conversations.

Obviously, Etan's disappearance -- coupled with Adam Walsh's a few years later -- created a huge shift, not just in parents but in the basic idea that we can trust most people around our kids and vice versa.

We used to give most people (at least in our neighborhoods) the benefit of the doubt. Abandoning that basic, core belief has torn America apart. If you look at the way many, if not most, kids are raised today, it's under constant supervision by a preapproved adult. Sometimes this is spelled out explicitly: Many schools will not let a child get off the bus at the bus stop until first, second or third grade unless an adult is waiting there to walk them home.

I've heard of this happening even when the bus drops the kid off in front of their own house. Mom cannot wave from the window; she must be at the bottom of the driveway to fetch him.

And then there's the rise of tracking to keep kids safe; as if a child is in so much danger, a parent should be able to see them at all times. (And I realize most parents use tracking for convenience -- "She's three blocks away, I'll start dinner" -- but a panopticon is a panopticon.)

I don't blame parents for being terrified. I blame a culture that has gradually taught them that the most responsible way to parent is to basically conjure up Etan every time they're deciding whether their kid can do anything on their own. My term for this is "worst-first thinking" -- coming up with the WORST-case scenario FIRST and proceeding as if it's likely to happen.

My own example of this is after I wrote my "subway column" and was on a million talk shows. Most of the interviewers would eventually ask some variation of, "But how would you have felt if he NEVER came home?"

Consciously or not, they were steering the story from one of triumph and independence to one of a peril I shamefully hadn't considered. The message was: If you are NOT worst-first thinking -- not channeling Etan -- you are playing with fire (and perhaps deserve whatever bad thing may happen to your kid).

In short: Since Etan, the idea of trusting our kids and neighbors has been undermined. We default to fear.

The only thing I've seen that brings parents back from that dark place is actually LETTING their kids out of their sight to do something outside, unsupervised -- walk the dog, run an errand, play at the park -- and then realizing, "Wow! That wasn't so hard. And I am SO PROUD OF MY KID!" The real-life experience is clutch. In fact, psychologists are studying independence as THERAPY for childhood anxiety. (And, I suspect, parent anxiety.)

A newfound respect for childhood autonomy is beginning to bloom. Let Grow has helped pass "Reasonable Childhood Independence" laws in 11 states. And big authors like Johann Hari and Jonathan Haidt are asking parents to step back a bit and see how much their kids can handle on their own.

It's not that the memory of Etan has faded. It's that the evidence of its impact on us is becoming too alarming. We're coming to understand that when we restore some trust in our kids and our neighbors, everyone is better off.

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Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, a contributing writer at Reason.com, and author of "Has the World Gone Skenazy?" To learn more about Lenore Skenazy (Lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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