[DanielStraight]

I think you're 100% right about over-parenting. Hence the need for something like this:

https://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

But I don't think the author of the article is (necessarily) there. I suspect the author is already pretty close to the middle ground you're proposing. I think the responses you've gotten on this have a lot more to do with people feeling bad for how you seem to be treating the author (though you didn't specifically say anything about him) than they do with people disagreeing with you.

[_cttz]

Yeah, I feel a little bad about that (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3005079) since I wasn't responding to the author in particular but impersonally to the pattern in the comments. I have no idea of where the author falls on this spectrum; quite possibly he's resolved these issues better than I have. A blog post isn't nearly enough information to make any judgment. The cultural pattern, on the other hand - that I've been observing closely for years. In myself as much as in anybody!