Upon reading Jerri Cook’s excerpt, it appears to be anecdotal. It is a funny piece wherein she pokes fun at herself for her own actions, as she succumbs to the whims of society. The Excerpt also has serious undertones, allowing Cook to mention how we have shifted from a society that lets children grow and be who they are, to a society who fosters a sense of constant danger born out of the necessity to sell more things like safety equipment and antidepressants. There is too much information for it to be a simple thesis statement, and a thesis seems to be completely absent from the piece. Therefore, it is most arguable the excerpt is an evidential piece, born of Cook’s desire to show why raising, “Free Range Kids,” is a more satisfying experience than living life as a helicopter parent. It is full of comparisons between how Cook herself used to raise her son versus how she raised them after his school began to pay attention to how he spent his time outside of its walls, as well as how one mother, Lenore Skenazy, refused to change how she raised her son, because she was unbothered by the media’s attempts to perturb parents into doing things differently. From letting her son ride the New York subway alone, unthinkable at the time, to writing about it in her weekly column, she was so unabashedly and deliberately determined to free range parent, she spoke freely and publically about herself and her son as child safety experts bad-mouthed her on television. Cook cites that nothing happened to Lenore’s child despite everybody being sure something eventually would happen to him. She goes on to admit she changed her entire parenting routine, later stating there was no need to. For example, she states she became a parent who would never have let her children trick-or-treat with their friends after dark, leading us to believe she also would never let them eat the candy before checking it because she had become the best helicopter parent there is. However, later in the excerpt, Cook divulges no children, ever have died from eating candy that has been tampered with on Halloween night. It becomes quite clear by the end of the excerpt it is evidence to the idea that we should not helicopter parent our children.
References
Cook, J. (n.d.). Excerpt.
