Recently a playground near my apartment got torn down. I was talking to my mother on the phone recently, and mentioned how tragic it was that playgrounds were

Recently a playground near my apartment got torn down. I was talking to my mother on the phone recently, and mentioned how tragic it was that playgrounds were being torn down across the nation in the name of "safety" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19tierney.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19tierney.html). To my great surprise, she disagreed. She thought it was a good thing. This is a woman that took me to countless playgrounds when I was a kid, and let me roam free in hundreds of acres of forest whenever I wanted. Somehow, after successfully raising me "free-range", she had a change of heart. I couldn't tease anything out of her besides "it's dangerous, kids could get hurt". I don't have a root-cause for her about-face. I suspect either the influence of media or that something happens when adults who have raised children become elderly. Maybe without kids at home, parents start dwelling on the past and fixate on everything that could have gone wrong.